Water's Edge, May 8, 2024 (for lack of a better title)
The AA meeting The Water’s Edge is in the Puget Sound Yacht Club. The Yacht Club, such as it is, is on a dock extending out over a I’ve been here a few times now – enough to accidently raise my hand when they ask for home group members. I like to sit with my back against the wall and looking north-north-east. There’s a building -length window along the wall that starts about 7 feet high and extends another five feet or so to the top to meet the ceiling. From my point of view the I-5 bridge that passes high over the ship canal fills the entire window, both decks of the double decker bridge humming with traffic. I-5, the main street of my life.
A woman named Tyson shared about the first step and read from the doctor’s opinion, and then straight off the bat, unexpectedly called on me. Caught me flattered and un prepared. Told a few jokes to get the crowd on my side. Started quoting the big book at length, the Dr’s opinion in particular and then caught myself “what am I trying to prove? Stop showing off.” Talked about how just like you can get more inebriated with each drink you take, you can get more sober with each step you take. And you never have to be done. I get more Sober, more clear, more free every time I come back to the program. When I admit my powlessness. When I look at the mess I’ve created and ask for help. When through cool analysis of my life and my behaviors that it becomes evident that my life is a shit show and that it could be better with a little help from friends. Maybe, just maybe I could make use of this “Higher Power” that everyone’s talking about. Steps four and five are tough but when I do it, I not only get a clearer look at myself and my insecurities and grandiosities, I get some useful tools – a shorthand for a continued inventory process. I do 8 & 9. I meet with people and tell them what I’m trying to do. For slimey fuckers like me, we pay back the money we stole. We change our behavior. And that’s tough, because a lot of these old tools are deeply ingrained and they feel safe. Maybe they even worked in their own way. Taking this sort of space walk out into the unknown requires faith, more faith. That’s where you dig into the joy, the growth steps – 10, 11, 12.
Of course, I didn’t say all that. But it’s behind what I’m talking about – my premise being, just like you can be more and more intoxicated and stupid and uncoordinated, you can be more sober, more clear, more free, more adept, and graceful. Sobriety is a life of joy. Let’s wade into the steam of life and just start panning for gold.
A woman named Tyson shared about the first step and read from the doctor’s opinion, and then straight off the bat, unexpectedly called on me. Caught me flattered and un prepared. Told a few jokes to get the crowd on my side. Started quoting the big book at length, the Dr’s opinion in particular and then caught myself “what am I trying to prove? Stop showing off.” Talked about how just like you can get more inebriated with each drink you take, you can get more sober with each step you take. And you never have to be done. I get more Sober, more clear, more free every time I come back to the program. When I admit my powlessness. When I look at the mess I’ve created and ask for help. When through cool analysis of my life and my behaviors that it becomes evident that my life is a shit show and that it could be better with a little help from friends. Maybe, just maybe I could make use of this “Higher Power” that everyone’s talking about. Steps four and five are tough but when I do it, I not only get a clearer look at myself and my insecurities and grandiosities, I get some useful tools – a shorthand for a continued inventory process. I do 8 & 9. I meet with people and tell them what I’m trying to do. For slimey fuckers like me, we pay back the money we stole. We change our behavior. And that’s tough, because a lot of these old tools are deeply ingrained and they feel safe. Maybe they even worked in their own way. Taking this sort of space walk out into the unknown requires faith, more faith. That’s where you dig into the joy, the growth steps – 10, 11, 12.
Of course, I didn’t say all that. But it’s behind what I’m talking about – my premise being, just like you can be more and more intoxicated and stupid and uncoordinated, you can be more sober, more clear, more free, more adept, and graceful. Sobriety is a life of joy. Let’s wade into the steam of life and just start panning for gold.
Old man, look at me now.
His name was Ralph and I made sure I asked him after we had talked for a while because I wanted to remember. Usually old men at meetings that have "wisdom to dispense" drive be shit-flinging crazy, and we had one earlier at the meeting, going on about what Bill really meant, when he wrote (in the 12x12 I might add) "the testimony of A.A.'s who have really tried a moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out to be bogeymen, nothing else. Once we have complete willingness to take inventory, and exert ourselves to do the job thoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this foggy scene As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable. These are the first fruits of Step Four." And then he went on, emphatically, that the real fears in life are sickness and bodily injury and something else. Maybe physical incapacitation. I wasn't taking notes.
Every one of these old men with an axe to grind is a cautionary tale for me. Is that how I am I work? Is that really what I sound like? (the answer is, definitely.) It doesn't matter how great the stuff is you're saying if you come across like a table pounding asshole. So it's progress for me to hold up a mirror and see and hear myself, and it's the daily double of progress if I can actually sift through the resistance and really _hear_ what they're saying, despite the resitance inside. And I'm sitting there during this tag meeting which means that one person shares and then "tags" another person the share and it goes around the meeting like that and getting a little bit of an attitude because none of these townies is calling making a motion to call on me - but then then I've got nothing coherent to share, or rather, so much to share there's no way I will ever fit it into 3 minutes in any sort of coherent way. After all, I've got my own passages from Bill W to quote. "A hundred forms of fear" "Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us" "Fear should be classified with stealing. It seems to cause more harm."
After they took the 7th tradition break, I did share, "just to claim my seat" as we say. And I just talked about what was going on. Being out to check in with my mom and family. I didn't know what I was going to say but I shared about being here for my mom, and shared about my mind being a bad room-mate. This may sound a little new-agey, but at this point, what I've discovered through the 11th step is that I'm not my mind. But I gotta say that my mind is a bad room-mate. Sloppy, doesn't clean up after himself, always wants to replay old out of day tapes, has really bad suggestions, whines constantly, focusses on the negative. Etc. I know as an alcoholic that no matter how long I'm sober I can't trust my first thought. Okay, and I got the laughs I need to validate my awesomeness and I'm sort of wiping my hands internally with a job well done, and this character comes up.
Uh-oh.
The first thing he says, or I think he says, is "What you were saying about Death being a bad room-mate" and I'm thinking, that's not what I said, but okay. I'm not going to correct him or ask if I heard correctly, let's just see where it goes. And he tells a story of being a quadropalegic. And of being in the hospital, unable to move. And he's standing right in front of me and I say you look better now. And he shows bends over and shows me where they fused his spine and continues his story. About how when he was laying in bed and he couldn't move and all he had for company was his mind. And all he could do was think of the other people coming in the room, the nurses and orderlies and doctors, 18-25 people a day, and he would simply think of their needs. There was a possibiltie of losing their charter funding and losing their jobs. So his job was to be positive and heal if he could. Take direction. And he said please and thank you to everyone that came in the room. He is 85, the same age as my mother. Before he had this medical issue which almost killed him - it was a staph infection that got into his spinal column – he was healthy, riding his bike to meetings when he was 79 and he credits his health before the event with helping him be able to deal with it.
I would credit sobriety and the program of AA with giving Ralph the tools to think of others.
And to think of me, and to tell me this helpful story, about making a better working relationships with my room-mate, my mind.
Every one of these old men with an axe to grind is a cautionary tale for me. Is that how I am I work? Is that really what I sound like? (the answer is, definitely.) It doesn't matter how great the stuff is you're saying if you come across like a table pounding asshole. So it's progress for me to hold up a mirror and see and hear myself, and it's the daily double of progress if I can actually sift through the resistance and really _hear_ what they're saying, despite the resitance inside. And I'm sitting there during this tag meeting which means that one person shares and then "tags" another person the share and it goes around the meeting like that and getting a little bit of an attitude because none of these townies is calling making a motion to call on me - but then then I've got nothing coherent to share, or rather, so much to share there's no way I will ever fit it into 3 minutes in any sort of coherent way. After all, I've got my own passages from Bill W to quote. "A hundred forms of fear" "Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us" "Fear should be classified with stealing. It seems to cause more harm."
After they took the 7th tradition break, I did share, "just to claim my seat" as we say. And I just talked about what was going on. Being out to check in with my mom and family. I didn't know what I was going to say but I shared about being here for my mom, and shared about my mind being a bad room-mate. This may sound a little new-agey, but at this point, what I've discovered through the 11th step is that I'm not my mind. But I gotta say that my mind is a bad room-mate. Sloppy, doesn't clean up after himself, always wants to replay old out of day tapes, has really bad suggestions, whines constantly, focusses on the negative. Etc. I know as an alcoholic that no matter how long I'm sober I can't trust my first thought. Okay, and I got the laughs I need to validate my awesomeness and I'm sort of wiping my hands internally with a job well done, and this character comes up.
Uh-oh.
The first thing he says, or I think he says, is "What you were saying about Death being a bad room-mate" and I'm thinking, that's not what I said, but okay. I'm not going to correct him or ask if I heard correctly, let's just see where it goes. And he tells a story of being a quadropalegic. And of being in the hospital, unable to move. And he's standing right in front of me and I say you look better now. And he shows bends over and shows me where they fused his spine and continues his story. About how when he was laying in bed and he couldn't move and all he had for company was his mind. And all he could do was think of the other people coming in the room, the nurses and orderlies and doctors, 18-25 people a day, and he would simply think of their needs. There was a possibiltie of losing their charter funding and losing their jobs. So his job was to be positive and heal if he could. Take direction. And he said please and thank you to everyone that came in the room. He is 85, the same age as my mother. Before he had this medical issue which almost killed him - it was a staph infection that got into his spinal column – he was healthy, riding his bike to meetings when he was 79 and he credits his health before the event with helping him be able to deal with it.
I would credit sobriety and the program of AA with giving Ralph the tools to think of others.
And to think of me, and to tell me this helpful story, about making a better working relationships with my room-mate, my mind.