gratitude

Falling Together

/ Tim / 1 Comment

 

“Just when it looks like life is falling apart, it may be falling together for the first time.”                 …Neale Donald Walsch
     I was a little more than a year into recovery when I broke my leg. I remember thinking, while I was lying there waiting for the ambulance, ‘This is going to change a few things!’ I ran my own business (a Bed and Breakfast Inn) and did most of the work myself. A couple of weeks later my relationship that had been limping along for several years finally ended. I thought, ‘What the hell, is this going to continue?’  My ‘go to’ for keeping myself somewhat sane was going to about 12 meetings a week and driving my motorcycle to out of town meetings. That wasn’t going to be happening for a while. The final thing was that I had already started the process with my doctor of weaning myself off of anti depression medication so I was ‘phasing’ every once in a while
     For the first month or so I was pretty much confined to home. I hired two people who were also in recovery to help me do all the work at the B&B. My mother and my ex pitched in when they could as well. And it was all working out fine. My sponsor came to visit as did other program friends. We had meetings around my bed at first, and later in the living room. Friends lent me some recovery literature. And I survived.
     I also learned several things. I learned that I didn’t have to do anything alone if I didn’t want to. I learned again of the generosity of people. I learned that things didn’t have to be done ‘my way’ to be done ‘properly’. I learned that my ‘perfectionist’ ways could be a whole lot more flexible. I never heard one complaint that I didn’t make the muffins or that the bed was made wrong or the bathroom was dirty. Everything got done just fine.
     I learned that while I wasn’t all that happy with how my life was at this particular moment, I was learning in recovery to play the ‘long game’. I might not see exactly what was happening or why it was happening, but I could trust the process and know that all was happening as it should. And I learned that I could survive and stay clean and sober even when the wheels fell off of the cart, or in our case, the wagon. Finally, it was at this point in my life that I began my journey deeper into spirituality and awakening.
In the time since that epic month of August in 2012, everything that came apart, came back together. After a couple of operations, a hard cast, a soft cast, walkers, crutches and canes and a month of physiotherapy, my leg healed.  A year later the business sold and I moved full time to Costa Rica, which had been a dream of mine. I haven’t had the need to return to medication for depression and I am still in recovery. There was a lot of change in a short time and a new me emerged from the ashes.
     Other momentous things have happened since in recovery. I now tend to look at them as stepping stones on the path. Some I have liked and some I would have preferred to avoid, but if that’s the next right step, then I take it. I’ve learned to trust my Higher Power and the process. My life fell back together in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I am grateful.

A Firm Foundation

/ Tim / Leave a comment

Meetings.  They’re part of the foundation of my recovery. When I came into the rooms I was invited back the next day. Not used to receiving many invitations at that time, I accepted. And I kept going back. I never counted the meetings I went to at the beginning, but I know I did a lot more than 90 meetings in 90 days. Now that I wasn’t consuming anything, I suddenly found that I had more time on my hands. I really didn’t trust myself going out socially. So I went to a lot of meetings. They ended at 9 PM. I’d get home a bit before 10 and go to bed. Safe and sound.

What I didn’t realize then was that I didn’t know how to act with nothing in my system. I didn’t know how to relate to others. My whole world had revolved around my disease. How to get it, how to hide it, how to get some more. I’d be nice to others because I thought you might share with me. Or I’d be trying to control things so I could make it through the next part of the day until I’d be free to let loose again. My life revolved in so many ways around my disease, so that now that I was trying to live in the solution, I had to find out what the solution was.  I had to relearn, or in many cases, learn for the first time how to relate to other people and life. I did this through meetings.

Going to meetings isn’t the whole program of recovery. But meetings kept me in contact with others who had, or were going through the same things I was going through. At meetings I learned how to apply the steps to my own life. I heard simple ideas about how to stay in recovery and not stray. I may not have been the cream of the crop of addicts but I did figure out something fairly quickly: people who were having the most difficult time in recovery were the same people who figured they didn’t need to go to meetings. Those who have long term recovery are those who still go to meetings regularly as part of their recovery. They’ve built their recovery on a strong and solid foundation upon which to base their lives. When the difficulties and challenges come along, that firm base supports them.

When I came into the program I was told five things: don’t consume, go to meetings, get a home group, get a sponsor, work the steps. There’s a reason why meetings have been part of Twelve Step programs since their inception: they work. Who am I to think I know better? After all, some of my best thinking got me to the point where I had to turn to recovery.

I go to meetings regularly because I’ve learned, when I start missing meetings, I start missing whatever I used. I listen at meetings because there’s still so much I need to know. I share at meetings because I’m grateful for what been given by the other members.

Peace.

Opening to New Thinking

/ Tim / 2 Comments

When I came into recovery I was told to keep an open mind. I was told that my best thinking had led me to the meeting rooms so maybe my thinking wasn’t the best at that moment. Perhaps I had better start listening instead of thinking.

At first I thought, I’m educated. Twelve steps? I can whip through those in a few weeks and be on my way. Higher Power? I’ll choose universal energy, it’s much better than the traditional ideas I grew up with. Make amends? No problem. I just won’t include a few people on the list.  I wasn’t living in my car. I didn’t drink Listerine. I wasn’t pushing a shopping cart through town. I wasn’t like ‘you people’ who really needed the program. I just needed a bit of help to get me stopped then I would be fine.

I had the idea that I was somehow ‘better’ than the other people around me. I had so many reasons why I was different from the others in the room. My situation was ‘special’. I had a set of challenges that no one else had. I heard my sponsor tell me that I was suffering from something very common in the rooms: Terminal Uniqueness. I was so special, living in conditions so different and in a world so ‘unique’ that it was slowly killing me, just like any other ‘terminal’ illness does. But I didn’t get it right away.

Slowly I learned to identify with everyone in the room and stop comparing myself to them. I learned that I had plenty in common with the woman who had lost custody of her children and the guy living at the mission. I began to see that their struggles were my struggles, and their triumphs were my triumphs. Once I pulled my head out of my, um, the sand, and I let go of the idea that I was different, things began to change. I started to feel I was a ‘part of’ and not ‘separate from’.

Throughout our literature I’ve read about how my Ego is at the root of my problem. My ego tells me I’m different, unique, separate and alone. Ego says I am far above or far below anyone else. It Ego that tells me that I ‘deserve’ this and that if you have something, I should have it too. What I didn’t realize when I arrived was that Ego was robbing me of the most important thing in life: connection.

Slowly I have reconnected with others in recovery, my family, friends, a Higher Power and myself. I am no longer alone as I walk this path of life. I thought that I was alone, but I never was. I thought I was different but I discovered many more similarities. I thought I wanted your possessions but I found that I already had abundance. Ego needed to be tamed, humbled, brought down to its right size. Slowly my thinking is turning around and it all started because I started to open my mind and listen.

I am grateful.