"A Journey Out Of Misery"

My two-year birthday is coming up in about a month, and I've found myself thinking about my story. I've chaired meetings a number of times now, and have been told that every time I tell my story, it's different. Not in a lying way, just that I focus on different things depending on what mood I'm in and what I'm moved to say. I really admire people who can condense their story down and keep it consistent, but I'm not one of them. So when I chair, I do my best to be honest and let myself be moved. My prayer before I begin is, "God, help me to say what needs to be heard."

I've also heard many, many, many people tell their stories. Sometimes I relate a lot, other times not so much. Sometimes I relate very strongly on an emotional level, even though the details aren't very similar. Sometimes I get stuck focusing on the differences and I have to fight the demons inside that tell me I don't belong. Almost everyone begins their chair talking about their use, the progression of their disease, and how insane things got from it. My story doesn't have the same structure. If anything, my story runs in the opposite direction. My life didn't get crazy because of being loaded, I got loaded because my life was so crazy. That is kind of an oversimplification, though. I've written my story in this blog before, and I wonder what it would be if I wrote it today.

We all have our stories. No one's is exactly the same as another's, but we all have common threads that weave through the tapestries of our lives. A lot of us come from homes where one or both parents suffered from the disease. A lot of us suffered abuse or some other severe trauma in our childhoods. Many of us spent our lives feeling like we didn't fit in or belong. Most of us have major control issues. Most of us have had people in our lives die from this disease.

It's similar with our Recovery. Everyone works the program in their own way, but the things we do are similar: we attend meetings; we work the steps; we take service positions; we reach out to others; we sponsor and are sponsored; we participate in the fellowship outside of meetings. Each of us does these things in different amounts at different times in our Recovery. We each bring our own unique way of doing these things, but we do them because we've found that they work. Our clothes may not be the same, but they're cut from the same cloth.

Some of us come into the rooms because we can't bear to go on living with things the way they are. Maybe we've realized we will die if we continue on in the same way. Maybe we've realized we want to stop and can't. Maybe we want our children back, or we want to stop hurting the people we love. Maybe we have to be there to save our relationship, or maybe we'll go to jail if we don't attend. Maybe we simply don't want to be in pain anymore. Regardless of the specifics, we learn quickly that the power of the program does keep us sober. It's not long afterwards that we begin to be amazed by all the other things it can do for us.

For me, Recovery has been a journey out of misery. My life before the program, well, I'd hardly call it a life. I didn't have any real friends. I was estranged from my family. I was consumed with hate--for myself, for people, and for this world I felt condemned to live in. Most of the time, I was straight-up miserable. And it had been that way for as long as I could remember. I owe a debt of gratitude to the program that I can never fully repay. Not so much because I have been freed from active addiction, but because I have been freed from the chains that kept me bound to my suffering.

I'm not saying everything is perfect now. It's not. I still have problems. There are plenty of things that I struggle with. And, of course, there's good old-fashioned life to deal with. But I can deal with it now. I have a set of tools now that I can use, and some powerful knowledge. Who I am really is enough, even if I don't feel that way at times. Not only am I worthy of being loved, but I am loved. What the program has given me is not a way of life; it's a way of living. And it works.