"Sharing Our Deepest Selves"

I wrote a song once. The chorus went, "tell me your deepest fears, I will believe you; cry my your wettest tears, I'll understand."

It's a little ironic. People have told me how much they admire the way I share so much of myself at meetings. I've gotten more than a few comments about how I put myself out there on this blog. Yet I know there is plenty more I don't share. Certain topics are pretty off-limits, each for different reasons. I hardly ever share that relapse isn't a part of my story, out of respect and recognition for the fact that it is for so many. I never talk about being in jail, except perhaps to acknowledge the fact that it happenned. My time in a mental institution gets discussed a little bit, but still only very rarely.

Uh-oh, there I go opening up about my secrets again...

Those of us with this disease know what it's like to walk through hell and live. And a lot of the time we come into the rooms, hear other people's stories and think that our own hell wasn't so bad. There's a line there to walk. We need to accept that what we have been through, our own personal hells, were hell for us to go through. All the things we've felt were and are valid. How you feel is how you feel. At the same time, we can ackowledge that there are others who have had to endure far worse.

Sometimes we hear someone else's story and feel better about what we've been through. Understanding another's pain can help us to release our own. Sometimes, when we're stuck inside ourselves, it doesn't matter what other people have been through. We feel like our lives are the worst and we can act out, like little children. Feelings can be tough, whether good or bad.

I've been to some speaker meetings where the chair really opened up. I've heard people share about being abused, raped, molested. It's very common for people like us to have that as part of our story. I've heard horror stories stated so matter-of-factly that a normie would faint dead away from sheer cognitive disonance. Because they can't understand. If you haven't been through hell, you can't quite fathom what it is that each of us with this disease goes through. There's no frame of reference. How do you explain the harshness of hell to someone who's only ever lived in privileged heaven? And if you try to explain it to them, denial kicks in and they'll refuse to believe that 'those things' could happen--and to so many. It's one of the reasons that it is so crucial for addicts and alcoholics to help each other. We understand.

This understanding happens in meetings, but it happens in our step work, too. When we do our fifth steps, we share deeply personal, private information about ourselves. We share our deepest secrets. And it is because we share those secrets with someone else who suffers from this disease, we find relief in doing so. We share secrets we thought we'd take to the grave, and almost every time our sponsor replies, "yep, I've done that too." We aren't alone, and we realize it--truly realize it.

We share the parts of ourselves we don't want anyone to see with someone who understands, and in return we receive the healing power of Knowing we aren't alone.