I sobered up, knowing for a while before doing so that I would die if did not. I knew that I would lose the two people I love most if I did not. I found out however that I had already lost the one. To explain to someone that the centre of your life has been ripped out and torn apart because of the person who is the centre of your life is difficult.
To the day, the words ring in my ears. She said under a patio while I held a glass of whiskey in my hand. “I refuse to discuss my affair while you are drinking” I threw the glass away. Somehow, I knew that this time it was not just until tomorrow night. And when she said to me “No, not just for tonight” It came as no surprise.
I joined AA, they saved my life purely through a strange sense of belonging. But somewhere things got a bit confused. I stayed sober for more than a year before I worked up the courage to start working the program, step one was the easy one. Admitting my sickness to myself and the world, what came after that was the bitch. Having to come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can take your sickness away from you, is in itself a spiritual thing... It is intrinsically believing that there is a Power greater than yourself, that can literally lift your sickness and cravings, and everything that worked in concert to make you go down that road in the first place and make it seem obsolete.
I now know that that is a pie in the sky theory, the same as Christianity in which the program is based. As the second step in this road to recovery intrinsically keeps your head open to the possibility of a Supernatural power greater than yourself. And I did not and do not believe that there is such a being.
On the night of my first years sobriety celebration I was told that I have come this far, and it is now time for me to start “making things right with the Old Man” The person who said this was my first sponsor, and he was brought to this meeting by my in laws.
On the night of my second anniversary they made a scene and left, because I did not greet them first before a new member that needed someone to talk to.
Soon after this they told her in front of me. “You have lost your identity, you are no longer the independent person we knew”
I predicted “ They have made you choose, and blood is thicker than water”
Six months later she left, I stopped making any attempt of hiding my beliefs after their little reclaiming of their daughter. I lost my wife, sober for two and a half years. But only after I had to drag everything I needed to know about her infidelity from her like a dentist would a tooth. Only difference, it was a repeated process. Over and over and over.
Through her leaving she degraded and belittled me through a process of new relationships, a process of taking things that was ours to an AA group that is based in Christianity and putting my private life in the open. This by the person that called herself a private person, not a public person. The deep seated hurt that I must have caused her to do that still haunts me.
Through her leaving she degraded and belittled me through a process of new relationships, a process of taking things that was ours to an AA group that is based in Christianity and putting my private life in the open. This by the person that called herself a private person, not a public person. The deep seated hurt that I must have caused her to do that still haunts me.
Through all f this I made a lot of other mistakes, I made serious fuck ups. But not one that I would not repeat in essence. As those choices came to define me. They came to be things that has made me embrace my labels.
I worked the program with a different sponsor, someone that understood that I should not be pushed in that direction. And the program worked for me and in some weird way still does, but I have to understand that I am responsible for the happiness that has come my way through the heartache and pain and bitterness, that sober Christians helped me achieve and maintain for more than a year.
I am alone now, but I am happy, I am responsible and I am sober. For the first time in my life I know that my happiness is my responsibility, and I can not look at anyone else for it. That for me to drink is to die, and for me to consider drinking is to consider losing every ounce of happiness that I am responsible for.
If I look now at what I lost, I realise that what I have lost is mostly other peoples acceptance. And in all honesty, I would rather look my son in the eye a sober, honest, kinky and polyamorous atheist, than a drunk lying, deceiving and pathetic Christian.
I am responsible for my own happiness.
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