10 months sober

I’m very, very tired right now and I really don’t want to write a long one tonight. I want to get to bed as soon as possible, but I’m going away for the weekend so I need to write something, as I probably won’t get to write anything more til next week. I’ll just say that it’s wonderful to be 10 months sober, in double figures at last. I’ve had a great day and I’m looking forward to a great weekend, out of London. I’m sure I’ll have tons to share when I get back on Sunday.

9 months, 29 days

The slightly awkward feeling of something not being right continued yesterday, as once again I managed not to do everything in the day that I had intended to do. I finally made a start on revision for Psychology exams next week, but by the end of the day I’d only read half a textbook chapter on mood disorders, when the original plan was to read the whole chapter and start on another one. I think this is what worried me most yesterday - the exam in Abnormal Psychology is next Tuesday, and although I know I learnt the subject matter pretty well when we were given the lectures, I can’t ignore this nagging doubt that I haven’t learnt enough.

 Up til yesterday I wasn’t worried about exams at all, which is surprising given that I’ve come close to panic attacks in the weeks leading up to every exam during the past year. Anyway, the nerves started yesterday and I’m sure they won’t subside until this round of exams is over. By next Thursday, I will have completed my last ever Psychology exam. Following that there will be one essay and one presentation to do, then I’ll no longer be a student. Even though the end is very much in sight, I still can’t quite accept that I’m not going to be a student any more. I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I’ve finished, because I haven’t looked at the options yet. I can’t quite bring myself to start looking.

 Other than feeling nervous about exams yesterday, I was also slightly concerned about relations with a couple of fellow members of AA at my home group. For the first time in weeks I bumped into Dave last night, that guy who I went on a date with last year. He showed up at the meeting last night for the first time in about a month, and I was naturally nervous about seeing him because the last time I spoke to him, I made a bit of a faux pas, referring to a condition that he’s got when I shouldn’t have.

 Ever since we went on the date back in December, things have been a bit uneasy between us, to be honest. At times I’ve found myself getting close to him again, but then I seem to do or say something silly, and he gets annoyed or uncomfortable, and another three weeks of cold silence begin. Last night he mentioned my recent faux pas, apparently willing to let it go, and I didn’t know what to say about it. I realise now that I should have made some kind of apology, but I didn’t say anything, I was just so embarrassed to be reminded of it. We had a bit of a chat, but I wouldn’t exactly call it jovial, and I don’t think we’ll ever be bosom buddies now. It’s a shame because I did really like him last year.

 Adam, who I asked out on a date last week, didn’t show up at the meeting last night, which is unusual. I couldn’t help thinking that I’d scared him off. Although we appeared to sort things out on Friday, I guess our friendship can never be the same now. He always goes to that meeting on Tuesday - it’s too much of a coincidence that he was absent last night. I’ve sent him a text message today asking him how he is, to show that I’m not feeling awkward with him any more, but he hasn’t replied. I feel awful for causing things to be this way, but there’s nothing I can do about it now, except be as pleasant as possible. If he chooses to start avoiding the Tuesday meeting it’s entirely up to him.

 On top of the problem with Dave, this new problem brought my mood down quite significantly last night, and for most of the meeting I was unable to feel positive about anything. I resented my job as literature secretary once again, and I resented everyone there for appearing to be confident and happy, like I used to in my early days last year. I realised that my social phobia was playing up big time - this fear of being judged negatively by others always causes me to be resentful and isolatory. I was sure that Dave and Adam had begun to dislike me, so I resented myself and the meeting as punishment.

 In the second half of the meeting I knew I had to share - it’s become second nature for me to put my hand up there every week. I talked about the social phobia some more, and it seemed to help me a little. What I’ve probably discovered from all of this is that I should never mix romance with the fellowship. Both of the people who I’ve encountered difficulties with recently, Adam and Dave, are people who I’ve developed feelings for and subsequently become co-dependent with. If I make it a rule never to date anyone in the fellowship, it might make that side of things slightly easier for me. Does that mean I will turn down anyone in AA who asks me out, regardless of how sober they are? Both Adam and Dave are under a year sober, like me, which may have contributed to our problems. But I can’t help getting the feeling that dating anybody in AA would just create awkwardness in meetings, because my co-dependency will never go away. Mixing sex with the fellowship seems like a recipe for disaster now. The thought of turning down a potential boyfriend just because they’re in the fellowship hurts me a bit right now, but I know that that hurt feeling is the reason why I should probably make this a new rule.

 After the meeting last night a group of us went for coffee in nearby Paddington, and I had a good laugh with my friends in the café. Once again I’d beaten the resentment and the fear. One of the people in the café, Gavin, is one of those people who I became awkward with last year over something silly. We didn’t talk for a long time; I can’t even remember how it became that bad now. Last night we were talking properly, for the first time in months, as if nothing had happened. So, I have proof that with lots of patience, one can overcome any awkwardness and embarrassment. I thought Gavin would never speak to me again at one point!

9 months, 28 days

Yesterday it sort of felt like things were getting back to normal, as I returned to my tea commitment in central London which I’ve not done for two weeks. Last week was a bank holiday, therefore there was no meeting on Monday. I can’t deny that I was a bit apprehensive about returning to service yesterday, as I always feel nervous about things when I haven’t done them for a while. Unfortunately because of a few things going round my mind yesterday, the nerves were made worse. I’d managed to get up really late, and spent most of the day surfing the internet as if I had no cares in the world, rather than making a start on exam revision like I had planned to do. My final exams are next week and I only made a very tentative start on revision last week. So I was beating myself up over that last night, and I was also being hard on myself about that fact that I’d spent rather a lot of money on a nice-looking pair of sandals which were causing my feet intense pain. Because I like to walk everywhere, I’d been walking in these sandals a lot, and by last night the blisters were so painful, I wanted to scream. I felt like I’d wasted yet more money on a needless thing. I chose those sandals specifically because they looked trendy, and now I was having to pay the real price, and I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to wearing my old trainers because that would mean I really had wasted the money.

 The chair in last night’s meeting was one of the most painfully honest chairs I’ve ever heard, and it was just what I needed to hear. It was focused on step 3 this week, and he talked about a number of stressful situations in his life which have made him want to beat himself up recently. They sounded pretty similar to the stressful situations in my life. At the end he said that step 3 has enabled him to let go of this crushing desire to be perfect, because he knows his life will never be perfect, he will never be the perfect person. God still loves him whatever mistakes he happens to make. This really clicked with me as I realised that the current imperfectness of my life does not matter in the great scheme of things. It doesn’t matter that I missed one day of revision due to getting up late; it doesn’t matter that I spent a lot of money on some trendy but deeply uncomfortable footwear. I didn’t have a drink yesterday, and that’s all that matters. I was able to share about all that in the meeting, and I instantly felt better about things, more so than I normally would after a share. Unfortunately my mood went down again a bit later on when I came home to find my mother watching a program that I don’t like on television. I was annoyed about this for half an hour, until I came to bed and wrote my daily diary, in which I was easily able to identify my character defects concerning that annoyance.

 It was arrogant and dishonest of me to be annoyed with my mum for watching a program I don’t like on TV. It was greedy and impatient of me to buy a trendy pair of sandals which ended up causing me physical pain. It was slothful of me to get up late and miss a day’s revision. Having identified those character defects, I know I’ve done a step 10 long before I’ve technically reached that stage in the program, but it does help doing these things at the end of every day. It clears my head, and enables me to go to sleep more easily. Before I would have gone to sleep with the resentments rushing around my head, confusing and impossible to ignore. Now, by talking and writing about them, I am exposing them to the world and taking their power away. I generally sleep a lot better these days.

9 months, 26 days (left out)

I gave my fourth chair in AA yesterday, at the meeting in Notting Hill which is now one of my favourites. All week I’d been looking forward to telling them that the first time I went there, last July when I was just two weeks sober, I absolutely hated it. At that time all I could see was a bunch of happy clappy, serene individuals. I hadn’t yet got the AA message properly and so wasn’t aware that one day I would be one of those people. This is the first thing I said in my chair yesterday, because I wanted to let people know that the resentment does subside. If you want to be a part of the fellowship, you can be. Well, that’s how I felt yesterday anyway.

 It was pretty much the same chair as that which I’d given the last three times. I hadn’t planned anything, I just said what came to mind. Afterwards I remembered all sorts of important things that I’d forgotten to say, as always. I’d forgotten to talk about my family and my childhood, something I know I need to say more about in recovery. I don’t know why I keep managing to avoid those subjects in my sharing. I hope that next time I can actually remember - my childhood is all I seem to be thinking about at the moment, and it’s obviously something that I have to deal with.

 After the meeting they all went for coffee at the local café as usual, and for the second week in a row we were able to sit outside in a cool summer breeze whilst enjoying our beverages. I felt like I was on holiday - I can’t remember ever sitting outside cafés in London before. It was a very pleasant evening, as Saturdays always are now. Today should have been equally pleasant; technically it has been, with even warmer sunshine to enjoy and more fellowship to experience. For the first time in ages I had a free Sunday, so I decided to go to the Covent Garden meeting which I’ve only been to a couple of times this year. Last time I went there I was asked to do the chair at the very last minute; the melodramatic part of me almost got carried away with fantasies of being asked again today. When I got there it came as a bit of a relief to see they already had a chair sorted out - it would be given by one of those people in recovery who I don’t know very well but have always liked chatting to.

 All the familiar faces were there at the meeting. It’s hard to believe that ten months ago I didn’t know any of them. When I first went there in July 2007 I never thought I’d be part of that group, I never thought I’d end up recognising everyone in the room, even though a similar process had taken place at University and other long-term situations in my life. After ten months I can finally sit amongst friends in any meeting I go to - any gay meeting, that is. Straight meetings are a slightly different story! As we sat there before the start of the meeting chattering and laughing with each other like school kids, a small part of me couldn’t quite relax. This is the part of me that still doesn’t trust the feeling that this will be a permanent thing. The part of me that thinks they might all forget about me tomorrow, that I’ll never really be a part of the group because they’re all so much better than me.

 The meeting’s chair was very good, and I would like to have shared back, but for some reason I couldn’t. Afterwards a few of us went to get coffee and sit in Soho Square, which was absolutely heaving with attractive men. It was so easy to tag along with the group, I wasn’t even worried about not being welcome because I’ve gone for coffee with them so many times before. But still, it didn’t feel entirely natural, for some odd reason. I wasn’t a huge part of the conversation. Of course, it should be clear to all concerned, including me, by now that I’m just a quiet person who doesn’t talk as much as others. It’s not really a problem, but my mind continues to pick up on it nonetheless.

 It didn’t help when we got to Soho Square and they all started talking about this holiday to Ibiza that they’re going on in the summer. I’d known that they were planning this holiday, so it didn’t come as a huge surprise to me that they should want to talk about it whilst all together in the same place. But after a while it was all they seemed to want to talk about - no other topic of conversation had proved interesting enough for them. They talked about their plans for the holiday, which places they were going to visit, which clubs they were going to dance in and how many men they were going to pull. I’ve been in this situation so many times before, where I seem to be the only one in the group that’s not taking part in some big thing that’s about to happen.

 It was just as painful today as it was the last time I felt left out of friends’ plans. Even though I knew I couldn’t possibly afford a holiday to Ibiza this summer, my alcoholic brain kept thinking: it would have been nice to be invited. Would have been nice for someone to ask what I’m doing this summer. I tried to imagine how the situation could have occurred where I wasn’t invited on holiday with people who were supposed to be my friends; I quickly realised that there had probably been an occasion recently where they were at the coffee shop or the park talking about holidays, and someone simply suggested a group trip to Ibiza. My only mistake was my absence. It’s unfortunate, but it’s not my fault that I wasn’t there for that conversation, and it’s not their fault either.

 Still, I couldn’t stop the old feelings of resentment from developing as I sat on the hard, uncomfortable grass this evening. When I’m in the middle of that resentment, I can’t imagine any time in the future when I might actually be invited on holiday with these people. Summer 2009 doesn’t exist in my alcoholic mind: summer 2008 is the only thing that’s important when I’m feeling that way, because I won’t be going to Ibiza in summer 2008 and so everything’s a disaster, the world’s over and we all might as well drop dead.

 The major breakthrough in all of this is that I can actually think about it in this way. A few years ago, whenever I was left out of things (which seemed to happen quite a lot) I would simply feel hateful and angry for a few days, and wonder why it had happened to me again. I didn’t have a program of recovery at that time. Today I have recovery on my side and I can see that it’s mere circumstance which has excluded me from being able to go to Ibiza with my friends. God, nine months ago I probably wouldn’t even have been able to go and sit with them in Soho Square! I wasn’t there when they arranged the holiday in the first place, and I can’t afford to go this year anyway. I have the rest of my life to go to bloody Ibiza, and it’s not like I can’t go on any holidays until then. Next weekend I’m off to Cardiff for a much needed break from London; in June I’m going to the gay AA convention in Bristol with Earl; later in the year I might be going to the South of France again with Neal, if I can find the money by then. In my alcoholic mind, all of these things pale into significance compared to the thought of a week in Ibiza with five of the coolest people that I know in recovery. It’s like all the holidays I’ve ever been on and all the holidays I will ever go on with friends count for nothing until I’ve flown somewhere with at least three other people from AA.

 It’s so silly to be resentful about it tonight, but my head still wants to cling onto that anger. It’s telling me that although there may be no good reason to feel resentful about Ibiza, there will be loads of other things in my life that I have the right to feel angry about - so I may as well just let myself feel angry tonight! But I know I can’t allow this anger to fester. I’ve analyzed the situation and I know it’s just down to bad luck and bad timing. I haven’t been left out of anything. Perhaps if I want to go away with them in summer 2009, I should start hanging around with them more and stop wallowing in self-pity.

9 months, 24 days (need, want)

We have been blessed with incredible weather in London this week, so I’ve been out every day in my shorts and t-shirt, people-watching in parks and reading in cafés. The temptation to go out when it’s sunny is always too great for me to ignore, I guess because continuous good weather is so rare over here! Because of that I’ve hardly been indoors this week, and I’ve been spending a bit more than I should on eating out. I’m trying to keep it under control, and I suppose I’m spending next to nothing compared to what someone on a big salary would. But I do want to watch it because of the awareness that I now have around my general ‘ism’, which can easily take on different forms.

 Saying that, it was a nice couple of days, up til this evening. Last night I completed another voluntary shift at the helpline in North London where I recently started work. It was a good shift, as I got along with my training supervisor really well and listened in to a few interesting support calls.

 Tonight I had a nerve-racking experience to endure, as I met up with Adam for the first time since my ‘faux pas’ the other night. We needed to chat, to clear the situation up, for the sake of our friendship. I didn’t want to meet up with him - I knew it would be an uncomfortable encounter, simply because my feelings had become too messy. I’ve grown to like him too much, and because of that I know it might be difficult for me to be with him for a while. Earlier today I could already sense my co-dependency kicking in, as I began to resent him for not feeling the same way about me. I thought I’d never resent him, because he’s been such a good friend, but I was wrong about that.

 The old co-dependent part of me is still so strong. There’s clearly no cure for it because the feelings were exactly the same six years ago, the first time I fell for someone unobtainable. It was exactly the same resentment, the same sense of being let down, abandoned. The only thing different today is that I’m aware of its roots, and I can write and talk about it honestly. I have to be honest about it, otherwise it will lead to another drink.

 Despite feeling that way I forced myself to go and see Adam this evening because I couldn’t afford to let a distance grow between us. I felt I owed him an apology, as well as an explanation for my behaviour. He was very understanding and nice about it, as I knew he would be. My resentment disappeared completely at that point - I only hope it will stay disappeared. I’ll make sure I do a step 4 on it later. Once we’d said all that needed to be said on the subject, we sat chatting about the usual things such as pop music, over a coffee or two. I wouldn’t say it was horrendously uncomfortable, but it wasn’t the same as it used to be.

 Things have changed now, because I know we’ll never be a couple, and I know I’ll always have an ulterior motive for wanting to hang out with him. Every time I’m with him I can’t stop myself from adoring him. My co-dependency wants to grab hold of him and keep him for mine. At this time I feel that the best way to protect him and to protect myself is to stay away from him. I’ve been through this before, I know what happens when I like someone too much.

 Eventually, the feelings will go, which is quite sad in itself. By then, with any luck we’ll be able to go back to normal. I don’t know if it will be possible for me to ensure that our friendship survives in that time. I know I’m sounding very negative about the whole thing at the moment. As I was sitting with him this evening I felt so bad for having those feelings, and I realised that he must know I’m uncomfortable with him now, which made me feel even worse.

 Later on we went to the meeting in Soho, which I didn’t enjoy at all. It was too hot in the room, and I felt detached from the whole thing. It’s never been my favourite meeting, to be honest. I’ve said it before: it’s a very social meeting, where people go to chat before and afterwards as much as anything else. Sometimes I feel part of the gang there, sometimes I don’t. I realise that it’s all part of my social phobia, which I’m trying to work on. It will take time, as these things do. It’s about progress, not perfection!

 After the meeting I needed to talk to my sponsor about how things had gone with Adam. Unfortunately because the meeting is on quite a small, narrow alleyway, there isn’t much space for one to go and have a quiet chat with someone before rejoining the group outside. Adam was stood just a few feet away smoking a cigarette while I described the situation to my sponsor; he must have known that we were talking about him. I would like to have gone somewhere else more private, but my sponsor was keen to hang around with the group for dinner.

 When Adam came to say goodbye it was so awkward, not like the goodbyes we usually say to each other. It was bad enough before, but now that he knows I’ve told my sponsor about him, I just feel so much worse for him. I’m feeling the urge to beat myself up a bit, because if I didn’t keep falling for inappropriate, innocent men, this wouldn’t have happened!

 Yet again I’ve ruined a potentially brilliant friendship with my co-dependency. The worst thing is, this hasn’t happened to me for such a long time - I thought I’d made progress with relationships. I think the truth is that it’s been so long since I actually looked for a relationship with somebody, now that I’m looking again the issue is coming up again.

 I don’t know if it will ever go away. I’ve never had anything like a healthy relationship with anybody. I’m glad that I can be aware of my motivations these days, and I can set boundaries when I need to, such as deciding not to spend any more time alone with Adam. I wish I could just learn what I need to learn and move on, but there never seems to be an end to all these difficult lessons.

 I know for a fact that every time I ask someone out, there’s going to be the potential for rejection. I also know for a fact that every time I like someone, I’m going to develop some degree of dependence on them. It’s just part of my nature. How do I meet somebody and fall in love without needing that person? I keep hitting this brick wall, and there are no answers, as far as I can tell. Am I just meant to be alone forever? Is my real lesson in all this to accept that I can’t be with anybody in a healthy, equal relationship? As soon as I ask that question, anger and sadness explodes inside me, and I want to burn a hole through the computer screen where the words have been typed.

 Anyone who thinks that alcohol is the only problem for an alcoholic, think again!

9 months, 22 days (the inevitability of it all)

12pm I feel a bit of a fool. Last night I could not get to sleep at all, I was so wrapped up in this obsession with Adam. So I decided to pick my phone up and send that text message, admitting my feelings to him. At the time, I felt I couldn’t wait another moment before opening up about it. I certainly couldn’t wait another nine months. Of course there was a bit of me that really thought I had a chance with him. We’ve spent so much time together recently; we practically went on a dinner date last week. Last night we were talking about relationships and romance, and I strongly got the impression that we would be right for each other.

 After sending the text message, I instantly felt ashamed, embarrassed, stupid. What had I done? He’s only three months sober - I’ve got no right to do this to him now! But the text message was sent and there was nothing I could do about it at that time. I had to go to sleep and wait to see what would happen. This morning, I was terrified to switch my phone on, because I just didn’t know what response I was going to get from him. Although I had a feeling that he might like me in the same way, that didn’t mean I was absolutely sure he would be running into my arms.

 The only way to find out would be to switch my phone on, so I did straight away, and he’d left me a voice message, saying he had absolutely no idea I felt that way. That’s pretty much all he said. He’s going to phone me later on for more of a chat. Although the content of the voice message doesn’t give much away, I think the tone of his voice does: he didn’t exactly sound happy about my news. He sounded pretty embarrassed about it to be honest, and if he had no idea that I liked him, then it can’t say anything about the so-called ‘hints’ I’ve been getting from him over the past few weeks.

 Of course, I should never have expected this to be the fairy tale romance that I’ve dreamt about all my life. When I sent the text message I knew what I was doing, I knew there was a good chance that it would only ever be just friendship. I guess I couldn’t wait another nine months to find out the truth. If he really isn’t interested in me romantically, then it is probably better I know now than nine months down the line when my feelings have been allowed to get completely out of hand. They were already driving me mad, after just one month.

 No, the voice message doesn’t actually say that he isn’t interested in going out with me, all it says is that he had no idea and he’ll phone me later. Perhaps I’m reading way too much into his tone of voice, but how can I not? I’m desperate for answers and being the way I am, I’m bound to read between the lines when I have to. I can’t afford to get my hopes up about this, I have to prepare for the worst because it would be bad news for me to end up let down again. I have to imagine that he’s really not interested in me and we’re just going to be friends. That way I can begin dealing with the disappointment and move on. If I was to let myself believe that I really had a chance with him, I could end up getting really hurt.

 To anyone in the fellowship who’s thinking of asking someone out, I strongly advise you NOT to do it unless they’re over a year sober!! By doing what I’ve done I’ve gone against the program, I’ve gone against my sponsor’s advice. Part of me thinks that anything to do with romance might always involve some distancing of oneself from the program, because the steps do not make any provisions for ‘love’ whatsoever. But at this early stage in my recovery, I’ve really taken a risk, and it doesn’t look like it’s paid off. I’m not going to drink on this - I have no intention of losing those nine months! - but anyone else might have suffered more in my position.

 All I can do is pray that Adam isn’t too affected by this. Hopefully, if he really isn’t interested in me, then he’ll just be feeling a bit embarrassed and will be able to move on. The real danger is if we actually end up in a relationship. That way lies co-dependency, the big demon of alcoholic relationships. I know that whenever I choose to enter a relationship with someone, co-dependency will always be an issue, whether I’m nine months sober or nine years. So I’m going to have to deal with it at some point - it doesn’t matter whether I’d asked Adam out now or in a year’s time. The point is that he’s just three months sober and so I would have been putting pressure on him.

 It’s a huge, huge dilemma. I had to take Adam’s sobriety into account, but I also had my feelings on the line, and in the end I followed my heart. Well, right now it looks like it’s just going to be one of those things that’s a bit awkward for a week or so before blowing over. That’s all I could have hoped for. I know he has a good recovery and he’ll cope with this.

 It’s not in my nature to look for the positives in any difficult situation, but recently I’ve begun to do that and in this situation, I’m sure there are a few good things I can take with me. I realised that I had feelings for someone and I was able to wait a month before acting on them. Instead of bottling it up and becoming resentful, I let go and allowed him to make his own mind up. Now that it looks as if he’s not interested, I am assessing the situation calmly and rationally. I know we’ll remain friends - if we were to become awkward with each other it would be entirely my fault.

 The last time I went through this it was absolutely horrendous. Back then I was full of loathing for myself and for the guy concerned, because he couldn’t reciprocate my affection. I’m determined not to let history repeat itself. I’m too old for awkwardness and embarrassment!

 It would be lovely to think that one day, my feelings will actually be reciprocated by someone. Never have I really loved anyone who feels the same way about me. As I said last night, I have a history of falling for the wrong person, and in most cases, they’ve been completely unobtainable. Perhaps my lesson from all of this is that I won’t fall for the obtainable guy until I’m ready.

11.30pm I’m a bit upset. All day worries and concerns over the future of my friendship with Adam have bothered me. I went out to enjoy the continuing sunny weather but ended up feeling miserable in the park because I just couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d done. I wished I’d never sent Adam that text message; I wished he would just phone me to let me know how he was feeling. I realised very quickly that I was allowing history to repeat itself, because the first time I had a major crush on anybody I spent weeks and weeks obsessing about that one person, sitting in my room waiting for the phone to ring. It’s insanely co-dependent behaviour, and I couldn’t stop it from happening this afternoon. I simply had to ride it out.

 I phoned my sponsor, who told me what I already knew: that I’d taken a risk in asking a newcomer out. I now had to live with the consequences of my actions, whatever they may be. He advised me to try and have a proper chat with Adam at some point, rather than go through it all by text message. I knew he was right but at that point I was far too scared to pick up the phone. Old behaviour alert!!

 I had a Psychology text book with me which I’d brought to try and take my mind off things. Unfortunately, the chapter I got stuck into was more about anxiety disorders, another subject that’s been concerning me recently. I read through some of the symptoms in greater detail and once again felt sure that I was a classic sufferer of social phobia. I became more convinced than ever that I would have to see my doctor soon and ask for treatment. The reading talked about the fact that social phobia sufferers tend to have limited potential for career growth without treatment. Apparently, a course of anti-depressants alongside some form of talking therapy is the best treatment.

 The reinforcement of this knowledge led to yet more anxiety for me because it meant that I would have to go back to my doctor, who I don’t really like. Months ago I wrote him a letter explaining the reasons why I thought I needed to go back into therapy; he’d specifically asked me to do with this with the promise that he would put me in touch with a therapist. I never heard back from him, and now I’m faced with the possibility of a confrontation, because I know this constant anxiety can’t go on.

 By the time it got to early evening I was close to tears with all the emotion bubbling around my head. The washing machine syndrome was worse than ever. I desperately needed a meeting and so I walked over to Soho for the step 11 group that I’ve grown to quite like recently. Unfortunately I managed to walk completely the wrong way for a while, and didn’t get there until 3 minutes before the start. I normally like to get to meetings at least 15 minutes early so I can find a good seat and chat to friends. Because I only had those 3 minutes to find a seat I was made to feel extra nervous, which didn’t help at all. My imagination told me that getting lost beforehand had been a kind of representation of the stuff that’s happening in my head. Perhaps I’ve been dealing with all my problems the wrong way today. In fact, I know I have. But it’s just so hard to do the right thing when it’s all getting on top of me!

 The meeting was really good, especially the ten minutes’ meditation at the beginning. It gave me time to think about approaching my doctor, what I might say to him. Afterwards I went for coffee with Andy and we mainly talked about my current problems. It was helpful, but I didn’t feel much better by the end of it. I think I was tired and just needed to get home. Sadly when I got back tonight I received another message from Adam, who had tried to phone me while I was on the train. This time he went into more detail, telling me that he was only interested in me as a friend and that he won’t be ready for any relationships for a long, long time.

 He was very nice about it, but It was still heartbreaking to hear, even though I’d been prepared for it. So I was mistaken to think that I had a chance with him after all. I read all the signs wrong; I really thought he felt the same way about me. Maybe I saw what I wanted to see. Realising that makes me feel completely stupid. What’s worse is that I’m going to keep seeing him in meetings, and I don’t know if I can handle seeing him for a while. I definitely can’t go on any more dinner ‘dates’ with him, even as a friend. For a short while tonight I wanted to jack the fellowship in altogether, thinking I’d be better off staying at home and avoiding all that awkwardness that’s bound to develop between us. Quite quickly I realised that the illness was trying to grab hold of me and make me isolate. But I’d be lying if I said a small part of me wasn’t still tempted to avoid the meetings where he’s likely to be. I know that would be a totally cowardly course of action, and I’m not going to take it - I owe him more than that. Still, it just goes to show that this illness is very cunning.

 All I want is to meet someone I like who’s actually interested in me - is that too much to ask for? I can’t count the number of times I’ve asked that question over the years, and I know the fact that I’m still so resentful about it is an indication that I’m still not entirely ready for the relationship I so desperately crave. Even before I’d got Adam’s message this evening I knew a relationship wasn’t going to work between us. I know it’s never going to work for me because I have these deep-seated abandonment issues which just aren’t going away. Which is why I desperately need to see a therapist, or at least start attending CODA meetings. Thanks to my program of recovery I have answers at my fingertips now which I didn’t have before. The feelings don’t stop hurting, but at least I know why I’m having them now, and at least I’m not going to drink tonight.

9 months, 21 days (selfish? me?)

Since Sunday things have really calmed down on the work front, and I have to say it’s been absolutely lovely. The sun is shining, it’s really hot in London, and I’ve given myself time off to enjoy it as the last few weeks had been just so incredibly hectic. Yesterday I spent the evening with my close friend Neal; first we sat in the park for a few hours then we went for an Indian meal later on. For the first time ever, we sat outside the restaurant and ate. It’s so rare to be able to do that in London - the weather is normally too unpredictable! Neal said he was sure we’d eaten outside at that restaurant before; if we have, I must have been really drunk, because I couldn’t remember any such occasions. It was a lovely, lovely evening, and today has been fairly similar. I sat in beautiful Regents Park for a few hours, listening to relaxing music on my mp3 player; then I went to my home group over in West London, where for once I didn’t feel resentful about anything!

 I set the literature out, had some tea, chatted to loads of people. Then when the meeting started in earnest I identified with all the sharing; because it’s a newcomers meeting I feel naturally on a wavelength with everyone there. During the tea break in the middle, one of the old-timers who regularly comes to the meeting was a bit awkward about which of us was first in the tea queue; the ‘incident’ pressed my anxiety button and for a few moments I became my old social phobic self, whilst more and more people approached me for friendly conversation. Quite quickly I realised I was unnecessarily isolating myself by allowing the conversations to drift; the frosty facade that I put up when I’m in social phobia mode was much less of a comfortable state to be in than it used to be. Eventually I returned to being the friendly, chatty literature secretary which everyone seems to like. Once all the newcomers had shared I put my hand up and talked about the great weekend I’d had; it was probably my most positive share in ages, because I’d had such a good day.

 Afterwards loads of us went for coffee: now that summer’s on its way I think more and more people will be keen to socialise after meetings. We all had a good laugh together in a nice local café. It was a fabulous half hour!

 My new friend Adam was there as always, and at the end we headed off on the tube together, and as usual we chattered away about all the things that we have in common. I really, really enjoy his company, and I WISH I could ask him out now! I’ve known how I feel about him for about a month. I also get the strong impression that he likes me a lot too. But I don’t know the truth - I’m not a mind-reader, and I really want to know if I stand a chance with him. Is that incredibly selfish of me? Probably.

 I’ve spoken to my sponsor about this, and he has strongly advised me not to ask Adam out until we’re both over year sober. He says that they call going out with newcomers ‘13th stepping’, as it’s a bit like taking advantage, and the sad thing is, I can see where he’s coming from. The truth is, Adam’s a lot newer to the program than I am, and if I was to start pushing my feelings on him I might be putting too much pressure on him.

 I’m torn between my dedication to AA and my powerful, romantic feelings here. If I go back in time and look at the occasions when I’ve been ‘in love’ before, it has never been straightforward for me. I’ve never been in love without there being a whole lot of pain and drama involved. There’s always some reason why the man is completely wrong for me. He’s always either too old, too young, too clingy, or too disinterested. The thing about Adam is, he’s not like that. He would be absolutely ideal for me, were he not just three months sober. He’s none of those things I just described. He’s the kind of guy I’ve dreamed about meeting. Already I can see myself getting way too attached. I am utterly co-dependent by nature, and if my feelings towards him are already causing this much of a problem, I dread to think what it would be like if I actually started going out with him.

 I so badly crave a relationship; I’ve been alone for too long, I know it. I hate having to keep these feelings a secret. It’s absolutely doing my head in. But every time I think about telling him how I feel, a reason not to instantly pops into my head. It would be taking advantage of him; it would be putting too much pressure on him; he probably doesn’t like me in the same way anyway; if we were to start going out our gossipy friends in the fellowship would have an absolute field day.

 Just now I composed a text message in which I come out to him about my feelings. I have no intention of sending it - as soon as I read it back it came across as soppy, silly and pointless. I’m sure it would be much better telling him face to face. But I don’t know if I can wait til I next see him!! My heart wants me to tell him tonight, and it really hurts having to continue with this secrecy. I know my sponsor would be mad if I go against his advice. I’ve come out to guys about my feelings in the past, and it’s never turned out well, because it has invariably been really soppy on my part, and as I said, they’ve always been the wrong guy. I just get the strong feeling that this text message which I’ve composed is the exact same text that I sent to the last guy a couple of years ago, that it has ‘co-dependency’ and ‘neediness’ written all over it.

 I don’t know what to do. What does my higher power want me to do? Is this meant to be a lesson in patience, or am I meant to be taking a risk and doing what my heart wants to do? Time and time again I’ve been told that any risk is a good risk for me. I’m so confused!! Right now I feel completely f*cked to be honest. Love - who’d want to be in it, ey?!

9 months, 19 days (mistakes)

When I was finishing my dissertation the other day, the naive part of me thought it had to be the end of that ‘full time job’ feeling which I’ve experienced daily during the past few weeks, but it wasn’t the end. My life has continued to be a bit like a full time job this weekend, though I can’t say I really mind. Yesterday afternoon I headed to my sponsor’s flat to get on with step 5. He had been away in LA for a fortnight so I was really looking forward to seeing him again and getting some more important work done. We made some good progress yesterday, reaching late 2002, the time when I was really beginning to drink alcoholically. What’s become clear in my step 4 and 5 work is that nearly all my resentments are based on self-centredness, self-pity, pride, arrogance and dishonesty. I’ve been calling them ‘the Big 5′ because they keep coming up all the time. The name is a play on the ‘big five’ personality traits which are very famous in contemporary psychology.

 I’m self-centred because I’m concerned only with how I’m feeling all the time; I’m self-pitying because I have a tendency to feel sorry for myself; I’m prideful because I’m obsessed with what others think about me; I’m arrogant because I expect everyone to treat me well, no matter how I choose to treat them; and I’m dishonest because I can’t accept that other people have feelings about things which might be different to mine.

 Saying all of this, it probably sounds like I’m being too hard on myself. I’m not placing blame on myself for having these character ‘defects’ - I was born with them, as many humans are, and I’m perfectly capable of doing something about them now as an adult. I still think steps 4 and 5 are the best things I’ve ever done. By writing it all done, by putting all those shitty feelings into words and exposing them to the world, I am taking their power all away. I don’t act on those character defects any more because I’m aware that I have a choice how to behave now.

 Last night I went to that lovely meeting in Notting Hill where I have some very good friends. I didn’t get a chance to share but afterwards we all went for coffee as usual, and we sat outside the café for once because the sun was out for the first time this year, and I chatted with everyone as normal. Later on some of us went dancing in South London, as we seemed to be in the mood. I’ve talked before about this desire to dance the night away that I’ve never been able to shake off; I think it’s part of being a young gay man in London. There are some really good discos with really good music out there, in my experience at least. So dancing has become part of my life again, and I think it’s great. I never advise anyone to go to ‘wet places’, and I would never stop anyone from doing so either. There was quite a big group of us there last night, all having fun and supporting each other. Alcohol had nothing to do with it.

 Of course, there were plenty of drunk people around us, which got slightly annoying right at the end of the night when I was queuing up to get my jacket from the cloakroom and someone bumped into me, spilling beer all over my shirt. Still, I didn’t turn it into a huge drama in my mind, because it was a pure accident and no alcohol passed my lips. I may leave it a month or two before I go back there; I simply don’t have the stamina to do that all the time any more. I used to be able to go out two or three nights a week, but now I just get so tired and exhausted after a while! Plus, there is only a small number of places where I would actually choose to go and dance these days. Most of the bars and clubs on the ’scene’, I can’t stand now.

 One of the brilliant things about not drinking is that I never get hangovers, which means I can go out the night before I have to work now. Today I was signed up for a shift with the Food Chain, delivering food around London to sick people who need it. I’ve been doing this work on and off ever since last July, when I was hungover and sick on my first shift. As I’ve said before, that experience was the last straw, and I decided to stop drinking there and then. Ever since then, it has been a constant struggle to sign up for shifts and not feel nervous about the work. I really want this experience because I know it’s good for me to have responsibility in the community. But I get so nervous about doing it, there’ve been times when I’m heading in for a shift and I feel like I’m going to prison!

 Today I woke up early with that familiar wrench in the pit of my stomach, telling me to stay in bed and call in sick. I wasn’t that tired, despite having gone to bed only six hours before, but my head was already telling me that the latest shift would be a disaster, because I’d become too tired in the end. I got up nevertheless, as I’m very used to being lied to by my own head, and I know it’s all rubbish. I knew I would have nothing to worry about today: I’ve done many shifts already, I know most of the delivery routes quite well and there’ve only been a couple of occasions when I haven’t got on with my allocated driver.

 As I ate breakfast the fear just wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to sit down and analyze precisely what I was scared of. Through steps 4 and 5 I’ve learnt that I have character defects which can only be dealt with through constant analysis; through Psychology I’ve learnt that the only way to combat fears is to identify them and face them. One technique used by Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is the ‘blow-up technique’, where the client is asked to identify a situation they’re scared of and take it to its absolute, most extreme, most horrendous possible outcome. For example, if someone’s scared of going out because they keep worrying about forgetting to turn the cooker off, the therapist will ask that person to imagine going out and leaving the cooker on, which sets fire to the kitchen, and then the whole house, the whole street, the entire neighbourhood, and then the city, and then the country, followed by the world, and eventually, the whole universe, until everything is burnt to ash and nothing is left.

 By this point, the client should have realised that the worst possible outcome they’re really scared of is never, ever going to happen, because it’s so ludicrous and far-fetched. Yet the fear that we feel about these situations seems so real, so powerful, because we’ve avoided the feared situation for so long that we’ve forgotten what’s real and what isn’t.

 Sitting down and trying to imagine what the worst possible outcome of today’s Food Chain shift was actually harder than you might think, because the fear tries to stop me from thinking directly about the situation. Fear is an emotion that we’ve evolved to help us avoid dangerous situations. When you’re scared of something, usually you’re right to be scared of it, so you avoid it completely, and you don’t really think about it in great detail, therefore the fear has worked.

 Unfortunately with anxiety disorders such as social phobia, many normal situations tend to be feared by people like me, and I’ve lived my life avoiding a multitude of ‘normal’ situations such as work just because the mere thought of them sends me into blind panic. The fear tried desperately to stop me from analyzing it objectively this morning; my heart raced wildly, my forehead sweated and I felt a bit a sick. But eventually, I managed to put down on paper what it was that I feared happening the most: I was scared that I’d be given a really difficult route, that I wouldn’t find any of the homes that we needed to deliver to, that my driver would think I was an idiot, and everyone would be really angry with me. Once I’d written those possibilities down, amazingly, the fear disappeared. Just like that. I’d made myself realise that I had nothing to be scared about, because the worst possible eventualities were at most very unlikely. I decided that the thing I was most scared of, not getting on with my driver, was nothing to fear because I had got on with nearly all my drivers in the past. It’s just incredible the lies that my head will tell me, isn’t it? I had no proof or evidence whatsoever that I was going to be given a really unsociable, difficult driver today, yet my head feared it nonetheless because it’s my default setting to be scared of the worst.

 I got into work feeling absolutely fine; I met my driver for the day, who turned out to be nice like all the others. Almost ironically, things started going wrong almost as soon as we had set out on the roads. When we got to the first address I managed to give the person there two meals instead of one by mistake. I don’t know why it happened, I simply took my eye off the ball for a minute, I suppose. I realised pretty quickly that I had made the mistake, but when I went back to the address I was mortified to discover that the people had already eaten both meals. Which meant somewhere further along the route, someone would have to receive one less meal (sometimes people order two or three meals, for their families).

 The driver came up with the suggestion that we go back to the kitchen to see if they had any extra meals. Quite often, they do seem to over-cook, and there’s always spare food left over when everyone’s finished delivering for the day. I was, however, petrified by the prospect of going back to the kitchen and admitting my mistake. Not only would it delay all the rest of the deliveries on our route, it would involve me walking up to the kitchen supervisor and admitting that I had done something wrong. The possibility of being told off, of being criticized publicly, looked very real, and negative evaluation by others is the thing I fear most in life. The idea filled me with doom this morning; I felt like I’d rather die than go back to that kitchen.

 I experienced exactly the same physical sensations on my first shift last July: the sweating, the palpitations, the sweaty forehead, the dizziness, the nausea. All of a sudden, I realised that I wasn’t only sick on that shift last July because of a hangover - I was sick because I was having a panic attack. I was so scared of being sick that I actually made myself sick!

 As we made our made our way back to the kitchen having only completed a few deliveries, I realised that I was going through one of those situations that have always made me scared of paid work. The type of situation where you have to be accountable for something, to admit that you’ve made a mistake, to ask for help. I find the thought of asking for help unbearable, because it makes me look stupid; if I’m not perfect in others’ eyes, I believe I’m a failure. All of this is typical alcoholic thinking, of course!

 We got to the kitchen in good time and - yep, you guessed it - no one told me off. In fact they seemed quite unfased by my unexpected return, as if this kind of thing has happened before! Could it actually be possible that other people have made such mistakes in the past?!

 They had plenty of food left over, meaning that once I’d picked up an extra meal I could get back to the car and return to delivering food very promptly. In the car I almost wanted to get down on my knees and thank God for letting my biggest fear turn out to be unfounded. The rest of the shift was relatively uneventful, although (almost even more ironically) a few people weren’t in to receive their meals, and when I called them they admitted that they had completely forgotten we would be coming, and had gone out!

 The shift ended quite late, unsurprisingly, but when I was walking home I felt like it had passed in a flash. On the way home several times I nearly stopped to cry, because I was so relieved and happy. I’d faced one of my worst fears, and I’d survived it. It must sound very strange to someone who doesn’t have social phobia, to hear me talking about a tiny little mistake like it’s the worst thing in the world. But this fear of being criticised, of making a mistake and failing, is so bad, it’s stopped me from carving out a career to support myself, and I used to drink on it, all the time.

 The last year has given me several different names to call this disease. Social phobia, alcoholism, self-centredness, self-pity, pride, etc. They’re all the same really. If I was to put my psychologist cap on, I’d probably say that I have alcoholism as a result social phobia. I do think the fear of being negatively evaluated by others (the definition of social phobia) came first, because I was always scared of people for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t start drinking until I was 18. In AA, some might not like me putting the tag ’social phobia’ before ‘alcoholism’, because in AA, alcoholism is the primary problem.

 By talking about all of these social fears and phobias I’m not dismissing my alcoholism as a secondary problem; it will continue to be the most important past of my life, because if I ever pick up another drink, I already know I won’t be able to stop. I’ll never stop being obsessed with what people think about me, and I’ll never be able to drink normally. The 12 steps/CBT aren’t there to cure my disease, they’re there to give me tools to deal with it. By drinking, I can’t begin to deal with anything.

 Right now, I am dealing with everything, and while I can’t exactly say that today has been fun, I’m glad it’s happened. I’ve made another step today, another bit of progress. I might have an extra long gratitude list to write later!

9 months, 17 days (it’s just emotion…)

I have a lot to say about today. It’s been one of those meaningful days that one doesn’t forget about. This afternoon we attended our last ever Psychology lecture. From next week we will officially be in our revision period, for the final exams which take place at the end of May. For my degree, I only have four things left to do: one coursework essay about therapy, two exams, and one poster presentation about my dissertation. After that, it’s really all over, and I will be out in the big wide world. With today being the last ever lecture, it’s the beginning of the end now, a fact which hasn’t begun to sink in yet. Today’s lecture was about group and art therapy. I could have stayed at home - it’s not a subject we need to know about for our coursework. But it’s something I knew little about before, and I thought it might be quite an interesting afternoon.

 I was also aware that I’d missed many of this term’s lectures, and I was feeling bad about that. When I got there, it was clear to me that most people hadn’t got to the point where they felt bad about missing lectures. Only ten of us were in today, out of a total of 50 who normally show up. The first thing the lecturer did was congratulate the ten of us on being there! She realised that we must be the few who actually found the concept of group therapy interesting enough to come in on the day of the dissertation deadline. You can be certain that most of those people who didn’t turn up today were at their computers typing their dissertations up, desperate to beat the deadline of 5 o’clock. I handed my report in yesterday, because I specifically didn’t want to be under that pressure today. It still hasn’t sunk in that it’s over.

 Group therapy is a very interesting subject. It sounds like it works the same as regular therapy, except clients have peers around them to support them through the process of therapy. There can be all kinds of groups for all kinds of purposes. It’s not just reserved for mental asylums, which a lot of us seemed to think before the start of the lecture. it turns out that I myself have partaken in group therapy before, when I did an assertiveness course for gay men two years ago. That was a very ‘closed’ kind of group work, with a finite series of sessions with set time limits and work structures. A lot of group therapy is ‘open’, such as support groups for women, ethnic minorities, etc, where people can come and go and the group runs continuously.

 It became obvious by this point in the discussion that Alcoholics Anonymous is perhaps the oldest and most well-known type of group therapy in the world, and when the lecturer described AA to us, I nearly fell out of my seat, because for the first time, a huge part of my life (AA) was getting recognition in the other part of my life (Psychology). It’s always funny hearing what psychologists have to say about AA. I’ve seen it mentioned in text books on occasion. On the whole, they seem to treat it with some suspicion. I think it must still be quite an odd concept to psychologists and the scientific community as a whole, purely because there’s nothing scientific about it. It just seems to work, for mysterious reasons which no one seems to be able to explain.

 The lecturer today only talked about it for a couple of minutes, telling the class about the American tradition of speakers getting up on a podium and receiving applause for their horrendous drinking stories. I thought she must have been to an AA meeting before, to know that much about it! No one I’ve met outside AA has ever known what goes on in meetings. People outside of AA genuinely seem to find the idea of it very strange. Here they do, anyway. The idea of talking about one’s feelings in brutal honesty appears to strike fear into the heart of anyone not acquainted with the custom!

 Most of the afternoon’s lecture was fairly standard, with a discussion of the different theoretical approaches to group therapy. After the break, everything changed completely, as the woman decided to teach us about art therapy by getting us to draw things. We were asked to draw a tree - she didn’t give us any more detail about the task at that point. So we were given paper and crayons, and for ten minutes we were allowed to draw the random image of a tree that we saw in our minds. Afterwards, we had to get into a circle and put our pictures in the middle, and describe the meanings behind them. At this point, the first thing that struck me was how different everyone’s drawing was. I suppose having only been told to draw ‘a tree’, it’s not surprising that ten relative strangers were able to come up with ten completely different drawings, though the differences did strike me this afternoon much more than the similarities.

 The next thing that struck me was how strange my tree looked compared to everyone else’s. I was the only boy there today, and while all the girls had drawn nice, neat oaks and pines and hawthorns, I’d drawn a big squiggly green and pink mess with a dark orange trunk shooting out of the bottom. I realised immediately that we had just drawn ourselves, and when the teacher announced that this was the real point of the task, I nearly cried.

 So the teacher began going round the drawings, picking out strange and interesting nuances for us to think about. One girl had drawn a very big tree with a mess of dark green leaves that didn’t seem to sit comfortably together. The lecturer began to ask the girl if she was currently feeling anxious about the exams which are coming up, and for some reason the girl started talking about missing home (she was not from this country originally), and then she suddenly burst into tears, which took everyone by surprise. She had to leave the room for a few minutes, and part of me wanted to leave with her, because I was close to tears myself. I’d never seen anyone cry in University before - it just doesn’t happen in that environment. Although it was unfortunate for the girl, it succeeded in making the session a whole lot more intimate and open for us.

 After that, people couldn’t wait to have their own pictures analyzed. Another girl had drawn a very happy beach scene with a great, tall palm tree and a sun smiling down from the sky and a small boat sailing out on the ocean into the sunset. It gave everyone the sense that this girl had a very sunny disposition, which she confirmed at length. And then the lecturer picked up on a bunch of coconuts attached to the palms, which led onto the news that the girl had just become pregnant. In three years of studying Psychology, I’ve never been privy to such personal information about my classmates - probably because I don’t know any of them that well. I don’t really hang around with any of them these days. But still, when I’ve hung out with them in the past we’ve never really talked about that side of things: our ‘personal’ lives. It’s always just about the course, the things we have in common.

 Despite my increasingly wobbly emotional state, I was desperate for the lecturer to analyze my drawing, perhaps because it was the last Psychology lecture I’d ever get to attend and I wanted to show my classmates that I am human after all. Being too unassertive to interrupt the flow of the conversation, I let it get right to the end of the session before opening up about my picture. As well as the dark green squiggly mess that was supposed to represent the leafy plumage, I had drawn some pink squiggles that were meant to be flowering blossoms. As I was drawing I had actually been thinking about this tree here outside my home, which is in blossom at the moment. It’s a fairly old tree, about thirty years old, and over the years the branches have begun to hang lower and lower because of the kids who swing from them during playtime on a regular basis. I’ve always felt quite sorry for the tree, and I have no idea how it’s survived all this time.

 So in my drawing I tried to capture that sense of low hanging branches by bringing the pink squiggles towards the bottom of the picture. In the end it looked rather like an old lady with green and pink hair that was falling out. It looked a very sad state of affairs, to me at least. Everyone else’s trees were clearly growing upwards towards the sky, whilst mine was slumping down towards the ground. Of course, once it had clicked that the tree was really just a representation of me, I knew that the messy dark squiggles were my incessant anxiety, and the low hanging ‘theme’ was a representation of my feeling that I’ve been pulled downwards all my life. The tree itself has been deformed over the years by the kids swinging from its branches, and I imagine I’ve been dragged down by children through my experiences of bullying.

 In the remaining time of the session someone mentioned that my tree looked very odd in the middle of the page, with nothing surrounding it, not even any ground for it to stand on. It was simply plonked there, rootless and alien. I talked about how the tree outside my home has always seemed out of place, in the middle of a car park where kids are always climbing on it and kicking footballs at it and pulling branches out of it for fun. The last thing the lecturer said was: ‘it sounds like the tree is very vulnerable,’ and of course, she was really saying: ‘it sounds like you’re very vulnerable’. It’s OK for her to say things like that to us, because we’ve had all the lectures on the theory, we know what it means, we can handle it. If I’m to train as a therapist, I will have to be told things like that over and over again. I will have to get to know myself, all the deep, dark and painful things, and my classmates will have to be privy to it. Therapy is as much a process for the therapist as it is for the client.

 It’s such a shame that the session had to end there - as a group we could have gone on for hours. We were starting to crack through our defences, the facades which we’ve kept up with each other for the past three years. God, I didn’t even know some of those girls’ names until today. That’s part of the reason why I was on the verge of tears for virtually the rest of the evening. I knew that something had been opened up in me this afternoon; a door had been unlocked and I’d just discovered another layer of my being. I knew I was vulnerable and anxious and scared of children before, but I never knew it was so pervasive in my life before. The lecturer didn’t tell us to draw the trees so that they represented our selves, she simply said ‘now draw a tree’. We weren’t told about it being a representation of our psyches until after we’d done the drawings, so I wasn’t consciously aware that I was putting all of these personal meanings into it at first, though I did begin to feel slightly emotional when I saw the finished result.

 This fear of mine, this corrosive feeling of being pulled down by life makes me very sad, and I don’t know how I’m going to change it yet. It seems to be such a big problem, it comes to everything that I do. It must be the driving force behind my desire to go into therapy. As I’ve said before, people become therapists partly because they want to heal themselves. It’s a great form of healing. I already know that it’s the reason why I’m an alcoholic.

 With all this on my mind, I had my first shift with the North London lesbian & gay helpline this evening. How ironic! Right up until the point when I got to the phone office, I thought I was going to burst into hysterical tears. I felt weighed down by my emotions. When I arrived and met my phone supervisor, I became all right again as I realised that he was going to be easy to get on with. It turned out to be a very quiet shift, which is probably lucky for me because I don’t know how much help I could have been to someone else in need of it. I could have called to postpone my shift to tomorrow night - I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded. But I didn’t want to put it off. I didn’t want to let my emotions control me any more. For years I’ve let my mood dictate what I do on a daily basis - if I’m feeling even slightly off, I have a tendency to change my behaviour to ensure that I’m as isolated and unburdened by responsibility as possible.

 I know I can’t continue with that behaviour because it’s stopped me from making the slightest bit of progress for a long time. I simply sat with the emotions this time and carried on with my job, and the result was a success, as I knew it would be. I learnt more about the work that the organisation does and I also learnt that I can do anything, regardless of how nervous or ‘wobbly’ I might be feeling.

9 months, 15 days (patience)

I’m going to make this a quick one today, as it is quite late and I want to be able to get to bed soon, as I do have to be up early in the morning. My dissertation deadline is fast approaching (I have two days left to finish it) and tomorrow I want to start writing as early as possible so that I can have it all done by the end of the day. I can’t bear the thought of sitting there on Friday along with everyone else, desperate to finish before the deadline arrives. I’d have more respect for myself if I could complete it tomorrow. So I want to be in bed by midnight tonight. I’m trying to get to bed earlier these days in general, because I’ve found it so unbelievably hard to get up in the mornings recently, and I know it’s because I’m going to bed late at night. I could leave this til tomorrow, but I don’t like going more than a couple of days without writing something.

 God, I can’t stop explaining myself!

 It’s really just been a week of work. For the past two days I’ve mostly been in front of the computer tidying up my dissertation. My surpervisor is sending a stream of feedback for me to use in improving the report. It’s good that she’s giving me all this help, but it has given me a lot more work to do this week than I would have liked. I was at the computer for six hours solid today. I’m surprised my eyes weren’t square by the end of it!

 Tonight I went out for dinner with a friend from the fellowship, Adam. We ate in Soho and spent a lovely few hours together. I really, really like Adam. The problem is, he’s three months sober, and he’s only just started the steps. I’ve known how I feel about him for a few weeks now. We’ve become very good friends, we have an awful lot in common, and if we weren’t in AA, I would probably have asked him out by now. The fact that I have the confidence to say that is amazing.

 He seems like the perfect guy. He’s smart, funny, and caring. I’ve stopped myself from pursuing a proper relationship with him so far because I know they suggest no relationships in the first year of sobriety. It’s a very good suggestion, I can see that. Relationships are stressful things, especially if you are co-dependent like me. So I haven’t told Adam anything about my feelings yet, I’ve simply decided to wait until he’s at least finished step 5. But it’s so difficult keeping it from him.

 Tonight could easily have been a date - it was very romantic in the restaurant, with the candlelight and the music and the affectionate chatter. I wanted it to be a date, but I was forced to hold myself back because I can’t bear the thought of taking advantage of him. Even though he’s older than me, I would feel like I am taking advantage of him because he’s less sober than I am.

 I definitely feel ready for a relationship now - the thought of it doesn’t scare me like it used to. I’m secure enough to know what kind of person I want to be with, and how I want it to be. But I know Adam isn’t ready, and I don’t want to put that pressure on him. I also know that the ideal relationship I’m imagining might not be how the reality actually turns out.

 It’s so painful to have to hide my feelings. How ironic is this situation?! At last I meet someone who I could see myself being happy with, and I can’t be with him because he’s only three bloody months sober. It’s really annoying, and if I didn’t have as much sobriety as I do, it would probably be quite threatening to my recovery. I am aware that if I was to wait for him, it would be so much better in the long run for both of us. So I will wait. I have to wait, there’s no other option.

 By not acting on my feelings right now, I give them a chance of developing and growing. Perhaps in six months’ time I’ll realise that I wasn’t in love with him after all. At least I would have waited to find out. Right now, I can’t persuade my heart that I’m doing the right thing, because my heart’s telling me that I’m falling in love. But I cannot afford to rush into a fling like I always did before. In sobriety I’m finding that the best way to go about things is the complete opposite to how I would have gone about them before.