Life lessons

It has not been a bad couple of days, but I’m not feeling so great tonight. Not feeling horrendous either, but it’s important enough to mention. I went to a meeting tonight where I know many of the regulars, but I hardly spoke to any of them, and at the end I was out before anyone could have the chance to say goodbye to me. It was the exact same room where I went to my first ever AA meeting, and at the end of that meeting nearly 20 months ago I did the exact same thing. Why? Because I’m a sick alcoholic, or I’m severely social-phobic, or I’m just not having a good day. Or all three.

 I suppose things like that are bound to happen every now and then, or there would be no point in me continuing to treat my illness by going to AA. But the way I felt for a few moments tonight, like the way I felt most of the time 19 months ago, was not pleasant. It almost reduced me to tears. I felt lonely, for the first time in ages, and though I could easily have avoided it, I chose not to. I could have stayed to chat to those people, or I could have headed to Soho where some of them would likely follow me for coffee. In recent times I have worked hard to do those kinds of things after meetings, to push myself into social situations so that I can get better at socialising. When I came into recovery I very quickly identified social phobia as my main problem, and I have struggled with it on a daily basis for 19 months. Today, I suppose it got the better of me. It’s an illness, I’ve identified it and made a good start on treating it, but it remains brilliant at catching me out, on days like today when it tells me that all the people in the room, apart from being alcoholics, have one thing in common: they’re all much, much better than me.

 All the people in that room are not better than me at all. Every single one of them is a good hearted, kind, compassionate individual, and would be excellent for my recovery. Yet I still can’t take full advantage of that fact, and while I may have seemed to be in a good place spiritually during the past couple of months, these doubts and fears have been secretly doing press-ups in the background. This illness, whatever it is, is a shady bitch. It can disappear for long periods of time, and I can experience such joy and happiness at times, like I did yesterday when I met up with some AA friends in Soho and spent the day laughing and chatting. But despite all that it can come right back at any time and slap me in the face. Recovery has, fortunately, brought me to a place where every day is no longer a battle imside my head, but it hasn’t made everything all right. In some areas, my life now is as fabulous as it might ever be. In other areas, it is starkly ailing.

 This year has enabled me to take great steps towards achieving a lifelong dream, which involves writing a good novel. I am writing every single day, and I’m enjoying it every single day. I’ve nearly finished the first draft of an exciting story about the pitfalls of time-travelling. Not so long ago, such an achievement would have seemed absolutely impossible. Whether the book is any good or not, doesn’t matter – I’ve created something tangible, something to show for my recovery. Were it not for recovery, I can say with 100% confidence that this book would not have been written. I’ve done it for me - I suppose I could consider it a gift to myself. Drinking as I used to did not bring me any such gifts.

 Recovery has done me a great service in that respect. It has shown me everything that is wrong with my life and it has given me the tools to fix those things. As Augusten Burroughs said, it husks the soul. I have been opened up and exposed to my own character defects, and the core of my soul is coming to the surface. There are bright, shining parts of my soul; there are also dark, wounded and rotten parts. It hurts to strip those away. When I walked out of the meeting earlier tonight without saying goodbye, I was acting out a very old behaviour, one that I have always found perversely satisfying. It punishes those people who are closest to me. Though it ultimately punishes me, I can’t stop myself from doing it. It comes from the part of me where the infection of alcoholism lies deepest and hangs on like a leech.

 The lesson I’m learning repeatedly at the moment is that you get out of life what you put into it, just as you get out of AA exactly what you put into it. The lovely day I had with friends yesterday came as a result of the work I had put into our friendships. The loneliness I felt briefly tonight came as a result of the effort I didn’t put into being sociable with people. If I had stuck around and – heaven forbid – asked someone I knew out for coffee, I would undoubtedly be sitting in a coffee bar in Soho right now feeling ten times better. But I didn’t. Well, we claim spiritual progress, not perfection. It’s a bit of a get out clause, but it’s true.

I can

Well I am feeling rather off at the moment, and it’s been one of those days where every few minutes I feel as if I can’t do something important. I couldn’t get out of bed before 1pm, I couldn’t find the time to do any writing, I couldn’t take my mind off the fact that I have a resentment against my sponsor, and I couldn’t share positively at the meeting tonight. Things just bugged me today – I suppose I was due a bad day, after weeks of relatively good days. I felt crazy by the time I got to the meeting tonight, for some reason, and I needed to get it off my chest. I ended up talking mostly about my sponsor, which has helped me to realise that this is probably the biggest problem in my life at the moment.

 I haven’t spoken to my sponsor for weeks. I don’t like his boyfriend, and I don’t feel that close to him any more. I know he goes out for dinner and stuff with his other sponsees; I never get invited to these things. Perhaps it’s because I’ve only been his sponsee for six months, whereas the others have known him for years. But in my heart I want it to be more of a two-way relationship, and it definitely isn’t. Once again, I get the feeling that I’m going to have to put all the effort in if I want to change things. I left my last sponsor for exactly the same reason: I hardly ever saw him, and after a year I felt like I didn’t know him any better than the first day we met.

 I can’t believe this is happening again, but it looks like it is. What does it say about me? Do I want too much from sponsors? Am I unwilling to put the necessary work into my relationships to make them better? Or am I just bad at choosing sponsors? I can’t help getting the feeling that when it comes to making important decisions about the relationships in my life, I’m simply crap at making them. Certainly in my life outside of AA, I have noticed a tendency to become bored of the people that I go out with after a certain time, no matter how interested I was in the beginning. All the guys that I’ve dated this year, apart from one, have started off seeming like the best thing since sliced bread, yet after six weeks I can’t stand the sight of them. I know this is about me and how I relate to people, and it REALLY bugs me because I can’t see any progress in the situation!!

 I’m actually so annoyed about it tonight that I could cry. After sharing about it in the meeting earlier, I felt WORSE rather than better, and I could hardly speak when I went for coffee with the group afterwards. The washing machine head has been switched on, and I can’t fucking switch it off now. I’m full of doubts and worries, about whether I’ve made any real progress in the last 18 months or not, whether I should find a new sponsor or not, how I’m going to find one who’s any better than the three I’ve already had. Sponsorship is a big fucking deal in AA – and I still seem to know as little about it as I did 18 months ago. Grrrr!

 Another relationship bothering me at the moment is the one involving Gareth. I was allowed to see him again on Saturday, after two months of cold shoulder treatment, and it was amazing. The guy is still a dreamboat; physically and mentally he is ideal for me. The sex on Saturday night was great, better than it’s ever been, probably because I was so happy just to see him again. But there was a definite barrier there, perhaps because I knew it might be just a one night thing for him. He seemed to make it clear that he was primarily interested in sex – there was no indication that he wanted to spend any time with me after we had finished for the night. When we first met he was completely different: he said that he really liked me and that he was looking forward to getting to know me. Now that’s changed, and I’m allowing myself to be used because I’m just so desperate to see him. I know I’m falling for him, this is much more than a school boy crush. So what do I do about it?

 The fact that on this score too I seem to be making no progress is another serious irritation tonight. I’m going to sleep badly tonight, I already know it. The phrase that’s been going round and round my head for the past hour is: ‘I can’t deal with it.’ It feels like too much now; I’m tired and hungry, and if I search deeper, I’m also probably a bit lonely and a bit angry too. Which is a very bad combination on a Tuesday night.

 I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow. There are good days and there are bad days in recovery, as we all know. I just wish I didn’t have to wait for tomorrow to come before feeling OK again – I wish I could make something happen right now.

Direction

This has been a good week. On Sunday I finally went to see ‘Milk’ at the cinema, and boy am I glad I did. Of course it was my duty as a gay man to see it anyway, but it didn’t disappoint. The message is great: gay rights ARE human rights, something that the American midwest still seems to ignore. Tonight I am going to see ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, something I have also wanted to see all year. Going to the cinema is one of those things that I discovered I enjoyed doing in sobriety, along with collecting old music, going to the theatre, reading books and walking. Things I only vaguely knew that I liked before, but which I never gave much thought to.

 On Monday something a bit embarrassing happened. I went back to the step meeting in Holborn where I recently completed a year-long tea commitment. I didn’t particularly want to go back, but it was late, I needed a meeting and there were no others on that I knew as well. So I got there feeling just OK – I had to keep telling myself that there was no reason to feel resentful or nervous – but as soon as I got to the room I saw that the new tea-maker had laid out a nice spread of cakes, something I never used to do. It was very professionally done: I felt incredibly jealous. In my mind it was like being shown how rubbish I was at the commitment. I never used to make all that effort, mainly because I couldn’t afford nice cakes and posh tea, and partly because a part of me always resented it. I didn’t put myself forward for the commitment in the first place, and as the year went on I found myself disliking the meeting more and more. This week all those feelings came straight back, after I thought I was finally free of them. I resented the new tea-maker, and I resented everyone else for eating his cakes. I was sure they must be thinking that this new person was much better for the job than me. I hated being there from the very start, but I forced myself to stay because I know that the only way to tackle these feelings is to sit through them.

 Another reason I dislike the meeting is because a lot of people who go there are atheists. I have nothing against atheism as a concept, but when you’re talking about the steps of AA, I think it’s harmful for the most powerful voices in the meeting to be saying that God does not exist. For a long time I have known that I wouldn’t be here were it not for a higher power, this metaphysical force which seems to guide me and keep me safe at all times. AA doesn’t guide me or keep me safe at ALL times, which is why I don’t choose to name it as my higher power. Whenever I go to that meeting I feel like I have to keep my mouth shut on the matter, lest I risk offending the show’s main stars. I’ve known them long enough to know that they probably would be offended. Clive, in particular, can be very outspoken and vociferous on the subject. I just don’t feel like that meeting is good for my sobriety any more.

 It is where the ‘clique’ gathers every week: Clive, Colin, Joe, Gavin, Phillip and Amanda. I’ve harboured resentments against all of these people for a long time. When they’re alone, they’re fine; when they’re all together on Monday nights, I can’t stand them. They’re the ‘happy clappers’ that I put down so cruelly weeks ago. Unfortunately, my sponsor is Clive’s long term partner and he is therefore also a part of that clique now. Whenever I see my sponsor now I have to see Clive as well, and it’s beginning to grate on me. Clive is perhaps the first person I have ever been able to say that I genuinely dislike. I disagree with him on a great number of important issues. I find it hard to talk to him without wanting to argue with him. The issue of God and higher powers is one of those important issues. Perhaps I chose my current sponsor last summer because he WAS Clive’s partner – perhaps I hoped it would allow me an easier route into that clique. If that was my thinking, I’m coming to regret it now.

 So, I find myself once again with a decision to make about sponsors. If I go deep and force myself to be REALLY honest, maybe I’ve chosen all my previous sponsors for reasons other than the fact that they might make a good sponsor. My first sponsor I chose simply because he was one of my first friends in AA; my second sponsor I chose because he was at the time sponsoring Dean, one of my closest AA friends in previous years. And now I’m questioning my true motives for choosing this sponsor – great! The good thing is we’ve done all the steps together, and I believe we did them thoroughly, so it will be a long time before I need to do them again. But for the time being, I don’t really feel like I have a sponsor, which will make it harder when I come to sponsor newcomers.

 Other than that, I continue to be in a very good place at the moment. The writing is still going brilliantly; I’m at the halfway point in my time-travelling novel. I’m having more fun than I ever did with writing now, and because of that I am experiencing a great deal of serenity as a side effect. Today I sent off an application form for an training scheme at one of London’s famous drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres. They train people to become substance misuse workers: it seems like the perfect opportunity for me. The advert made it sound like I already had all the experience required, something that is unusual for me when it comes to jobs. Oh, I’d love to be given this opportunity…I never really forgot about the dream of working in mental health, I think I just put it on the backburner while I threw myself into the novel. Having filled out the application form to the best of my abilities, I am quietly confident that they will love me. I KNOW about alcohol abuse, I have the life experience. Luckily I’ve done a year’s worth of voluntary work and a degree in Psychology to fine-tune my knowledge on the subject. It’s almost like everything I’ve been through has been pointing me in this direction!

Soppy but spiritual

I’ve had a very good week, though it got off to a bad start what with the heaviest snowfall in 18 years in London and a general sense of malaise, brought on by boredom and associated negative energy. That blip did not last long; by Wednesday I was in a spiritual place once again, writing my novel at a tremendous pace and feeling that contentedness which I hadn’t really experienced since last summer. By today I had just about reached the halfway point in the novel. It is really amazing to be here, as it becomes clearer and clearer that my creativity was stifled my whole life until recovery came along. At the moment I am definitely not stifled; being able to write freely and maturely has brought me happiness like none I ever knew.

 On Tuesday night I volunteered to do a shift at the lesbian and gay helpline in North London which I have not been to for a few months. I finally felt ready to go there again, and by the end of the shift I was glad to have made that decision. I ended up speaking to a young girl over the phone for an hour and a half; she sounded exactly like me where I was ten years ago. She hated school, and she was feeling suicidal because she couldn’t face going back after the recent snow-enforced break. I gave her all the advice and support that I wish someone would have given me ten years ago. By the end of the call she sounded a little better, though when you’re a teenager it is almost impossible to see past your own problems, and I think someone like that would probably need a long term course of therapy rather than one and a half hours on the phone to sort things out. But I was personally able to reap the rewards of being in a position to take such a call. It shows how far I’ve come in recovery. A few months ago I was convinced that nothing at all had changed in my life in the past ten years, but experiences like the one I had on Tuesday prove that a lot must have changed – which is very comforting.

 The only fly in the ointment at the moment is Gareth. He keeps bothering me on facebook, and I can’t find the energy to forget about him once and for all. I think I need to forget about him, because we only saw each other for a week and I shouldn’t be feeling this dependent on a man for my happiness – but dammit, the man was so amazingly beautiful, and not just in a physical sense. If only he would reply to messages more quickly; if only he would be more available! He is a typical man in that sense. Sometimes he’s overtly flirtatious in his contact, sometimes he seems serious about wanting to see me again…most of the time he is completely silent, after all this time, and I can’t stop bloody thinking about him!

 I’m hurting my recovery by getting into this state, I know I am. I keep thinking: I can never have a healthy relationship with someone as long as I keep giving my power away to them…but how can I not give my power away when I find myself feeling that strongly about one man? How can I stop myself from needing someone in that way? I either want him or I don’t want him; and when I want him, I automatically become vulnerable around him, and I feel like I need him…love isn’t logical, it can’t be controlled or rationalized or prettied up. So what do I do? Ignore Gareth forever, or allow myself to fall into a black hole of soppy, romantic neediness? There don’t seem to be many options.

 But…at least I’m sober!!

Down

I’m not feeling great this evening, which is strange because I’ve technically had a few good days, and up til a couple of hours ago I was really feeling that. But this evening I am overcome with emotion and lethargy, the most prolific symptoms of depression. I believe I know the reasons for this. After I’ve had a nice experience there’s always a comedown; yesterday was a lovely day, and today, Monday, was empty in comparison. Also I’ve been having very vivid, emotional dreams recently, a side effect of anti-depressants I think. Most of these dreams concern my past. Whatever the situation, whoever I’m with, it always takes place at school, a place that has haunted me for the past ten years. Last night I dreamt about my friend in the fellowship who recently passed away: he seemed to have come back for a visit, and I was trying to tell him that I missed him, but he couldn’t hear me because so many other people were louder than me. I was in tears throughout the experience and when I woke up it took a long time to begin to feel normal again.

 Because I’m experiencing a minor depressive attack I am going through feelings of fear and anger on the side. My major life resentments have all come out today: I can’t see a teenager or heterosexual person in the street without wanting to hit them. Those resentments come from my school days, and I know it would harm me to actually act out on them, but in this state I can’t stop myself from having them.

 Yesterday was very different. I spent most of the day at the offices of the gay charity which I have volunteered for as a phone counsellor for the past year. I haven’t been there for for some time and it was nice to see familiar faces again; that they remembered me is good. Yesterday was one of their regular training days, so I got to learn stuff whilst having fun. In the evening I met up with Murray and we went for dinner in Soho, before heading to his place for some kinky activity. I enjoyed myself a lot, despite thinking that I wouldn’t, because those old fears about sex still haven’t gone away. Afterwards we cuddled up in warmth while a snow blizzard fell outside the window. I haven’t felt that comfortable with another man for a long time. I don’t think my feelings for Murray will ever compare to what I felt for Gareth, but as far as that old flame and all those like him is concerned, I have lost interest.

 Today the heaviest snowstorm in 18 years has hit London, and I decided to go out for a while this afternoon to take pictures. London is very pretty in the snow, and I managed to take some great pictures on my phone, but when I came home alone I started to feel a little down. Since then I have been in this melancholic pit, helpless to climb out by myself like so many times before. It’s too cold now to go out to a meeting, so I should call someone, but I just don’t want to. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow, or later tonight if I’m lucky. Having felt so good for nearly the whole of January, it was only a matter of time before I had another one of my episodes. The pink cloud never lasts forever, at least not with me. I will be OK, because I always am. Hopefully I can make it to a meeting tomorrow and share about this, as one of sobriety’s major lessons has been that keeping feelings inside makes them hurt more.