Beneath the surface

On Saturday I was still living in a fantasy, and I went to see Gareth again, for the first time in about a month. The sex was great, as usual – he really is a beautiful man, exactly what the needy inner child in me wants. Seeing him again was something of a spiritual experience, as he fed that neediness in me more than any drink ever could. But of course, the experience and the pleasure had to end eventually. When I came home on Sunday afternoon it took a while for the comedown to start, but once it did, it was horrific. Yesterday evening I felt so low that I couldn’t leave my bedroom. In fact, I could not stop crying. Thoughts of suicide and drinking and self-harm crossed my mind several times. I missed Gareth’s arms, and I was scared that I would have to be alone forever. I had tried to get him to agree to see me more regularly, to take me out for meals and be more responsive like he used to be when we first met. But my tentative suggestions were obviously not designed to make a difference. I can’t change Gareth’s personality any more than I can change the world.

 Realising this last night brought me to the lowest place I have ever been in, because letting go of Gareth means that I have to let go of a lifetime’s fantasy. All my life I’ve fantasized about being taken care of by the archetypal big, strong man. Gareth, when he came along, fit the bill nicely. Not only is he physically very masculine – he acts like a real man too, drinking beer and driving cars and listening to guitar-driven rock music all the time. He is nothing like me whatsoever, which is precisely what attracted me to him. He is what I secretly think a man ought to be. He is the ‘great dark man’, in Quentin Crisp’s words. He is just a fantasy. I can’t have him all the time, only for brief nights of passion once every month or so. God, the passion is good when I’m in the midst of it. With Gareth I have learnt to enjoy sex for the first time in my life. But that enjoyment has turned into an addiction. It was an addiction from the very first moment I met him. He represents all the things that I think I’m lacking in life: he has a solid career, money in the bank, his own home, the epitome of a manly body…he is the person I have always dreamed of. And he will be my ultimate destruction, if I keep on acting out with him.

 It’s funny that while all of this goes on I come to the chapter on enlightened relationships in Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’. According to Tolle, we are all addicted to the fantasy of a romantic relationship. When we meet someone who represents what we believe we are lacking in life – someone who tends to be the complete opposite to us – our egos cling onto that person and invest everything in them, to the point where we would rather die than be without them. Is that not what I have always done in relationships? Again, I seemed to know the answer before I ever came across this book.

 The ego gives us a false sense of self and tells us that our survival and happiness is dependent on external things, whether they be money, material things, drugs or romantic relationships. What does Eckhart Tolle think constitutes a truly enlightended relationship? It’s hard to tell – I probably need to read the chapter again – but if I think about it deeply, the answer seems to be that only two enlightened people can form a truly lasting relationship. If Tolle is to be believed, I don’t need a relationship with someone like Gareth at all. Gareth represents the clinging to external things that has driven me to insanity – I’ve fallen in love with his body, his masculinity, the things that he does and the things he doesn’t do. I haven’t fallen in love with the person underneath all that, because I don’t know that person at all.

 The big realisation from all of this is that the man I’ve chased all my life is what has caused me so much unhappiness. Tolle seems to say that true happiness cannot come from a man or a woman – it can only come from a person. Which means that I need to start looking past external gender and think about the spirituality that exists in the people I’m dating. Where am I going  to find people who are similarly spiritual to me? I’ve always had it at the back of my mind that I would be better off dating in AA, though the fear of breaking a taboo has put me off so far. I haven’t properly tried dating in AA yet, so I can’t say that it doesn’t work for me. It just seems really coincidental that a book which has nothing to do with AA talks so much about the kind of spirituality that I’ve only ever found in AA. If I really want to be in a relationship, I guess I need to be with someone who understands the things I’m talking about. Until I find someone like that, I have to remember that I will be OK. Tolle says that whether one is in a relationship or not, one has everything that one needs to be joyful and at peace right now. And I’m beginning to believe him.

Me vs my ego

Well…where to start! It has been an interesting and enlightening week – actually the last two years of my recovery have been interesting and enlightening, but I want to mark this week out as the week that I finally possibly decided to make my recovery a spiritual journey. Having already done the 12 steps you might be thinking that I should already have made that decision – but with me, making a decision doesn’t always equate to accepting it. I have been reading ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle, recommended to me by a number of AA friends over the years, and it is all about spiritual enlightenment. But it doesn’t just take the usual line of: ‘here are a few meditation techniques, use them and your life will improve.’ It repetitively and firmly presents the argument that we all need to start living a spiritual life now, or the survival of the species is under threat. Apparently we are all afflicted with over-active egos, which means that we are identified with the resentments and jealousies and wishes and whims of the ego instead of being identified with our true, inner, peaceful natures. We derive our sense of self from an insecure and raging ego rather than looking deeper inside to find the joyfulness of just being. According to Tolle, the ego takes its power from the past, from which we take our identity, and the future, from which we derive purpose. The belief and the hope that the future will be better than the past causes a great deal of anxiety because both the future and the past are illusions – they do not exist. Only NOW exists, the Now is all that has and will ever exist.

 I have been affected profoundly by this book because it confirms a lot of stuff that I already believed. I knew that I was slowly killing myself by projecting myself into the future all the time. All my life I have waited for the future to arrive, because the future is sure to be better for me, isn’t it? I’m waiting, just waiting all the time, missing out on the power and beauty of Now. The future and the past are both chimeras that haunt me. My insecure and needy ego resides in them, so powerful because I made the choice a long time ago to keep feeding it, so that now it is like a monster, and the process of attempting to get away from it has caused me a great deal of pain. The other day as I sat in my favourite coffee house in Soho reading Tolle’s book I was almost in tears – the words hurt so much because they are true. I have not been able to let go of the dream of the a future that will bring me things like a boyfriend and a secure job, because I believe that these things will make my life complete. But they are just part of a big, non-existent fantasy that has stopped me from living my life. Nothing external will complete me, I have known that ever since I came into recovery, but knowing and accepting are two very different things. To accept something, you have to go through the sheer pain of finding it out, as I have done recently.

 This week I’ve also watched a film called ‘The Naked Civil Servant’ for the first time in my life, a film about the life of Quentin Crisp, Britain’s first openly gay man. In the 1930’s he walked around London with dyed hair and painted nails, causing controversy and shock everywhere he went. He faced abuse and violence on a daily basis, but he never stopped being himself, not for one moment. This film has also had a profound effect on me this week (as has the long-awaited follow-up which I was lucky enough to be able to see at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival yesterday.) I’ve faced some of the discrimination that Quentin Crisp faced, I’ve experienced his loneliness and deeply engrained need to be loved. Both films are brave enough to explore the theme of love, what it can mean to gay men in a world that hates them. Crisp’s final conclusion seems to be that romantic love is impossible, because what we crave is the love of a ‘real’ man – and real men don’t fall for other men. ‘There is no great dark man,’ says Crisp, shattering all my illusions and fantasies in one short sentence. Don’t I crave the love and affection of a big, muscular, manly man who doesn’t exist? For a long time I have secretly held onto the slim possibility that someone out there might one day be able to fulfil all my needs, because, like the existence of God, such a thing can never be fully disproved. But the fact that Quentin Crisp felt exactly the same way as me eighty years ago is surely strong evidence for the reality that my fantasy is just that – a fantasy. All we can do, if Crisp is to be believed, is give our love to as many people as often as we can. Even the AA literature says that ‘it is better to love than to be loved’ – for months I have tried to make that profound idea sink into the core of my being, but it won’t, because it is so painful and so final.

 My ego wants to be loved and cherished and looked after – it doesn’t want me wasting my energy on loving people who might never return the feelings. My ego wants something in return. But as I keep finding again and again, love can never be expected from anybody else. Depending on the love of others for my happiness is what has brought me to insanity. The only way for me to go forward is to forget about external happiness and begin relying on my inner resources, which I am sure to have. One of Eckhart Tolle’s suggestions for meditation – ‘portals into the realm of inner Being’, as he calls them – involves lying still, listening to the silence around us, feeling the life energy in our body and letting that take us away from the curse of the neurotic, ‘egoic’ mind. At first the idea of listening to silence is terrifying, because as far as my mind is concerned, there is nothing to listen to. How can one listen to nothing? But that is the whole point, says Tolle. When you can let go of external forms and thoughts and even language itself and learn to just BE – that is the source of true happiness.

 ’Weird psychobabble’ is how some have described ‘The Power of Now’. My mind isn’t made up on it yet – but I suppose that doesn’t matter, because the mind isn’t the important thing here. The egoic mind ties me to pain and fear: the Now is where I can find peace. In my heart, that place which has nothing to do with the mind, I already know that to be true. I did a long time ago. The pain I felt in my heart and in my gut on Wednesday meant something. It reared its head and tried to take me over just as the book said it would. It is a powerful disease: the fear I felt as I began to let go of the past and future and took hold in the Now was literally like the fear of dying. It is the death of the ego, ultimately. The death of a sick, unhealthy part of me that has dominated me for too long. It doesn’t want to die, and of course it will fight and try to trick me into keeping it alive. This is going to be a long journey.

Another weekend

It’s been a great weekend and I am feeling very well at the moment. On Friday I went back to the Soho meeting where I felt so horrible the previous week; it was much better this time, with a chair that I could relate to and even some fun socialising afterwards. One of the recent newcomers to the program asked me to be their temporary sponsor, and I accepted, instantly feeling both excited and nervous. I knew the request was coming, it was only a matter of time as I have been putting my hand up for weeks in every meeting where they ask if anyone is willing to volunteer their services as a sponsor. When I finished the steps last year my sponsor told me I should start volunteering, because he knows as well as I do that it will be good for me. So I have my first sponsee - we’re meeting tomorrow to make a start on the steps. I’m nervous because I really hope I get it right – though at the end of the day, whatever I do it will be up to the sponsee whether he chooses to take on board the suggestions that I make or not. I’m looking forward to a new chapter in my sobriety, whatever happens.

 Yesterday was a particularly nice day. I spent the afternoon enjoying the sun in Camden with some non-AA friends, then in the evening after taking my home group in Notting Hill I went to Soho to help young Joe celebrate his first sober annivesary. It came as a pleasant surprise when I received his invitation earlier in the week. As I’ve said before, we haven’t always been on the best of terms. Most of the time the problem has consisted simply of my resentment towards him. He’s in the centre of the young gay AA ‘clique’ that I have been so scathing about at times in the past year. It was nice of him to invite me along last night, and until I got there I was just looking forward to a good night out. We would be celebrating on the Soho gay ’scene’, the place that chewed us all up and spat us out in our drinking days. My perspective on the scene has certainly changed since I stopped drinking – these days I just think of it as a collection of bars and clubs and coffee houses to be enjoyed, rather than a place to be relied on for friendship and entertainment. Unfortunately when I arrived on Old Compton Street last night I felt nervous for some reason, even though I’ve been there many times in sobriety. Nearly all of the ‘clique’ was there, and from the start I found it hard to join in the conversation as they kept talking about things I had no involvement in, such as friends that they’ve fallen out with. I was surprised to find out that Joe and Colin have fallen out. Up til last week they were virtually inseparable. Some kind of dynamic has changed in the clique: the way they were talking about Colin actually shocked me a little. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Colin, who should have been there but wasn’t because of this new acrimony between them. It will probably blow over and be forgotten about by next week. But for now I’m reminded that being part of a clique can be much more trouble than its worth.

 In the end we all went dancing at G-A-Y nightclub and because the music was so good, I couldn’t help enjoying myself. At times I felt left out of the group, just as I always did in the cliques that I desperately tried to be part of in during my drinking days. At times I didn’t want to be there, feeling stupid for intruding on Joe’s little gang even though he had invited me to be there. But it wasn’t so bad as I knew I could leave at any time, and I didn’t think about drinking at all. At 3am I finally left, exhausted and relieved to have made it through another clubbing experience without harm. It wasn’t a bad night out for me by any means. I enjoyed dancing to top pop music, as I always do, and the men were all very pleasing on the eye too. I imagine it will be my last clubbing trip this year, though – I just don’t have the energy for regular clubbing nights any more. In my drinking I don’t know how I managed to do it two or three times a week!!

Spring is sprung

Good week so far. Highly productive, I would say. And I’m feeling a lot better than I did last Friday, when I suffered one of my social mini-crises. The weather has changed this week and it’s clear that spring has finally arrived in England. For the first time it’s occurred to me that spring is my favourite time of year. The sun is shining, it’s warmer than it has been in months, flowers are coming out of the ground and growing on trees; everything is fresh, and new, and alive again. My whole life I never noticed the intensity and the beauty of this time of year until now. Isn’t that amazing?

 I’ve started a twelve week course of cognitive behavioural therapy, having been on the waiting list since last July. The guy I’m seeing is young, friendly and very to the point. The thing about CBT is that there is no beating about the bush. Clear, concise problems are identified in the first session and the next eleven sessions are spent working through those problems in a constructive way. So far we have identified the main area in my life where I struggle as being the social situation. For last week’s homework I was asked to draw out a flow diagram describing what happens when I am in a social situation. I had to write out in detail my feelings, thoughts and behaviours in these situations. It’s clear that I have a lot of negative beliefs about myself and other people: I’m convinced that I have nothing interesting or useful to say, and everyone that I meet will dislike me for it.

 Despite the great progress that I’ve made in AA during the past 20 months, these negative core beliefs remain under the surface, which is why I am having therapy to address them. Most of the time they don’t really bother me, but on days like Friday they blow up for whatever reason and affect me worse than they ever did. Hopefully if the therapy works I will be able to finally come off the anti-depressants, which I would say have been moderately successful. They’re not the ultimate solution, I’ve always known that, and it would be great to be able to live life without something in my body. I don’t know what the chances are of twelve weeks of therapy actually working for me: it is a short period of time, but it’s all the NHS can afford, and judging by the progress we’ve made in two weeks, I might end up getting a lot more out of it than I initially thought I would.

 In my spare time I have continued to be creative, something that is spiritually good for me. I’m also reading a lot, nourishing the creative muscle. I gave up on the idea of a normal 9 – 5 job quite a while ago. If one happens to come along, hey, I’m not going to pass it up. But for now I’m content with what I’m doing. The therapist wants me to go out there and be more socially active – the idea is that my beliefs about myself will change eventually – so that’s what I’m going to try and start doing. I know that last Friday cannot happen again. It was a nightmare. The feelings will come up again, undoubtedly. But I won’t change them by doing nothing. My dream is to be invited to more birthdays, asked out on dates, rang up on the phone everyday – all of those things will happen as side effects of me changing myself from the inside. I can’t just expect them to happen.

Screwed

Went to the big Covent Garden gay meeting earlier tonight. Big mistake! Beforehand I was faced with a tough choice between that one and the other, much smaller gay meeting over in Fulham. I needed a meeting tonight but I really couldn’t decide between the two: both have their pros and cons. So I took a coin from my pocket and let that decide for me. It came up tails, telling me to go to the small meeting in Fulham. Because I am so incredibly indecisive, I was unhappy with the decision that the coin had made for me, and decided to stop at Covent Garden instead. Don’t ask me why I did that: my thinking is too crazy for me to even describe sometimes.

 I felt out of place and isolated at Covent Garden from the start. I’ve been there millions of times and I know a lot of the people who go there – but that didn’t stop the feeling. There was someone present tonight who I had not seen for a long time. The feelings that their presence produced were unexpectedly intense, almost overwhelming. I was unable to even say ‘hello’ properly, which made me feel embarrassed and doubly out of place. I didn’t want to be there; I felt bad for not being able to talk to my old friend properly, and I felt jealous of everyone else for being able to chat and socialise naturally as usual.

 The main chair and most of the sharing passed me by while I allowed myself to plummet into the old tumultuous self pity and self hatred. By the end of the meeting, I was ready to burst into tears. I had to run to the toilet several times, where I locked myself in a cubicle and tried to let the emotion out but couldn’t because the people on the other side of the door would have heard me. When I emerged from the cubicle at the end I half hoped that my old friend had gone, so that they wouldn’t have to see my in that state. I also half hoped that they were still there, so I could tell them how good it was to see them again.

 I found that they were gone, and I was heartbroken. The self hatred increased tenfold. Palpitations and nausea overwhelmed me as a panic attack began to kick in. Paralyzed to the spot, I watched all the others laugh with each other and arrange to go for coffee down on Old Compton Street. I don’t know why I couldn’t leave the meeting. I stayed rooted to the spot until every single person had gone; not one of them had invited me to coffee. I was not surprised, but it hurt nonetheless. Convinced that I must have a face like a slapped arse, I came home in a state, thinking I would never be able to go to the meeting again. They’ll all think I’m a strange, over-emotional loner now, surely. That moment was exactly like a moment I experienced ten years ago at school, in the playground when I stood alone in a corner while everyone else played and giggled and lived their normal lives around me. It’s like being trapped behind a two-way mirror: I could see everyone else, but they couldn’t see me, and I had no way of communicating with them.

 Of course if I had just shared in the meeting about it, it wouldn’t have become such a problem. The same thing has happened on a number of occasions recently. It’s not as if this was the first time. Why does it keep happening? Why can’t I just open up and let people in? Someone said to me in my very early days in AA that if I was willing and open, everyone in the room would be there to feed me. He sounded sincere when he said it, but I couldn’t believe him at the time and I still can’t, really. I should believe him – I’ve been in AA long enough to know that it is the most non-judgemental and supportive environment I am ever going to find myself in – but no matter how many friends I make, how many spiritual experiences I encounter, this deep mistrust of people continues to pervade every area of my life. I can’t just stop feeling that way, it is at the core of my being. Every night recently I have made a note of my most anxious time during the day: whenever I have gone to an AA meeting, it has always coincided with that.

 This can’t keep happening, I know it can’t. On the way home two dangerous thoughts crossed my mind: how easy it would be to drink, and how it would be even easier to commit suicide. I haven’t thought about suicide seriously for a long time. I doubt I would have done it, because I was sober…if I had been drunk, however, I can’t say for certain that I would be here now. That is how serious the illness is, why it is so imperative that I get this off my chest.

 The reason I find myself in so much pain is not because I was socially awkward at some meeting on a Friday night; it’s all the times before when the same thing has happened that have added up to make this experience so much worse than it should have been. My entire life has seen me struggle with people. I don’t know what I could have done to make tonight better. Either way I was going to feel upset, and if I had forced myself to talk to people I would probably have burst into tears in front of them. That’s why I ran to the toilet, to avoid such a humiliating occurrence. Well-recovered people would say I should have allowed myself to cry in front of those people, because it would have been the most honest thing to do. But I can’t make myself that vulnerable, I just can’t!

 This is the sticking point in my sobriety, and I don’t know how to get past it. Every time I begin to feel serene and truly sober, like I did just this morning, something comes along and all the good things that I think have happened disappear in a puff of smoke. Sometimes I’m better than I was two years ago, sometimes I’m worse. Tonight I was definitely worse. Tonight I was sixteen years old again, standing in the middle of the playground, sick with fear and resentment. All I can do to deal with that resentment is isolate myself further. I can’t go back to the meeting next week, because I am stuck with this certainty that they all think I’m a weird loner. Even though they don’t think that, my head tells me that they do. It never stops fucking telling me.

Dreams

I was feeling a bit low earlier and I feel the need to share about it, because sharing always works. As usual, there were many reasons for me feeling that way. I overspent over the weekend, there is no getting around that. I felt lonely and angry today because I couldn’t spend any more money to make myself feel better, so I would just have to sit with the feelings, something I am still slowly learning to do. I’ve realised in the last few days that I can’t bear having to stay indoors: I am usually out for hours every day, avoiding coming home when I can because I just don’t like being here. I have been going to AA meetings nearly every day for months, and I’m starting to wonder if I am going to too many. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say, and it hasn’t escaped my attention that I have developed a number of resentments against certain meetings where I go the most.

 As soon as the thought of cutting down on meetings occurs to me I seem to go cold inside, because it means that I would almost certainly have to spend more time at home. When I’m going to a meeting I’m never just going for the meeting itself – I invariably want to go to a coffee house or restaurant first where I can spend money on nice food and attempt to be sociable. Although doing things like that was good for me in the beginning, because it got me out of my comfort zone and helped me to learn new social skills, I think it’s stopped paying off because I’m just spending so much money. For me, overspending these days is a form of ‘acting out’.

 Why don’t I like spending time at home? Well, there has always been the intolerable noise levels that I have to put up with here, thanks to the main road outside and the television that my mother constantly has on full volume. If I try and ask her to turn it down she might, if she’s in a good mood, but if I had my own way the TV would never be on, as I can barely stand it these days. And at the end of the day it’s her flat, so she can do whatever she wants. There’s nothing I can do about the busy road outside, either. Over all there is a negative atmosphere in this place, perhaps because of my own personal issues, but the feeling remains. Moving somewhere quieter seems like the only answer, but I cannot dream of moving with my current finances. If I didn’t spend so much money on getting away from home in the days, I would undoubtedly be in a much better position today. So if I want to be able to afford my own place I need to start saving properly – which will mean a lot more time spent at home.

 If I could find a way of going to meetings without spending all the money on coffee and food before and afterwards that would be great…but I generally hate coming home from meetings without socialising these days. God, there are no easy answers! Something deeply rooted in my life is going to have to be dealt with here. I’m not happy at home – I never have been – and becoming happy looks like it’s going to require lots of boundaries that I feel too powerless to put up.

 That leaves me with the hopeless, lonely languor which I get every now and then, which I experienced earlier this evening. Going to a meeting to share about it helps, which is what I did, but as I’ve pointed out, meetings are not the entire answer. I need to make changes in my home life, I’ve known this for a very long time. The great changes that I’ve made in the last few years have not been enough. God, I don’t know where to begin! I’ve given up on the idea of getting a job to earn more money…maybe getting this book published could be an answer, but success in that field would be so unlikely, I can’t afford to hang my happiness on it. It’s still a distant dream, as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, when things remain distant dreams I tend to subconsciously give up on them, rather than putting in the work required to make them come true. Step 3 comes in here, I think. I need to keep putting the action in, forgetting about the eventual results. If I don’t put the footwork in I have no chance of making a success of my life. If only I could stop slipping into that self-pitying melancholy which just makes everything so much harder.

Weekend

It has been a great weekend, although I think I have spent too much money…I’ve eaten out in expensive restaurants both days, and I’ve bought tickets for the lesbian & gay film festival which is coming to London soon. I suppose that is the consequence of living a busy life and having lots of things that I want to do. It’s really nice that I have the friends to do these things with now. Yesterday after taking the meeting I was asked out to Soho, where I danced for a few hours in one of the gay bars. I hadn’t been out dancing for a while and thought it was worth the risk going into a pub. I had a nice time, not least because the men who hang out in gay bars in Soho are on the whole very nice to look at!

 Around midnight I got a text message from Gareth asking me over for sex because he was feeling ‘horny’. I turned down his offer because I’ve realised that I’d prefer to see him if I knew we were going to do things other than sleep together. I thought I could deal with just seeing him once every few weeks for casual encounters, but I know it’s not I want. I thought long and hard as I lay alone in bed last night whether I should tell him this – I didn’t in the end as I knew it would not make any difference to him. If he wanted something more than casual sex then I’m sure he would have said so by now. It’s disappointing to finally let him go, but I have to do it for me. I can’t hang on waiting for him to turn romantic any more.

A new day

It is indeed a new day, and the feelings that I was expressing have subsided to an extent. The best news is that I haven’t drunk, and I don’t think I am going to at any point today. I have decided to stay sober not because I am desperate to give AA another chance, not because I know that drinking would be selfish and a waste of time; I knew all those things already anyway; I am staying sober because I know exactly where drinking would take me. If I was to drink again I would not be able to stop at one or two drinks, or even just one heavy binge. I would be doomed from the very start to spend the rest of my life drinking to excess. It would have to be all or nothing – I would be happy with nothing less. Unfortunately I do not have the finances to fund another life of drinking. I am just about surviving as it is, so if I was to drink it would have to kill me pretty quickly, before I run out of money and am forced to return to a sobriety twice as miserable as the one I’m already experiencing. I don’t want to die yet, so I’ve figured that I might as well stay sober and see what happens. I don’t think that the program I have been practising will suit me in the long run, so I have to change it. I made a first step by meeting up with my sponsor this morning and speaking to him honestly for the first time in months. I wasn’t expecting it to go so well: I never do when I haven’t seen someone for such a long time. But it went a lot better than I thought it would. He still wants to be my sponsor, and we can still talk with each other like adults, without awkwardness or distance.

 I feel like I want our relationship to work out, so I have asked if we can meet up at least once a week from now on, a suggestion that he seems very happy with. We hadn’t bothered with each other for weeks, and I didn’t have the human anchor in the program that used to keep me sane when the meetings alone couldn’t. Maybe this is the fresh start in AA that I need. It’s good to know that he still likes me and retains faith in me. We talked about everything, from our worries and insecurities around sex to our feelings about different meetings. We agree with each other on a lot of stuff, and I finally remembered why I chose him to sponsor me in the first place,

 We spent most of the time talking about last night. I am still reeling from what happened to me, the way the disease was able to overwhelm me without my permission. That this can happen after all the time I’ve been in recovery is not a pleasant thing to know. I realised this morning that my problem is I haven’t been very honest with anyone about the anger that still lies beneath the surface. I haven’t even been honest with myself about it. I need to start being really honest about it, which is why I sat down and said everything I needed to say to my sponsor this morning before he had the chance to speak and I had the chance to change my mind.

 I’ve been in a healthy spiritual space the past few months, that is undeniable. I wouldn’t have been able to write the book if it weren’t. But while I’ve been celebrating how sober and well I am in all my sharing, I have been ignoring the fact that the illness remains. Not deliberately, I simply took my eye off the ball. All the time that I felt so happy last month, I was wondering when the sickness would return to haunt me, because it always does in the end. The truth is that it never went away, and I have to be even more careful about it than I was already. I honestly thought I was being careful – any suggestion of ‘complacency’ would have shocked me to the core – but this is a bitch of an illness, and I guess I forgot how true that is.

 If I had gone out drinking today I suppose I could have spent anything from £30 – £50. That is a lot of money to me, even now. Because I didn’t waste it on alcohol, I decided to treat myself to a new pair of shoes after saying goodbye to my sponsor. I haven’t bought anything nice for a long time. They’re very nice shoes, and I hope they’ll serve as a reminder to me that I can’t drink. If I did drink again, I’d never have nice things in my life again.

 When I was talking to my sponsor earlier about the anger that I felt last night, the feelings naturally returned to me for a moment, as I forced myself to spit the truth out, something that still fills me with shame. All that I’ve learnt in AA has taught me that one should be honest until it hurts – so that is what I’ve tried to do today. It did hurt, and I feel better for it now. I talked about the resentments I am currently experiencing because of these upcoming birthday parties that I have not been invited to. My sponsor reminded me that resentments like that come up for me because of my past, when I was left out of things all the time. Of course all the resentments that I experience today are about the past and nothing to do with the present, but knowing that doesn’t stop me from feeling them. Will they ever stop coming up, or am I doomed to live in the past forever? I really thought I was moving on from it, but it seems that one is never entirely free of those shackles, which just makes me want to throw my hands up in the air.

 I don’t want to be miserable forever, and I don’t want to be resentful at people who used to be dear friends forever. But how can I stop myself from living that way? When I get into a resentful frame of my mind it’s not like I’ve made a conscious decision to feel that way. Step 4 would say that it is a decision ultimately, but it doesn’t feel like one! My sponsor had to remind me that the resentment is ultimately a comfortable state for me to be in, because it is  familiar. I know that when I’m in that place it can be quite enjoyable, because it gives me the opportunity to isolate myself and punish people who I have perceived to hurt me. How do I make the decision not to go to that place in my mind again? It’s almost too familiar to me now, and the other option of serenity and goodwill towards all is just too new and scary for me.

 What can I really expect of my so-called friends? That is the dilemma that I keep facing in sobriety. I keep finding myself in this situation where I am left out of someone’s party, and it will probably never stop hurting. Have I the right to hurt at all? Even my sponsor seems undecided on the question. Yes, it’s possible that the person who has organised his birthday celebrations without inviting me simply forgot about me; perhaps my invitation is in the post, like I always think it should be. But whether there’s an innocent explanation or not, the fact remains that no human being is reliable all of the time. Expecting other people to invite me to things, to do anything for me in fact, always leads me to this painful place, therefore I get the sense that I can never expect anything from anyone. Therefore, how can I be true friends with anyone? Why would I be friends with anyone that I can’t expect anything from? Surely friendship in its true sense entails some kind of expectation? It is one of life’s many paradoxes that I am beginning to face, and I don’t like it, and it doesn’t make me want to continue dealing with life.

 God, at least nice shoes are something you can always rely on!

The strait-jacket

Before I begin, I have to confess that I am not going to sound like a grateful, spiritual member of Alcoholics Anonymous tonight. I’m not even going to sound remotely sane. Unfortunately the negativity has seeped in again and I am resolutely wallowing in it like a child in a bath full of ice cream. I am so sick of feeling like this…even though just a few hours ago I was feeling quite normal, having almost forgotten what anger and depression and anxiety were like. The nature of my illness seems to be that the bad feelings can disappear from time to time – they can even be replaced by really nice feelings sometimes, but in the end they always come back - those fucking sick, negative, hateful feelings. There is no rhyme or reason to why the negativity has chosen to come back tonight. It could have returned at any time, technically, and I am still not on top of it or in control of it. All I ever wanted was to learn how to deal with this anger, this pain – I really thought AA was going to teach me, but it hasn’t, and I am so fucking furious I honestly feel like walking into a pub and drinking.

 I’m sorry to break tradition 11 again, but the story requires it, so here goes. I was in a meeting tonight and everyone was going on about panic attacks. A few brave sharers told of how they resisted the temptation to go on anti-depressants, and how they have beaten anxiety by riding through it bareback. Good for them, I thought. How lucky they are to be able to press a magic button and feel fine again. Whenever someone mentions anti-depressants in AA, the anti-anti-depressant brigade never fails to pipe up. I’ve talked before of the general mistrust and contempt that AA holds towards psychiatry; it bugs me because I know that anti-depressants work. Or do I? It doesn’t help me to feel confident in my decision to take medication when you have people saying that all medication is bad and should be avoided, whether it is prescribed or not. They never go further, but there is a blatant underlying belief in these messages that people who take anti-depressants and so forth are not really sober. So if I’m not really sober, what the fuck am I doing claiming to be 19 months into my sobriety?

 It’s one of those things that hits at my core insecurity. Another thing is when so-called friends in AA go out and socialise without me. Twice this week I’ve heard that a big birthday party is coming up to which I have not been invited. Yes, that old chestnut is clanging again. It has been a big threat to my sobriety at times…for some reason I have a thing about not being invited to people’s birthdays…it doesn’t just wind me up, it hurts me deeply. I wasn’t invited to anyone’s birthday when I was a kid – boo hoo! – maybe in sobriety there’s a really stupid, fucked up part of me that expects to get invited to things. Maybe it would be nice to feel included sometimes. When I’m in this frame of mind, the one I’m in right now, it’s hard to think of anything good that’s ever happened to me, such as being invited to someone’s birthday. The seed of negativity has been sewn, and I’m falling, plummeting into darkness, back into depression.

 I want to drink and I never want to go to AA again. I want to see how people would react, how long it would take before they start calling me to find out if I’m all right. Would it be three days, three weeks, or three months? Would people miss me or would they be glad to see me gone? The way some of them looked at me tonight, after I had ranted about anti-depressants, daring to express my actual my opinion on the subject, you’d think the latter. Actually I almost laughed when the person who was supposed to be doing a chair at a meeting for me this weekend came right up to me afterwards to cancel, claiming that he had double-booked himself. It could not be a coincidence. Is that ‘fellowship’? Or is it just people being twats?

 Oh I know that drinking again just because of how I feel right now would be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. It would be pointless and tacky, and it would hurt no one except me. I would be taking ten steps back, wouldn’t I? The thing is, when I feel like this, I can’t see the good in staying sober either. Neither way forward looks very appealing, drinking or remaining sober. The only slight thing that drinking has in its favour is that it would stop me from feeling this pain within minutes. And that is what I’m thinking about right this minute.

 I just cannot see the point in going to AA any more…and just a day ago I could see it so clearly…how ironic is that? I’m absolutely sick to death of being told by amateurs that I need to stop taking anti-depressants…I’m also sick of seeing the same fricking faces all the time, saying all the same stupid things…I want a change. A big change. I feel strait-jacketed by fear and anger all the time. Even though I was on top of the world last week. The darkness was there underneath the surface, all the fucking time. It will never go away, will it? So what good is AA to me now?

 I want to disappear from the face of the Earth. I’m sure someone would wonder where I’ve gone eventually, and the look on their face when they realise that I’ve been gone for months would be so satisfying to see. More than that, the feeling I’ll experience after a few bottles of wine, when all the pain and fury has gone, would be a wonderful thing…not because I’ve really missed it, but because it would tell me whether I really am an alcoholic or not. I’ve always wondered that, whether I went far enough in my drinking or not. Would one more drink tell me everything that I need to know? Would I then be finally ready to let go and take everything that AA has to offer me? Because today, there are doubts remaining…it’s bothered me throughout my so-called recovery, if I’m really honest.

 I don’t want to hurt or upset anyone…I’m not really a bad person, but I remain constantly aware that something is still wrong with me, and it’s not going away. I haven’t fully given myself over to the program yet, I know that. And I’m not sure if I’m ready to yet. I’ve loved my friends in AA, but did they ever love me? I see other people in the fellowship professing ‘brotherly’ love for each other all the time. No one professes that kind of love for me, ever. Not even my fucking sponsor. I’m still an outsider. No one in AA really knows me properly, despite all the endless sharing I’ve done. I haven’t managed to take that final step yet. Will another drink help me to take it? It would be so easy to drink tomorrow, dangerously easy in fact.

Oh I don’t know…I don’t fucking know…I want to know so badly, it hurts.

Norwich

For the first time in two years, I visited my old stomping ground of Norwich this weekend. I lived there for three years, while I was studying for my first degree in Philosophy. It is the place where I came out, and began my drinking career in earnest. It is where I grew up, in other words. Since I left in 2004 I have only been back a handful of times, mainly because of financial concerns and the cost of staying there. This month I was finally able to make a long-awaited return, due to the fact that I have turned my finances around this year and I am not controlled in any way by the bank any more. It was interesting to go back and see how the town had changed in two years. When I left, the whole place was virtually a building site, with new shopping malls and accomodation blocks being erected to house a growing population. Today there is a lot of new stuff there: the University has virtually doubled in size, and in the centre of town there are about ten new nightclubs, adding to the cosmopolitan feel of the place. There will always be something slightly provincial about Norwich, though. Because it’s at the end of a little-used line, it’s not one of those places that tourists really go to visit. The UK has dozens of bigger, more well known cities. Norwich, therefore, always feels like a bit of time warp. All the fashions are about ten years behind London; most of the shops are still independent, and there are even cobbled streets in many central parts. Because I lived there a long time ago, it always feels like stepping into an old life, one that isn’t mine any more. I can never just go back to appreciate the architecture: those memories play on my mind whenever I am there.

 In spite of the passage of time, there is still a small group of people that I keep in touch with in Norwich. I’ve known them since my early days at University, and they have seen me grow up. On Saturday we all got together at Andrew’s house; Andrew was perhaps my closest gay friend at University, and we lived together for a while in the summer of 2004. Back then I was in the depths of alcoholism, and these were the people who saw the worst of it. I had amends to make to every one of them last year. Steve, Andrew and Tim were all there on Saturday – three people I thought at one point that I would never see again. Other than those three, I didn’t know anyone else at the party on Saturday night. I gathered that they were all members of the University’s gay society, which is how I originally met Andrew etc. in 2002. It’s an excellent society. You make lifelong friends out of it. So when I got to the house at 6pm on Saturday evening I was nervous about two things: seeing Andrew, Steve and Tim again, as well as meeting a whole bunch of new people who I would probably never meet again.

 I was nervous about seeing Andrew, Steve and Tim because, although they took my amends very well, I have not spent any time with them since I stopped drinking. The last time I visited them in Norwich I was still a practising alcoholic, and I can barely remember anything about that night two years ago, other than being sick on their kitchen floor. On Saturday night everyone apart from me was drinking. Andrew was my biggest drinking buddy in Norwich. We’ve had drunken fights, we’ve laughed and cried together and we’ve even been sick together. Saturday night was obviously not going to be anything like old times.

 In the end, it was OK. I couldn’t shake my nerves the entire time, I’m not really sure why. It was so much like the many drunken Saturday nights that I spent in Norwich, perhaps it was too much like old times. Drinking didn’t cross my mind at any point – my sobriety is too strong – but none of those people know anything about my sobriety, and I think I would have been ten times more at ease in a room full of sober friends. In fact, nearly all the fun that I’ve had in sobriety has been with sober AA friends. Andrew, Tim and Steven don’t know me as a person any more, despite our all history, because that’s an old life now. Since I left Norwich and got sober my whole world has moved onto a different level. In the same way, it moved onto a different level when I left London at the age of 18 and moved to Norwich eight years ago.  I will never forget the day I moved to Norwich: the 19th September 2001. That day I was plucked out of an old, lonely life and dropped head first into a colourful new one. On the 15th July 2007 a similar turning point was reached when I had my last drink. From these turning points there is no going back.

 I felt a surprising lump in my throat when I had to say goodbye to my oldest friends before leaving yesterday. Perhaps it is good to have all that history with people. I’m sure I’ll see them again sometime, it would be rude not to. It was nice of them to invite me into their home again, despite all the damage I did five years ago. I can safely say, however, that London is where I want my life to be today. Five years ago it broke my heart to leave Norwich. I thought it was where I belonged, because I had been so unhappy in London before. The truth, as I have found after a lot of water under the bridge, is that London was where I should have been all along.

 Since I got back home yesterday I have achieved something amazing: I’ve finished the first draft of my latest novel, ‘The Final Paradox’. This is the science-fiction fantasy tale that I started last September. In total it’s taken about three months to write, a big feat for someone who thought he couldn’t write a few years ago. Sobriety alone has made this possible. My journey to spirituality has taken the cap off my creativity, allowing me to complete something that I am actually very proud of. I look forward to receiving friends’ feedback. After that, who knows where it will go?