Tipping point

I’m going mad. Three days ago I sent off a mass of job applications via the internet and, lo and behold, one employer came back inviting me for an interview this afternoon. It sounded like the perfect job opportunity: part-time, flexible hours that I would choose, great pay. Only problem was that it involved teaching martial arts to children. I don’t know why I applied for the job – perhaps the sentence containing ‘part time’ and ‘great pay’ attracted me – and I don’t know why they asked me for interview. I have no experience or knowledge of martial arts and I told them this in my reply to their invitation, but they still wanted me to come along. Apparently they were looking for fresh young faces to train up from scratch. Too good to be true, I thought. No employers want to train inexperienced youths like me up from scratch these days.

I agreed to go to the interview, telling myself that if I felt too nervous or depressed on the day that I could always change my mind. When it got to today, I woke up nervous and felt increasingly edgy all day. By the afternoon I was shaking, sweating and close to tears, like I always am before interviews. The job was based on the other side of London and I had a long, testing train journey ahead of me. There may have been a possibility of me vomiting on the train – I was that scared. In the end, when it came to decision time, I couldn’t go through with it. I let the time pass and before long it was too late for me to catch the train. I’ve missed the interview; here I am now in central London, typing furiously so that I can get away from my crazy head. I couldn’t stay at home; mum’s off work today and tomorrow and her full volume TV programmes were making me feel worse. I didn’t tell her that I had an interview arranged for the afternoon. I didn’t tell anyone. I had a feeling this sort of thing might happen because it’s happened many, many times before.

The trouble with me is that I don’t believe I’m capable of doing anything that requires responsibility. I’ve never believed it. Having such a belief doesn’t help one’s chances of getting an actual job, I’ll tell you now. When it comes down to it my head is full of images of failure, the self doubt is screaming so loud that it takes a gargantuan amount of effort to go through with what I’ve said I’m going to do (i.e attend an interview). So another opportunity passes me by, one of very few opportunities that have come my way this year. If I think about what it would entail, becoming a martial arts instructor, I guess it’s not a role that I would ever have considered suitable for my character. But they were willing to train me up from scratch and pay me for the privelege. I can’t stop thinking about that.

Beating myself up isn’t going to do anyone any good, so I’m not doing that right now. There will be more opportunities, perhaps ones that feel more right, it just might be a long time before the next one appears. Until then I will continue to put up with lack of space at home and financial discomfort as I have done for the past god knows how many years. Perhaps the thought of breaking out of my old life really is too scary to contemplate: when there was actually a chance to make the break, I couldn’t take it. What is that about? The answer fear comes to me again, again and again.

Life would be so much easier if I wasn’t an obsessive, incessant worrier, if I could take life less seriously and not automatically create mini-dramas out of everything. An hour or so before I came here to write this I was in the coffee shop on Old Compton Street and not so surprisingly I bumped into some of the people who I’d sat with last night. Because I was so frazzled about missing my interview I could barely string a sentence together, and I might have come across as rude. Instead of sitting with them I went to sit on my own downstairs: I couldn’t cope with conversation at that point. After I’d finished my pot of tea downstairs the noise of the coffee house finally became too much for me and I rushed out, failing to say goodbye to my friends upstairs.

Another perfectly avoidable situation that has now become a mini-drama in my head because I’m convinced that they must be really pissed off with me. When they saw me leave the coffee house mysteriously I’m sure they must have turned to each other and said: “What a rude, anti-social bitch!” Because I am the most important person in the world, clearly, and my behaviour can’t go a single second without being analyzed by someone somewhere who has nothing better to do.

It’s driving me mad right now and I know the best thing to do is go to a meeting and share about it. I need to open my mouth in front of people who will understand; I probably need to cry. This madness isn’t going to go away by me just thinking about it. The people I ignored at the coffee house will probably be at the meeting that I plan to attend and I may feel awkward with them because whenever I encounter that kind of situation a part of my brain automatically marks the people involved forever. It’s an old behaviour, something I learnt to help me survive as a child; something I hope I will be able to let go of one day.

For now, the next right thing is to go to the meeting and speak. It doesn’t matter who I say ‘hello’ to or who I ignore; all that matters is that I speak. Thank God two years of recovery have imprinted such knowledge on my brain to the extent that it overrides the screaming banshee in my head telling me to go home and avoid everyone.

A gentle reminder

Our internet connection was somehow lost early this morning and it took the service provider all day to sort the problem out, so by this evening I definitely needed a meeting as I was going a little stir crazy without access to my normal online fixes. I went to the gay step 11 meeting in Soho which I’ve had a mixed relationship with over the years, and when I got there I was in a terrible mood. I found the usual small talk with all the smokers outside excruciating and cringeworthy (I don’t enjoy small talk, even with people I know), and to make things worse when I got inside I saw that the chair was being given by Colin, a man I’ve had a very mixed relationship with over the years (just like the meeting!) I must have heard his chair about thirty times, and I didn’t want to hear it again. Today he was his usual overly chirpy self, which I didn’t like at all. I sat down in a corner of the room and did my usual thing of folding my arms, crossing my legs and staring at the floor.

A lot of people who I would consider friends walked through the door between then and the start of the meeting, and I didn’t want to talk to or look at one of them. Until the meeting began I was at a loss as to why I felt so angry. I only ever feel that particular type of anger in meetings: anger brought about by fear of the social situation and its expectations. It seems to come and go at random. As I’ve gone on in sobriety it has probably lessened to an extent, as I’ve got to know more meetings and the people in them, but it has never left me entirely. Perhaps it was made worse today by the fact that I got up really late again and forgot to do my ten minutes’ sitting meditation; the continuing dreary weather definitely didn’t help.

I would get away with not meditating this morning as the step 11 meeting always starts with ten minutes’ meditation, a great help to me today. As soon as the silence fell upon the room I felt anxiety and resentment quickly drain out of me. Although I have found the daily routine of meditating for ten solid minutes upon waking difficult to get into this year, I have really come to appreciate the benefits that meditation can bring when I do it properly, and it was just what I needed this evening. The silence gave me the chance to ask myself why I was so angry: stopping to look at what’s really going on can only be achieved in that silent stillness, I’ve found. After the ten minutes were up Colin gave his chair and it was actually really refreshing to hear. Instead of talking about how wonderful his life has got in AA he focused on step 11, talking about what meditation means to him. After that the rest of the room was free to share back, and it was clear that we all have very personal reasons for needing meditation (and prayer). It doesn’t have to be done formally with a certain amount of time set aside every single day: it can be done when one is walking, completing errands, doing the housework, tending to the garden, even when listening to music. I’ve decided to formally set ten minutes aside for it every morning so that it becomes a regular, reliable part of my every day life. One day I may be able to part with the daily sitting on the floor, when I get to the point where I am meditating automatically at times of necessity. I can already see how it’s possible to meditate when one is in the midst of the mundane, everyday tasks that I mentioned before. Whether you are sitting, standing, walking or running, if you are focused truly in the present moment then you are essentially meditating. Thinking about one’s breathing, the movements and sensations in one’s body at the present moment is a good way of getting into the present moment; asking oneself what’s going on behind one’s negative thoughts and feelings is another way.

After the meeting I was tempted to skip another small talk-induced ordeal and rush home, but something made me stop and talk to friends. Some of them were going for coffee on Old Compton Street and I was pleased to be invited; while the coffee posse went ahead I took a moment to say goodbye to someone else, telling them I would catch them up. A few minutes later on Old Compton Street I was slightly confused not to find them in the designated coffee shop. I was angry enough to want to go straight home, but I was starving hungry and had to get something to eat. The panini that I ended up with was the worst panini I’ve ever tasted, totally unsatisfying and dreary, making me want to get home even quicker. As I was walking out of the coffee house I noticed my friends sat at an outside table that I hadn’t spotted before. I was faced with a tough choice between going home as planned, punishing their inconsiderateness in choosing such an obscure seating area, or joining them without a word of negativity. I don’t know what it is but something made me walk over to the table and sit with them.

They were talking about fashion and clubbing, two things I like to think that I know about but when it comes down to it, I’m not very good at talking about. For the next hour or so I mostly listened, nodding on cue and smiling when I was smiled at. One of the people there was a man from New York who I’ve noticed in meetings a few times over the years, a very fashionable gay man who utterly scares me. He tried to include me in the conversation a few times tonight, and when it was late and people were starting to go home, he told me that it was nice to see me smiling for once. I could tell that he didn’t mean it in a bad way: he really meant it genuinely, to point out that it’s nice when I smile. And then someone else not at the coffee house sent me a text message telling me it had been really nice to see me smile again after the meeting.

After all that I wouldn’t say I am quite on top of the world again, but it’s clear that tonight is meant to be a reminder of why it’s good to make the effort with meetings and the people in them. If I had gone straight home after the meeting, or if I had avoided the meeting altogether, I would probably feel quite low right now. As it is I feel just OK, and feeling ‘OK’ is all I would ask for. I think I hit on something a few weeks ago when I realised that daily contact with other people in recovery is necessary for my sanity. It doesn’t always need to involve a meeting; what it needs to be is an honest conversation with another human being, on a daily basis. At the moment, going to meetings and accepting invitations to post-meeting coffee are the two main ways that I get to have honest conversations with people. Outside of recovery there is a marked lack of honesty in conversations. I’ve said it before: people who know nothing about AA and recovery find the kind of honesty I’m talking about inappropriate. It’s a real shame that with most people outside of the rooms, I could never talk about how I’m really feeling on a day to day basis, but that’s the way the world is at the moment. It might change. For now, thank God there’s AA. In AA, people understand when I say that I feel like murdering somebody. They don’t simply assume that I’ve gone mad and need locking up: they know I’d never actually kill somebody. They know how I really feel without me even having to say it. It is good to say it, though.

The work starts here

I am back home now after the end of two weeks of independence in Tottenham, and as expected, I’m quickly finding things to complain about. It’s not so much living here that’s the problem any more, it’s the actual state of the place which is really pissing me off. Our bathroom is in a diabolical state at the moment. Two weeks ago the council came out to remove the ceiling due to years of damage caused by leaking pipes in the flat upstairs, and a replacement ceiling has still not been put in. So all these ancient supporting wooden beams and electrical wires are showing, and a great big hole in the concrete where the water was coming through from upstairs is clearly visible. Bits of concrete and plaster are now falling down into the bath; that’s not to mention the state of the wall, which is cracked and mouldy from years of bad ventilation. Mum’s at her wits’ end about it and so am I. We’ve chased the council up, surveyors have come out to take pictures of the problem, and nothing is being done about it. If we had a spare £3,000 lying around of course we would pay someone to do the entire job tomorrow. But sadly we don’t have that kind of money lying around – if we did we wouldn’t be living in this shithole in the first place.

It’s been the cause of many arguments between my mother and I over the years. Until very recently I believed she was being unreasonable when she called up the council first thing in the morning to shout at them. Now I can understand why she feels the need to do that on a regular basis. What they need to do is strip everything out and put a new bathroom in. Everything in there is at least thirty years old, and the government’s standard for social housing states that bathrooms should be no more than twenty years old. But they won’t do the work. They’ll put it off until the very last moment when we are getting ready to take them to court, and of course by then both of us will probably have moved somewhere else. It’s a ridiculous and irritating stalemate situation. I guess the global recession hasn’t helped matters. Maybe the council doesn’t have the money to do any repairs that aren’t a matter of life and death. But that doesn’t help us very much. While our landlords procrastinate about this we have to put up with a crumbling bathroom ceiling and wall. The kitchen presents a whole set of other problems that I won’t go into detail about now.

It’s all part of yet another bunch of problems that I simply have to let go of. When I get the time this week I hope I will be able to calm myself down, pick up the phone and ask to speak to someone at the council offices who has decision-making power. Until then, I can’t afford to worry about it. There’s room for me to be angry at myself here, since I could and probably should have picked up the phone today, but I didn’t have the time because I’d managed to stay in bed until mid-afternoon. Getting angry with myself is another unhelpful action. I obviously wasn’t meant to get up early today.

To clear my mind this evening I went to a mixed meeting in Soho where half the crowd are straight and the other half are gay. It’s a good meeting, I’ve been there quite a few times now and I got my two year sobriety chip there a couple of weeks ago. Tonight’s chair was given by someone with a lot of sobriety, and as always with lots of sobriety, I enjoyed what I heard. They spent time talking about depression, and I really appreciated this part of the chair as the message was very clear: depression is a serious illness, just like alcoholism. By saying that I am a depressive as well as an alcoholic, I am not in any way diminishing my alcoholism or claiming the ability to drink safely. Like it or not, depression is one of the most common mental illnesses in the western world and it tends to be comorbid with alcoholism. Although I love the Big Book, I think it contains a great big gaping hole where depression is concerned. I appreciate that depression probably wasn’t understood very well when the BB was written. I am not criticizing the authors of that book or the principles behind it. I am simply arguing for recognition of the complex, multi-layered nature of alcoholism. Depression is not worse than alcoholism and vice versa; neither illness is more important than the other.

The really confusing thing about depression, and the reason it took me so very long to accept that I had it, is that it comes and goes. Every single day is different. I do not feel the same from one day to the next. Sometimes I feel on top of the world. Other days I find it impossible to want to get out of bed. In recovery I have discovered the true nature of depression: it is a dreadful, debilitating, cruel and baffling thing. For weeks at a time I can believe that it’s gone for good and I’ve beaten it; then along it comes again to wallop me, and I feel like there’s a thick, suffocating blanket wrapped around my head for the next few weeks. Getting sober has not removed my partiality for depression nor has it made depression any more bearable when it decides to come along. What sobriety has given me is the clarity of mind to see what’s really wrong with me. It has enabled me to find out about the nature of the problem and it has given me a chance to deal with it. At the moment I don’t think I will ever be entirely free of depression, just as I don’t believe I’ll ever be cured of alcoholism. The surest thing in this life is that a drink would not make my problems even the slightest bit better. I might not die instantly after taking one drink, but that drink would represent one big step backwards into denial. I would have to start lying to myself again, and I don’t want to do that.

Going with it

It has been an interesting week, yet another week of learning and growing and finding and losing people, places and things. I am coming to the end of my time in Tottenham and, in all honesty, I am glad about that. I’ve found that I do not like living in a place where the neighbours are awake all the time, where the main transport connection into the centre of London is closed every weekend, and where there are no convenience stores nearby. Yes, I am complaining about things that no one would have complained about 100 years ago, before anyone had heard of convenience stores and the tube and 24 hour living. What this week has shown me is that I’ve got very used to living where I live in Islington. I keep going back to Islington and wishing I could stay there. Tomorrow night, I will get my wish, when my friend returns from his holiday.

In the book I am reading at the moment, called ‘Wherever You Go There You Are’, it talks about the necessity of taking your head and your heart everywhere you go. When I get back to Islington I will still be me, and I suppose there will be different things to complain about. Before coming to Tottenham I remember being close to breaking point with my mother, who does not understand the concept of personal space and the need for peace and quiet in the evenings. Before coming to Tottenham it crossed my mind that I would end up missing her, and at times this week I think I have missed her a little. That’s what happens when you move away from home, isn’t it? As soon as I get back home familiarity will once again breed contempt and by this time next week I’ll probably be cursing myself for ever complaining about Tottenham.

With the global recession in full swing there is next to no chance of me leaving home any time soon, therefore I need to find a way of fully accepting the way things are there. I cannot expect to change my mother at this stage of our lives. She is who she is and she has been that way for a very long time. I no longer claim the right to judge her nor do I really hate being around her, most of the time. If I want to truly accept the present state of things then I really ought to learn to respond to my mother the way I respond to everyone else, with kindness and respect and compassion, even when she’s having one of her bad days and she’s spitting fire at me because I’m the only person available to spit fire at.

On Wednesday I had my final therapy session, and we talked quite a lot about ways of improving the state of things at home. My therapist initially took the view that it must be natural for me to respond to my mother like a stroppy teenager when she is treating me as if I’m responsible for all the things that have gone wrong in her life. But I know in my heart that none of her verbal attacks are really aimed at me. She has no one else to talk to, no one to confide in or trust.

The fact is that while we continue to live in such a small space together my first response to the attack is to attack back, a response which is never going to make the situation better. I react before thinking – if I can receive my mother in all her mood states, negative and positive, with the same spiritual calm then maybe, just maybe things will improve. Even as I sit here thinking about it I know it’s never going to be perfect. My default setting is always going to be to react first and think later. All I can do is try.

Today I broke my celibacy rule, met someone from the internet and had sex for the first time in about a month. I wanted it to be fun, and it was certainly that. I felt attracted to the guy as soon as I met him, and the feeling was clearly mutual. We ended up spending the entire day together, going for dinner in town after an afternoon’s worth of naughty fun. I met him with no expectations, and by the end of the day I was more than surprised by how things had turned out. We seemed to really like each other; in fact he told me several times that he liked me and wanted to see me again. Best of all he had an actual personality!

When we were chatting and laughing over dinner this evening it certainly seemed like there could be room for something good to grow between us. I don’t know what’s going to happen, whether I’ll see him again or not; it w0uld be nice if I do. I’m trying not to take it very seriously because I know that’s where I’ve got into trouble in the past. It’s about living in the moment, not in tomorrow or next year. I’m not waiting for the phone to ring or a message to arrive in my inbox. He’s a really nice guy, I got way more than I hoped for today, and it’s been a truly great day. I’m not beating myself up for breaking the vow of celibacy that I privately took last month. I never planned how long I was going to stay celibate for, anyway – I simply said that I would wait until it felt right to go out and start looking again. Today it felt right. That’s the only important thing. I don’t suddenly feel like I’ve solved all my sexual problems. They are manifold and they are sure to remain with me regardless of who I meet or what I do. Today I went with the flow of things and it worked. In the future it may not work. I’m not interested in the future.

I’ve come to believe that there is something to be said for ‘going with the flow’. The books I’ve read about spirituality this year have all emphasized the importance of riding life’s waves as opposed to trying to create your own waves. Even AA says that it’s good to live life on life’s terms. I’ve gone where life has taken me today, instead of worrying about doing the ‘right’ thing. And it’s paid off, as I will go to bed with a smile on my face for the first time in a very long time!

Ready and willing

The past two days have been quite a mixed bag. Yesterday was much worse than today. Being alone in Tottenham on a dreary Sunday was really getting to me so I decided to try a new meeting that I’d never been to before. I went all the way into central London, a place full of life that can lift my spirits on the worst of days, thinking any meeting there was bound to be good. I could have gone to the gay meeting where I would have known everyone, but I’ve never particularly liked either of the gay meetings that happen on Sunday. When I got to the building where the new meeting I’d picked from the list was being held, I was far more nervous than I expected to be. A few people I didn’t recognise were standing outside – not surprising, since I had never been to the meeting before, but it frightened me enough to make me walk around the block a few times.

By the time I’d completed two circuits of the block I was exhausted and knew that I would either have to go into the meeting or go home. As soon as the idea to go home popped into my mind I couldn’t get rid of it, and I ended up jumping on the tube at Goodge Street. The self loathing kicked in then, as I regretted the hours that I had wasted in coming all the way to central London when I could have stayed in Tottenham to rest.

I was really taken aback by how powerful the fear of strangers could still be. Although I’ve gone to strange meetings many times before and dealt with the anonymity, I guess I wasn’t in the right space for it yesterday. I returned to the flat feeling that great sadness which has affected me a lot in the past week. Part of me wanted to get off the tube at Holloway Road, my real home, where I could see my mother and make use of the extra TV channels that she pays for. But I had to come back here to feed the cat: a semi-resentment ensued. The fact that the Victoria line was closed for the weekend works did not help my mood at all. It meant that getting back would take an extra hour or so, with replacement bus journeys involved.

Monday normally does nothing to improve my mood, but with the knowledge that the Victoria line would be running again, I felt better as soon as I got up this morning. I actually managed to complete fifteen minutes of sitting meditation for the first time. Usually I feel too tired and dirty in the mornings to do anything other than eat breakfast. So the day got off to a great start, and it pretty much continued that way. After doing some shopping I sat in front of the computer and wrote for a few hours, then in the evening I was scheduled to give the main share at the step meeting in Holborn where I used to make the tea every week.

I hadn’t been to that meeting in six months, and the last time I went I said I would never go again. Today I felt surprisingly indifferent about being asked to do the chair there. A few months ago I might have felt resentful, but that is no longer the case. I was probably interested to see if the meeting had changed at all. Since discovering that Amanda and Colin (the meeting’s two main personalities) are no longer on such good terms I thought that perhaps the meeting might not be so cliquey any more.

When I got there I found it to be a lot quieter than it used to be, which was promising. The week’s focus was step six, a step that I remembered enjoying as it was so easy. After such a thorough step five I was always going to find step six a doddle. In my share I talked at length about my character defects (pride and self-pity got a lot of attention) and the way that my sponsor encouraged me as part of this step to write down the opposing behaviours that would remedy those defects. When the room started sharing back to me everyone was full of praise for my chair, telling me how grounded I seemed and how helpful my description of the step had been. I was pleasantly shocked by the extent of the praise: considering how little I had planned my share, the response was positively incredible.

Afterwards I was glad to have had the opportunity to talk about step six in detail, as well as relieved to find that I could still do a good chair. Some of the group were going for coffee and I felt I had to go with them, having talked about the need to socialise to combat the isolation instinct in my chair. Altogether it was a lovely evening, just as Saturday had been lovely, thanks to people who I never expected to want to spend the time with me. Six months ago the thought of going for coffee after that meeting used to scare me – tonight it seemed like the natural thing to do.

I musn’t get complacent and assume that this is the way things are going to be from now on. It could be if I choose it to be, I suppose, but just because I’ve had one brilliant night doesn’t mean I will enjoy every meeting that I go to forever more. Experience has shown me that those character defects I was talking about never go away. Tonight they were dormant; another night they will be in full swing. As I said the other day, there are important things that I need to keep in mind when I am tempted to act out, such as the true friends in my life. It isn’t always going to be easy to make a night like tonight happen. It’s always hard work to keep recovery going. The theme of step six is willingness: something I continue to have a lot of.

People power

Last night I went to Hop Gardens for the first time in about a month, in the mood for some gayAA socialising to mark my second anniversary. Most times when I go to that meeting I come away feeling awful because it is such a big meeting and everyone is so glamorous and attractive. It’s not like the glamorous ’straight’ meetings because here I actually know everyone and compare myself to everyone so much more easily.

Yesterday I thought I’d see if a month’s break would have made a difference. Somewhat fortuitously, I turned up at the coffee shop across the road from the meeting an hour early for some refreshment and bumped into my sponsor. I hadn’t spoke to him in around a month and still could not make my mind up on whether to sack him or not. If he had been on his own yesterday perhaps we would have been able to have the chat that we should have had six months ago, but he was with friends about to head off to the theatre. After a few minutes he left, barely aware that I had just celebrated my second sobriety anniversary.

I was prepared to spend the rest of the free time left before the meeting on my own, but it wasn’t long before a few people who I hadn’t seen in a while turned up, also there for pre-meeting refreshment. It would be a lie to say that I hadn’t chosen that particular coffee shop for its proximity to the meeting and the likelihood of seeing people there; I didn’t expect to see so many, though. We all chatted easily enough. I was nervous about saying the wrong thing as usual (I always have this problem with people I’ve not seen in awhile) but it was OK. One of them happened to mention that she had a job going at work and asked if I would be interested. By the time that we were crossing the road to the meeting we had swapped e-mail addresses and I had promised to send her my CV. She can’t say that I’ll get the job but she thinks she might be able to get me an interview. Which would be brilliant.

After such a serendipitous experience it should have been a brilliant meeting. Though I’ve had my difficulties with that meeting in the past I’ve always liked the sharing, and last night’s sharing was particularly good. In the end I still came away feeling horrible, though, because the five minutes or so where everyone stands around chatting and saying goodbye was just as unbearable as it always is. I always hope that someone will come and grab me and take me for coffee; it’s happened before, but not very often. I don’t know why I find those five minutes so difficult there when in other meetings I never struggle with the post-meeting small talk. The fact that it’s such a big meeting full of such good looking people probably doesn’t help. I’ve asked myself if it would be possible to just go for the sharing then leave the minute it ends, so I avoid the awkward standing around altogether. I don’t like leaving any meeting without at least giving the small talk and potential coffee trips a chance, I have to say.

I was really sad when I got back to Tottenham late last night, not only because I hadn’t said goodbye to anyone at the meeting but also because I didn’t want to come back to Tottenham. I’ve officially decided that I don’t like it here. Apart from the cat, it doesn’t feel like a nice place to live. Before he went on holiday my friend warned me that some of the neighbours on the estate here can be a bit rowdy and threatening – he wasn’t wrong. There hasn’t been any trouble yet, mainly because I’m so skilled at keeping my head down, but the worry is there all the time.

I’m aware that I could just be a really paranoid person. It’s also true to say that the place I call home hasn’t been my favourite place in the world for a long time, and home is completely different to this place. Up here I can moan about the neighbours and the fact that Tottenham is so much further from central London; when I get home next week I’ll probably feel relieved for a day or so then the familiarity and resentment will kick in once again. Mark my words.

So the problem must lie with me, as always. Part of the problem has got to be loneliness, so I’ve come to the conclusion that it might be good to have some form of human contact in my life at least once a day. It could be a meeting, or it could just be meeting a friend for a coffee. Today I managed both. This afternoon I celebrated my second sobriety anniversary by having lunch with a small group of close AA friends. I hadn’t wanted anything big, and the number that turned up felt just right. I was nervous beforehand as I always am before things that I’ve organised. In the end it was nicer than I expected it to be. We spent most of the time eating and talking about recovery, about the people that we like and don’t like in the rooms. Some of the people there were once people that I would have considered to be part of the gayAA ‘clique’, people I wouldn’t have chosen to hang out with. Today it became clear that the ‘clique’, whether real or imagined, definitely doesn’t exist any more. Dean and Amanda talked about former friends such as Colin as if they hadn’t considered him a friend for a long time. I was taken aback by the change in group dynamics, before I realised that when it comes to social groups, nothing lasts forever. My feelings towards these people have changed dramatically in the past two years, so it should come as no surprise that their feelings about other people have changed too. In the end, social groups and cliques are not permanent, important things. They are transient and quite insignificant. What’s really important is true fellowship, and I had that today.

After lunch I made my way across central London to my home group at Notting Hill. I’ve decided that I will be keeping it as a regular meeting after all. I could have decided to take a long break after handing in the secretary commitment earlier this month, but I didn’t want to. I think it’s nice to have meetings that I can always go to, whether I do service there or not. Therefore there are at least two meetings now where I see myself fitting in permanently, which is lovely. There will be future resentments and difficulties, of course. Throughout all my difficulties and resentments and pain in the past two years, the truth of the matter has remained constant: I need people in my life. It doesn’t matter how I feel about certain people and groups on a day to day basis. Feelings change all the time, and this year has shown me that feelings really can’t have any bearing on my actions and behaviour. Having a relationship with a higher power isn’t enough – my higher power works through people, therefore I need people. For years I have been so loathed to admit that, because I desperately don’t want to trust and let people into my life. I need to start learning how to trust. I need to start letting people in again.

Two years sober

That’s right, this week I celebrated two (long) years of continuous sobriety. Because of that I think it has been a week of reflection for me – I guess anniversaries always will be about reflection and evaluation, as well as celebration and joy. Considering how close I’ve come to drinking at several points this year, it’s probably worth marking the event even more. I wasn’t going to bother doing anything but at the last moment I realised that I would probably regret not marking it, so tomorrow I am meeting some sober friends for a nice lunch in Soho.

I can definitely say from my heart that the second year has been harder than the first year. That’s not to put newcomers off, it is just to be truthful about my story. I’ve had to face up to the realities of life and sobriety this year; I suppose having no job or a reason to get up in the mornings has not helped at all. In my first year I still had the comfort and safety of University to take my mind off the worst parts of sobriety. In that sense it’s interesting and probably quite apt to split my recovery into two parts: the good part and the bad part. Both parts are equally important to think about.

There have of course been brilliant times as well as terrible times. I’ve been able to travel in recovery, I’ve made an awful lot of friends, and I’ve experienced every single bit of it with clarity and appreciation. The bad times, not helped by unemployment and severe lack of finances, have brought me to my knees and forced me to face some of my darkest memories and feelings. I’ve used a lot of this year to look at those feelings and to try and make a start on dealing with them. It was never going to be easy, and I can’t say whether it would have been much better if I didn’t have so much time on my hands to feel those dark feelings.

In the future I doubt I will look back on this year with such fond memories as those with which I look back on my first year. I know it’s been an important year and I can’t dismiss some of its achievements though: I’ve written at least one and a half books, I’ve done a lot of unpaid work which has enabled me to face some of my fears, and I’ve done a lot of service in AA. I don’t have quite the material wealth to show for my achievements which I would have liked to see this time last year. It really has been a rude awakening in many ways but I’ve survived it sober and I am willingly embarking on my third year of the journey.

In this week’s news, I am still looking after my friend’s flat in Tottenham. Independence has been good for me, if a little lonelier than I thought it would be. The cat is lovely but I can’t help wanting a bit of human conversation from time to time. Maybe that’s what AA meetings are for, but I can’t always get to AA meetings. Tottenham is a lot further from my regular meetings than Islington, where I normally live. Yes I could try meetings in Tottenham, but I’ve heard that they are nowhere near as well attended as the ones I like.

So I’ve had to make do with watching TV and stroking the cat most of the week. I can hardly complain – this is the kind of independence I’ve always wanted. If I was to put a positive spin on the experience it would be that I’ve found out what kind of place I want to live in and what kind of place I don’t want to live in. I’ve also discovered that living with another person isn’t as terrible as I always thought it was.

A test

I went out dancing with AA friends on Saturday night for the first time in ages, after being randomly asked along by one of the guys at my old Saturday home group in Notting Hill. I wasn’t going to go there this weekend, planning instead to revisit a meeting in my local area that I hadn’t been to in two years. On the spur of the moment I decided to go to Notting Hill, feeling in the mood for the long walk, and I tend to think that when it comes to decisions of that nature, the best policy is to go with what I feel on the day.

It was nice to be back at Notting Hill after a week’s break, though not being secretary any more was weirder than I expected it to be. Being able to sit wherever I wanted to sit in the room, as well as having no official duties at the meeting, took away some of the thrill that I used to get out of having responsibility there. I think I will keep going back nonetheless. Afterwards I went for coffee with everyone and this is where I was asked out to dance by some people who I would never have expected to ask me out.

I was feeling a little awkward in the coffee shop when they asked me; like the last time I felt awkward there, I had chosen to sit at the end of the table away from most people rather than in the middle, where I might have felt more securely part of the group. Anyway, the invitation to dance came as a pleasant shock and I was even more thrilled when the person who invited me said he would pay for my entrance fee to the club as well (I was completely broke that day.)

So we got the tube to Vauxhall, which is seemingly the first choice location for sober clubbers these days. Sitting and laughing with friends on the tube has always been a favoured pastime. When we got to Vauxhall I was in a far better mood than I had been all week. Inside the club the crowd  was looking particularly gorgeous that night, a fact that increased my spirits even further. Part of me thought there might be a chance of some hot action, something I’d consciously avoided for the past few weeks. As the night wore on the argument between the desire for sex and the need for celibacy raged louder and louder in my head. By the end of the night I was not surprised almost to find myself in tears about it. Despite having a great night out with friends I could not stop tearing myself apart with this obsession that seems to have dogged me for years.

I really wanted to go  home with one of the many good looking bearded men in the club that night – bearded men really do it for me these days, more so since I identified where that little peccadillo might have come from. But the split second I begin to think about that desire, numerous doubts about why it would be a much better idea to go home alone would pop into my mind and taunt me. None of the guys I’m interested in would want me anyway, and I can’t bring anyone home because what would my mother say? And I still have problems functioning in bed so it would be really embarrassing, and I’m not looking for casual sex any more because I want something deeper and more spiritual.

But in spite of the glaring obviousness and truth in all of those doubts, there is still this seeming need to be wanted sexually. When other people see guys they like in nightclubs they seem to just be able to go for it or forget about it. When I see someone that I like, I always fall in love a bit.

And yeah, all of that does make me a strong candidate for the SLAA program, but I’ve talked before about why I don’t think SLAA works for me. So I went home alone on Saturday night, resigned to continued celibacy which I might as well be calling sexual sobriety now. I wasn’t quite depressed, but there is a definite boredom with this ongoing struggle that happens every time I see someone or something that turns me on.

What I really needed to take my mind off it all was a friend’s request to look after his flat for two weeks while he goes away on holiday; it’s a good job then that that is exactly what happened. On Sunday I moved to Tottenham, to the flat belonging to the man who took me to my first AA meeting two years ago. He’s gone to France for a fortnight for a friend’s wedding, so here I am, on my own in a nice flat overlooking a river with a cat for company. It is practically a dream come true; if only it was forever.

Leading up to yesterday there were the natural paranoid fears that he would have to cancel his holiday at the last minute, meaning I wouldn’t get my two weeks of freedom from living with mum after all. When I got here and got shown around the flat the paranoia continued; when we first discussed the arrangement weeks ago he had said that he would reimburse my extra travel costs into London for meetings and so on, but by late last night there had still been no word about the exact details of the reimbursement. Then when I got up this morning I found £180 on the computer desk and a note from my friend saying ‘I hope you enjoy the fortnight ahead, here’s a little something to say thanks’. I could have cried; the whole thing is a gift from God. Everything that I’ve been praying for this year, almost.

I’m not so worried now about the fact that it’s only for two weeks. A fortnight is quite a long time in my life; last year when I stayed in Manchester for a week it felt like a perfectly timed break, and by the end I was quite happy to come home. I don’t know how I’ll feel about moving back in two weeks, back to dependent, noisy living; it might be OK. I might have some miraculous spiritual awakening between now and then which enables me to find a way of living comfortably with my mother again. Who knows?

What’s true is that this is a necessary experience for me. It’s a higher power thing, it’s got to be. Later in the year I will be travelling to the north of England for a week long creative writing retreat, paid for entirely by an organisation that’s given away 40 free places on its 2009 retreats to mark its 40th anniversary. I didn’t expect to get one of those places but thanks to a stroke of luck (a.k.a. a higher power moment) I did. That week will give me another taste of independence, far away from home where I won’t know my surroundings or anyone that I’m staying with.

I’m assuming that these experiences will be preparation for the real life independence that I have craved so badly for so long. I’m fully aware that to gain that independence I’ll have to make some sacrifices that I haven’t made yet – getting a full time job springs to mind. As I’ve said before, I need someone somewhere with power to give me a chance at employment. I am putting all the footwork in now to find that job because this is the life I want.

I know it isn’t easy taking complete charge of one’s life. I got the chance to do it before when I went to Norwich for three years, and I failed because I was too young and far too unprepared. This time I think (I hope) I am better prepared. If I need to find out how prepared I am, I guess these two weeks in Tottenham will be a good way of seeing.

A matter of importance

God, what an evening. Tonight I attended the famous ‘After 8′ meeting in Chelsea for the first time in a year, as I fancied a change to my routine of exclusively gay AA meetings. Last time I went to After 8 I really liked it and something told me that it would be a good idea to go tonight. Anyone can share there but the main chair is always given by someone with more than 8 years of continuous sobriety, and the general theme is ‘issues of later sobriety’. I can see how that would put some people off, but I find it fascinating. Whereas gay AA is a fairly young fellowship with most of the regulars being under 10 years sober, meetings like this one are full of people with 20 and 30 years of sobriety. So whenever I feel like hearing about what it’s like to have been sober since the 1970’s, I can go there.

Tonight it was no different to how I remembered it. It’s still one of London’s busiest meetings, with over 100 attendees. The sharing is on the whole positive; the real regulars usually have stories to tell about each other that go back years and decades. I like seeing fellowship like that. The main reason I go there is that I see hope there. Some of these people have been best friends since before I was born. Some of them have been sober since before Elvis Presley died. Amazing, isn’t it?

With such long periods of sobriety seems to come a degree of material success. A few of the regulars are obviously well to do people, with amazing jobs and a lot of nice things in their lives. Being able to see that is really another part of the attraction for me. Ever since the first time I went to that meeting I’ve had this dream that one day I will be one of those people in the front row with the posh suit and shoes, keys to the sports car in one pocket and keys to the Chelsea townhouse in the other. It is just a fantasy, I know. Just because God had that planned for those people doesn’t mean that God has it planned for me. And I shouldn’t be basing success in recovery on some sort of fantastical vision of the future where material things mean everything. But it’s quite possible that all of those people were just like me when they came into the rooms. And now look at them.

At the end of the meeting I mistakenly put the remainder of my week’s cash budget into the tradition 7 pot, so I had no money for the train fare home, meaning that I’ve just had to walk all the way across London. It took nearly two hours thanks to getting lost around Buckingham Palace, and I am now shattered. But I was looking forward to getting back so I could write this. When I had been walking for an hour and a half I got to Camden, the home of the alcoholic, or so it seems. There I was accosted by a dangerously drunk person who could hardly walk in a straight line but seemed determined to latch onto me for some reason. It took me five minutes to understand what he saying; to begin with I assumed he was after money and so I did my best to look away and keep on walking. But despite being so drunk he was able to keep up with me, and when I realised that he wasn’t going anywhere I had to stop to listen to him.

It turned out that he wanted to know where the nearest bus stop was. After I had told him he was keen to let me know how much I had hurt his feelings by trying to run off. “Why do you have to be so mean? Why wouldn’t you just look at me? Do you know the meaning of kindness, mate? I don’t think you do…” Finally he wandered off when he saw a bus coming, leaving me to feel ashamed of myself. In the beginning I had simply assumed that he was going to mug me, and when he wouldn’t leave me alone I thought he was going to push me into the road or something equally horrible. If he hadn’t been so drunk I would have been quite happy to stop and listen to his request. As it is I did what I always do when danger appears to present itself. Running away normally works for me, but of course it doesn’t always.

The truth is that this man didn’t need to know the whereabouts of the nearest bus stop, he needed help from another alcoholic, and I didn’t give it to him. There’s always been this unconscious assumption that I am better than people like that because I don’t drink any more, and anyone in that state can only mean harm. If I had been as drunk as that today, however, I could quite easily have found myself in his position, stumbling from one passer by to the next, determined to get someone to listen to me but so wasted that it takes me several minutes to get my words out. In fact I clearly remember being like that at times in my drinking, unable to get the words out of my mouth and scaring people off with what they possibly perceived as aggression. It wouldn’t be entirely unfair to say that at times I could be quite aggressive, if I was in the wrong mood.

So the only difference between me and that man is a few drinks, really, and there’s a chance that I could have really helped him. What should I have done? Given him the AA number? Taken him for coffee and told him my experience of alcoholism? Oh, I don’t know. Such attempts to twelfth step him might not have worked with him being quite so drunk. But his parting words to me did strike a nerve, because although I might not be a bad person deep down, I do fail to help others when help might truly be needed. In AA meetings I don’t speak to newcomers, I don’t pick up the phone, I no longer do very much service. I don’t know why after nearly two years of sobriety I still struggle to get going with any of those things. All I can say is that helping others terrifies me.

I’m thinking that this is the kind of skill I need to be working on at the moment. It’s unfortunate that I sacked my sponsees last month, but perhaps it wasn’t the right time for us to work together. There’s other service I can do. Getting a commitment in a ‘mainstream’ meeting like the one tonight might be really good for me. It would take me away from the small collection of gay meetings that I have firmly stuck to for two years, not that I want to discard those meetings altogether, but something is telling me that I need some balance in my recovery now between different kinds of meetings. I still have no heterosexual friends and thinking about that now, it does seem worth addressing. For some time I’ve simply assumed that getting a job is the only change I need to make in my life, but tonight’s events have made me think that there are other massive changes worth making as well.

If challenged before today I might have said that once I’ve got a job I’ll have all the confidence I need to start making these changes, start giving back to AA and the world again. But with the interminable delays that I have encountered in my job search, it’s crossed my mind that there would be no better time to change my approach to everything than right now. I don’t quite know if or how I’m going to being of service in AA again. Perhaps all I need to do is do as much as I can.

Facing the facts

Tonight’s home group was very interesting. It is my only home group now, as I am no longer in charge of the Saturday meeting at Notting Hill and I feel like a break from that one will be good for me. So tonight at my new ‘primary’ meeting there was a lot of talk about childhood, and it got me thinking. When talking about the pain and horror that can be experienced in childhood a couple of tonight’s sharers burst into tears. When talking about my own experience of youthful trauma, I still cannot cry if it is in front of people. Even people who know me. I was talking the other day about this problem; my therapist brought it up last week when I hadn’t thought about it before. Tonight I really wished that I could share in that emotional experience with the room, but as usual I was automatically mechanical and matter-of-fact in my sharing. I don’t even know that I’m doing it unless I happen to look closer at what I am saying, like I am now, and I realise that these things should be producing some kind of emotion in me, but they just don’t.

I can get in touch with my feelings perfectly well when I am alone, but with others in the room it happens very rarely. I wouldn’t know how to begin making myself open up in that way. Somehow the link between the words I’m saying and the emotions behind them has been blocked off. It’s no wonder I can get so down when I am alone with my pain. The emotion that I should be expressing in the rooms automatically gets saved up for those times when I’m lying in bed and I feel safe to let some of it out. I have no choice in the fact that this happens. If I could break that block and cry openly in front of friends I would, but I don’t know where the block is. Avoiding emotion in my sharing has become so unconscious that I wouldn’t know how to share any other way.

What people were saying about their childhoods tonight gave me further food for thought. The old cliché that “my traumatic childhood didn’t make me an alcoholic” came out a few times. I have inevitably asked myself over the years whether the fact of my faulty upbringing, the shame around my sexuality made me more susceptible to alcohol dependency or not. I know why people in the rooms are so vehemently inclined to deny that the past had anything to do with their liking for booze: if you admit that the past played a part then you have to admit that overcoming the past might allow for ‘normal’ drinking (if there is such a thing). My own personal take on it at the moment (and this might well change) is that coming to terms with the past doesn’t necessarily mean that I will ever be able to drink like a normal person. After two years of not drinking I’m not sure I would ever want to go back to it, even if at some point I manage to achieve my dream of living at peace with the past. My ideal vision of the future would include living peacefully with the past whilst remaining sober forever. That may or may not mean that I accept my past played a part in my addiction issues.

I can’t think of a single person I’ve met in AA who had a peaceful, undisturbed childhood. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that any human being who says they had no issues whatsoever in childhood and adolescence can’t be a real human being. Surely it’s the experience of pain in our early years that makes us truly empathetic and wise? Anyway, it’s taken me many years to get the point where I can admit without reservation that I experienced trauma in my childhood, and with nothing much else going on in my life I am faced with all these feelings that I never dealt with properly whilst drinking. The drinking was a way of escaping from the pain, a band-aid over the wound; it was not the cause of that pain. The pain I am talking about started when I was very young, before I could even talk. Alcoholic drinking caused its own pain of course, which is why I had to stop drinking. Did the pain and problems stop as soon as I had put the pint glass down to get sober? Of course not. Occasionally you’ll hear in meetings the idea that getting sober is all one needs to do to have a wonderful life, usually from relative newcomers who haven’t experienced true sobriety yet. My experience has shown me that this idea is a fallacy. Sobriety can be truly wonderful (at times); it can be tough as shit (at times), as I have expressed here very honestly.

No matter how much I would like to run and hide from the pain, with all my sophisticated and unconscious ways of avoiding it, I can’t run from it by saying that my childhood didn’t make me an alcoholic. Perhaps it would be fair to say that it didn’t give me a preference for certain liquors over others, alcohol over drugs. Those specific preferences weren’t decided by any experience that I could pinpoint, not that I would want to waste time looking for such experiences anyway. What my childhood did make me is over-sensitive, neurotic, needy and prone to depression. These are mental states that I have to deal with on a daily basis now; it’s unfortunate that some in AA would dismiss them by saying that they have nothing to do with alcoholism. I’ve heard it said on a couple of occasions that if one wants to talk about depression one should go to another fellowship. AA meetings should be reserved for alcohol talk, according to these ‘fundamentalists’.

It’s not that I wish to take over every AA meeting I go to with talk about depression and other mental states that don’t directly relate to drinking, but I certainly don’t believe that depression is an ‘outside’ issue. I think it has everything to do with my propensity towards drinking heavily. I actually think it can go some way to explaining why I crave alcohol so badly from time to time. I don’t want to hurt or upset people in the fellowship, and I certainly don’t want to come across as someone who takes life far too seriously (as if!) but I want the truth about sobriety to be known. To thine own self be true, they say – and this is what I am doing.