Yesterday afternoon I searched for an honest and fair way to tell James, last week’s fling, that I didn’t feel able to fit him into my life at the moment. He wasn’t happy about the news, logging straight on to facebook to tell everyone that he felt ‘used’ but was ‘back on the market’. For an hour I was angry at his reaction, and I wanted to retaliate by reminding him how hard it had been for me to come to my decision, that my life was difficult enough without him creating more friction. I resisted the urge to retaliate, deciding it would be better for both of us if I left him alone. It wasn’t at all easy to rein in my tongue in such a way. My feelings were telling me that a great injustice had been done. The thought of all the negative assumptions that his facebook friends would be making about me, the idea that he could go away thinking of me as a using bastard, nearly drove me mad. Instead of acting from anger and fear I made a decision to walk away from the whole situation, and I’m sticking to my decision. In my new spiritual life I have to walk away from things instead of making them worse; I have to treat others with unconditional kindness rather than reacting with vitriol when I feel as if I haven’t got everything I expected from them. Enough experience has shown me that living in this spiritual way is vital to my inner peace.

I can no longer hide from the important work that needs to be done in my life, and unfortunately sexual relationships have to fall by the wayside for the time being. They require too much hard work in themselves, and as I wrote the other day it’s clear that I don’t have the mental or physical space to do that work yet. The really important work that needs doing right now cannot get done when I am distracted by men! I am slowly getting back to the task of spiritual enlightenment that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago, listening to podcasts and reading books which contain highly useful lessons. I’ve gone back to Eckhart Tolle and Buddha because they know about what really matters in life. I want to go deeper into myself, past the distractions of lust and resentment and insecurity, down into the place where I find out who I really am. In that place there is a lonely child who I have spent so much time talking and writing about but never really given compassion or love to.

I am starting to ask what is truly essential in life, what my priorities need to be, and in doing so I’m leaving behind very comfortable unconscious ways of thinking, and it feels like I’ve jumped off a cliff. Five years ago if you had asked me what I really wanted more than anything I would have told you about the perfect TV boyfriend, house, bank balance and job. Today I have a very different understanding of what I want: I know that inner peace and contentment are closer to what I really want and far more achievable. But accepting that those are the things I should be striving for is a very tough thing to do, because there remains a very strong part of me that does not want to let go of old dreams. The more spiritual work I try to do, the louder and urgent that doubting voice gets. I have talked about it with my therapist for the past two weeks, and he finds it very interesting that my doubts and fears actually seem to have a voice that speaks. Perhaps the voice is shouting louder now because I am getting closer to the core of the problem, closer to the final answer that will silence it for good.

Last week for homework I was supposed to practise meditating with my perfect nurturer in mind, to try and make that image more real and get in touch with the healing emotions that it can bring up. I wasn’t very successful in this assignment partly because most days I struggled to get out of bed before midday and felt as if I was catching up with myself the whole week. When explaining to the therapist why for the first time I had been unable to complete a homework assignment, I naturally mentioned that doubting voice in my head, the voice that asks endless questions and never finds satisfaction in any of the answers. Every attempt at meditation is dogged by this irritating narrative which simply refuses to believe that the work I’m doing will make any difference in my life. Although I know that logically I should get better with sustained and purposeful meditation practise, the voice of the illness (in other words, my sick ego) is determined not to believe it. It’s like that part of me just doesn’t want to get better. Everything I have done in the past two years to improve my quality of life has been met with these endless repetitive and rhetorical questions. At the very bottom of it is the unshakeable belief that I can’t get better, that I am not meant to be happy because I am irreparably damaged. The part of me that should be able to answer all these doubts and fears with trust and faith is seriously underdeveloped.

So next week I am going to partake in an experiment with my therapist. It will be our penultimate session and therefore probably quite important in determining the success of the whole run. We are going to revisit the past; go back to a specific experience of my choosing that causes powerful emotions whenever it is recalled. I will describe the experience in the first person, as if I am there experiencing it all over again. Instead of leaving that memory as it is, we are going to bring a new narrative into it – the voice of my perfect nurturer, who will comfort the little child in that memory and hopefully produce a positive emotional response. The therapist has stated that I need to be completely in touch with my emotions during this exercise: I cannot run away or avoid the pain like I usually do. If we can put that caring, loving mother figure that I imagine as my perfect nurturer into the memory and change my pain into love, then perhaps a breakthrough will be reached.

The problem is that I avoided accessing those painful emotions for a very long time. They’ve been coming up a lot recently while I’ve been moving towards this therapeutic goal, but never in the appropriate places. When I’m talking to my therapist or sharing in an AA meeting I tend to be matter-of-fact about it, successfully detached from the painful reality of the past. Only when I’m on my own can I cry or feel anything. The therapist tells me that this detachment from emotion which I practise every time I’m not alone is the problem that has allowed the critical, doubting voice in my head to arise. Before I came to AA, I never accessed my emotions at all, not even when I was alone, and so the negative voice of the illness didn’t have to shout too loud at all.

I am heading towards that pain for the first time in my life - I can no longer accomodate the belief that there might be another way forward. I have to go to those dark places; I am already going to those dark places. I have to keep going there, again and again until the fiery furnace of pain burns itself out or I die. On a practical day to day level, there are many different ways of facing that pain and fear. Meditation is not the only tool to be used in this quest: it is simply a way of creating space and love around the pain that is inevitably going to come up in the multitude of life situations that cannot be avoided. No matter how much I would like to run away from everyday life and spend every moment practising meditation, I can’t. I was talking the other day about regaining my independence: practically moving towards that by finding employment is a task that meditation and other spiritual/therapeutic work has told me I need to start engaging in. I don’t want the task – it will be boring and repetitive and I will probably hate it for years. But I have to start engaging in it sooner or later.

If an AA newcomer was to ask me what I’ve learnt about life in sobriety, I would answer that life is a series of a million daily journeys. There are countless links and relationships between what happens from day to day, of course, but every new day is essentially separate. What you learn one day can very easily be forgotten the next; a routine that you manage to engage in for one week can be lost ever so quickly the next. Progress in any life challenge involves accepting that you might have to apply yourself equally to the challenge every single day for the rest of your life. In my early days in AA I learnt that there was no miracle cure for alcoholism, only a daily reprieve; at this stage of the journey I am starting to learn that there is no miracle solution to any of life’s big challenges. To succeed in the task of living I have to start doing the same things every single day. I have to face the same problems every day and accept that they might never go away. What I have found in accepting this harsh truth is that small miracles start to happen. Things do start to get better, in small and barely noticeable ways. For a year I have partaken in voluntary work at a gay helpline; the work terrified me at first; only by going back again and again to face the fear I have slowly been able to find enjoyment and reward in the work. It’s taken a long time and the fear is by no means gone. It might always be there in a small way. But it has become a lot more manageable.

The funny thing is that I’ve only been able to come to this conclusion by accepting the possibility of fear always being present in the work. I very quickly had to let go of the old and naive assumption that a few goes at the task would be enough to eliminate that fear completely. The truth about life is that fear has to be lived with: it involves a very long learning process. I was able to say ten years ago with some conviction that I knew there were no miracle cures to my problem, but I was in no way ready to accept this truth, because I had barely begun to experience it. Now I am experiencing it on a daily basis because I am living an adult life that forces me to face it. I am being forced to let go, little by little, every day. And the pain that comes with being forced to let go is totally and utterly necessary. And…I think…I could be grateful for that.