Yesterday was, quite possibly, the strangest day of my life. In the morning there was a rushed exchange of e-mails between myself and London Metropolitan University, where I hoped to find someone who could write a couple of lines confirming for my new employers that I was once a student there. Positive response was not instantly forthcoming, but once I’d made it known that I had been unemployed since graduating, they seemed to realise that their assistance would keep me from bumping up their graduate unemployment rates. I finally got the head of Psychology to agree to be a referee, even though she never met me and probably hasn’t a clue what to write. With that sorted, I was once again free to worry about the actual job that I had taken on. After training last week I have a fair idea of what the company actually does, but the details of my job specifically are still reasonably vague, partly because it’s a new job that no one’s done before. The job description makes it sound easy, but I’m sure it isn’t going to be, otherwise they wouldn’t be offering to pay me as much as they are. So in spite of their obvious eagerness to employ me, I haven’t a clue whether I can actually do the job or not. I don’t know who I’m going to be working with; I got the impression last week that it was a fairly quiet, serious kind of office, and I just have this impression of people who work in offices as being cold, unhelpful and far more clever than me.

I didn’t have much time to think about these things yesterday, unfortunately, as in the afternoon I had to return to Highbury Magistrates Court to testify against Ben, the mentally unwell individual who attacked my sponsor outside a meeting last year. The hearing has been postponed so many times that by now my memory of it is unhelpfully hazy, and none of us really wanted to go through with the hearing by this point, but I think if my sponsor had just dropped the case, there might have been a risk of Ben getting off scot free without any order to get the help that he desperately needs.

We got to court at 1.30 yesterday afternoon to find the place almost empty. Apparently everyone was still on their lunch break. Part of me was hoping that the whole thing would be called off again like before – I really didn’t want to be spending my last day of freedom in that place – but another part of me just wanted to get it over with. It’s been a year of waiting, wondering, not knowing. By yesterday the case was most certainly something that could not be put off any longer.

My sponsor was the first to be called to the witness stand. The prosecution simply asked him to explain clearly what happened; defense then did their best to pick holes in his story. Up next was me. Within seconds of reading out the oath I was shaking. All of a sudden I seemed to realise where I was, what I was doing. Ben was sitting on the other side of the room, looking alone and lost, and I felt terrible for him. There was no way around what I was about to do to him. In telling the truth of what happened I was to smear his character, make him out to be a villain, because he was one that night. Now, however, he is just a lonely, depressed individual who doesn’t deserve to be where he is.

I stumbled over my words and the judges kept asking me to speak up, which was embarrassing. When the defense started on me, I knew I had no hope. It became clear that they wanted to portray my sponsor as the bad guy, the intimidating one who came in and picked a fight with poor Ben. Apparently, Ben only kicked and punched and threw coffee at us in self defense. I found myself unable to disagree with the argument, even though I knew in my head that it was not right. I was only on the stand for a few minutes at most, which is probably a good thing, though as soon as I got back to my seat I began to wish I could go back and tell my story again.

Next up was Ben himself. He looked a state on the stand: upset, shaky, hardly sure where he was. His story was rambling and inconclusive and he couldn’t answer a question with a simple, straight answer. When it was all over, the judges went out and took about twenty minutes to debate their verdict. When they came back, they explained in far too many words that while they felt sympathy for Ben’s mental condition, they didn’t believe that he had acted in self defense. They found my evidence and that of my sponsor wholly credible, and they believed that what happened was down to a heating of tempers, caused by Ben’s ongoing disruptive and abusive behaviour at the time.

Ben was given a conditional discharge on the grounds that he has been receiving treatment since the time of the incident (I didn’t know this). If he commits any further offences in the next twelve months he will return to court to be sentenced for this as well as any future offence. He was also required to pay £100 in court fees – when he tearfully explained why he could not afford to pay it all in one go, I nearly collapsed in shame. How could I do this to him? We shouldn’t be here. This should have been sorted out months ago with an honest, open, face to face discussion. Not on opposite sides of a court room.

I will probably never see Ben again. I don’t doubt that this is the best thing for both of us, I just wish…I don’t even know what I wish. He’s getting help, he’s not coming to meetings and causing disruption any more, so I suppose everything really has worked out well.

Outside the court there were sad farewells to be exchanged with my former sponsor, who is leaving the country to return to his home, California, for good today. He lost his job in London a couple of months ago and I think he never really intended to stay here permanently, in any case. It would have been nice to have a longer goodbye chat with him, but it was cold and we both wanted to get home. I’m sure I’ll see him again – his long term partner still lives here and I imagine that we’ve become close enough friends through all of this not to lose touch. We have been through a lot together. He took me through the twelve steps – I can’t forget that. Though there was a time earlier this year when there was a great distance between us, I think that’s over now.

So, both of our lives are changing completely today. He’s moving to the other side of the world; I’m starting my first proper, adult job. What a way to end our old lives, in court. Coming home from Highbury Magistrates wasn’t quite the end of my day yesterday. In the evening I received a surprise call from a friend, Jan, who had two tickets to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in the West End. He told me it was a treat, to celebrate my new job. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d been dying to see Priscilla for months, ever since they erected that giant glittering stiletto outside the Palace Theatre on Cambridge Circus. Going to see shows such as this was part of the dream that I envisaged around starting work, having money again. I didn’t think I’d be living the dream quite so soon, though.

The show was, of course, incredible. Priscilla is one of my all time favourite movies, and the stage production doesn’t let the movie fans down. If anything it is bigger, brighter, bolder and more fabulous than the film in many ways. I suppose it has to be – the quieter parts of the film just wouldn’t work on stage. Glitter, pink feathers and confetti flew everywhere; well known classic pop songs were belted out with twirling, kicking dance routines. Everything was camp times a million. I loved it. At several points the worries about starting work today tried to intrude on my enjoyment; I quickly forced them out, telling myself to stay in the moment. That’s where all the fear comes from, not staying in the moment.

When the show was over I couldn’t believe that was it. I wanted to go back and live through it all again. I didn’t want the fun to end. But now it has ended. First thing this morning I woke up with that all too familiar jolt of fear. I knew that the day was finally here, that there was no escaping responsibility any more.

In three hours from now I have to go to work for the first time in years. Though I’ve survived so many frightening things in recovery already, I can’t convince myself that this isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. If I could take to the stand and give evidence in court against an old friend yesterday, surely I can go to Notting Hill and complete a few slightly complicated administrative tasks as part of my brand new role? No. My head cannot believe that I am ready for this.

The hardest thing, as I said before, is the fact that I won’t be able to leave once I’ve got there. I’ve told the job centre about this new job now, so if I end up resigning, I won’t get any more benefits. I have to go along today, tomorrow and every single day for the foreseeable future and I have to see it through. Logic and reason keep butting into my thoughts, telling me that it’s not being sent to Afghanistan, it’s not being banged up in prison for five years – it’s just a job. But it isn’t just a job! It’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to me and I can’t afford to screw it up!

Before sitting down to write this I spent about half an hour crying my eyes out on the sofa. This is just like leaving home all over again; going to school for the first time; leaving the safety and comfort of the only home I’ve ever known to step out into the real world. I experienced the exact same emotions the day I left for University in 2001, the day I started secondary school in 1994, and the day I started primary school in 1987. Despite the years that have passed, the feelings haven’t changed. I know this is wrong, I shouldn’t be feeling that fear any more, but I never got over it, I never learnt whatever I needed to learn to deal with growing up. In the most significant and memorable dream I ever had, I was forced to go back to school to rearrange some tables in a large hallway. At first all my old school ‘friends’ were there, pointing and laughing at me, not helping at all. After a while I was on my own in the hallway, and the tables just kept multiplying, growing and growing in number until there were hundreds in front of me and I didn’t know what to do. Today, I face that challenge. I’ve run away from it all my life. I can’t run any more. I can cry, I can plead, I can panic, but I can’t run away. Mum isn’t here to hold my hand now. Is God going to take care of me? He took care of me when I went to school, left home for University, and when I stopped drinking and joined AA. All those major turning points in my life were huge, terrifying, and I survived them with God’s help. Why can’t I trust in God today? How could I think that He would abandon me now, when I need Him the most? This is it, then. This is where my faith really gets tested. By the end of the day, I’ll know the answers to all the questions. I’ll know what the rest of my life is going to be like.

I am so scared right now I could weep. I’m due to be starting work in two days’ time, and one of the names that I gave my new employers as a reference, a former lecturer who supervised my final year Psychology dissertation, is refusing to write me a reference because she is on maternity leave at the moment.

This is the very last thing I need to happen. My new boss wants proper references covering the last three years. Three years ago I was at London Metropolitan University, and the only person who might remember me from that time is not going to help me. Because of this I don’t know if I will be able to start my new job or not. Just fucking brilliant.

I’ve searched the London Met website for other staff from my time who I might once have had a conversation with, but practically all of them have left since then. So basically this one woman who is on maternity leave is the only person who could help me. My future might depend on her. It kills me that it has all come down to this. My career is on the line because I never spoke to the other lecturers, because I kept myself to myself for three years, got on with my work and never asked for help. If only I’d been more visible, if only I’d known how to form relationships with people outside the small drinking circle that I immersed myself in outside lectures – but I didn’t. I was never the type of student to hang around with academics in the hope of bettering myself. That’s the sort of thing clever people do. I never believed I was that clever.

Of course I could be panicking unnecessarily. I do have a tendency to catastrophize the smallest things. Maybe there’ll be a kind professor who doesn’t mind writing references for former students he or she never knew. That’s the kind of person I really need. I can’t believe for one minute that God will be good enough to put that kind of person in my path. I’m starting to think that God wants me to fall at this hurdle, that it was never God’s intention for me to work, that it was a waste of time me going through all that training last week because I am meant to be unemployed forever. I’m clearly not cut out for the world of work, so why should I care that I can’t get a reference from my former tutor?

This time last week I was terrified that I could be on the verge of re-entering the world of work; now I’m terrified that I might never work again. In this world you NEED references for any job – not even the manager of a McDonalds would employ someone without proof that they’ve worked before. I can easily provide references from the past year, thanks to all the voluntary work that I’ve sweated over at London Friend, but it’s the murky past, pre-recovery, that I cannot account for. If the new job didn’t need evidence covering the last three years it would be all right, I would be sailing into this new role, but it was never to be that easy. Oh fuck, what am I going to do?

I should be so happy tonight. I should be on cloud 9. I’ve spent the day with my dad, who seems happier to see me with every meeting. We met in Covent Garden and spent three hours chatting over coffee. At no point did the conversation dry up or get awkward, like it would have done a few years ago. We seem to have worked out how to get along: we know each other’s comfort zones, the things that can be talked about and the things that should be avoided. I’ll never get him to open up about his feelings towards me. But I guess the fact that he’s willing to spend time with me, after all our history, all the acrimony, anguish and heartache we went through, is all the evidence I need about how he feels. Before tonight’s goodbyes he gave me a Christmas card, thinking he might not see me again before the end of the year, and inside there was a £50 note, a sort of early birthday/Christmas present. The most he’s ever given me, without any asking or hinting from me. I guess, unbelievable as it is, he must love me in his own way. All my life, until the last year or so, I lived in the shadow of his rejection. Now I suppose we are like any normal father and son. Not that I need money from him to show that he actually cares about me – his presence in my life says it all.

I should be fucking joyous tonight, but coming home to this e-mail from my former lecturer, explaining why in very few words she won’t write me a reference, has brought me crashing down. The dark thoughts that were going through my mind earlier in the week are now back, and they’re not going away. Drinking, drugging, suicide, I want to do it all tonight. I’d really rather not be here if I have to go to the job centre to start signing on again. How dare God get my hopes up for this job, only to dash them all in one horrible, mean gesture. How dare He?

Who the hell am I to question God’s motives? I should be grateful to have a roof over my head, food on the table, clothes on my back and a bed to sleep in. That is what I would say if I were feeling more sane tonight, anyway. I’m not sane, and I’m not remotely grateful for any of the things I happen to have. I’ve been stuck in this rut my entire fucking life, I want to get out of it. Why am I not allowed to get a job, move on and make a place for myself in the world? Why should I accept unemployment as the content and purpose of my life?

Oh, how deliciously ironic it is that I am bemoaning unemployment now, after all the time and energy I spent desperately trying to avoid work. How humorous God is!

What am I going to do? AA would tell me that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle…right now I’m quite sure that there isn’t much more I can take.

My facebook status, when I next update it, should read something like this: ‘Josh is at peace with life and the world’. I’ve just finished two days of training for my new job – two days of intense, laborious training in which I was required to learn everything there is to know about the company that I am to start working for next week. And there is a lot to know about it. There were about eight other people on the training course to begin with; by the end of it only five of us were left. I couldn’t believe that I was one of those five at the end. Me! The one who always walks out of job situations as soon as they get tough!

The company is an exceptionally busy, fast-moving company but, over all, full of nice people. I was surprised by this as similar places where I’ve worked in the past have been full of bland, robotic people that all address you by your surname and look at you with the same dead expression. Here, colleagues all seem to be on good terms. And the working hours are not bad.

The reason why my facebook status update should read that I am at peace with the world is because of something wholly unexpected that happened this afternoon, just before the end of the official training. I was plucked from the group and taken to one of the trainers’ offices, where she explained to me that one of the other divisions in the company, website development, are looking for a person to fill an admin role. Would I be interested?

I was of course very interested, not just because it would mean I don’t have to deal with actual people on the phone all day, like I would in the helpdesk role that I originally applied for. I was promptly introduced to the head of the development team, a loud, scary lady with a BIG personality and even bigger bosom who told me all about the admin role and the reasons why she thought I would be perfect for it. To be ‘chosen’ in this way was such a shock that I can hardly remember most of what we spoke about now; the main thing that sticks out in my memory is the bit where she told me she liked me because I had done two degrees at University, both completely irrelevant to any vocation in the real world. She didn’t say this in a derogatory or arrogant way: she really meant it as a compliment, implying that she liked me for doing something so different to the norm, i.e. going to University twice to learn about subjects I actually found interesting. I got the impression that she had done the same thing herself.

So, my two degrees get to be useful after all! There was a time, not too long ago, when I thought I’d never, ever use my degree in a career. Not that I was horrified or upset by this – I’ve always been glad that I got to study Psychology on top of Philosophy. I won’t exactly be using my psychological or philosophical qualifications in this new role, but it’s nice to know that my unique ‘experience’ is after all appreciated by someone.

The turn of events is just so unexpected, so unusual, I can’t feel any nerves about entering the world of work at the moment. How often does someone apply for one job in an organisation, get spotted and promoted to another, better position on the spot? Maybe it happens all the time, I really don’t know. Everyone concerned was complimentary about my abilities during training. And the best thing is, I’ve been able to choose my hours. I will be working part time to begin with, five hours per day Monday to Friday, to allow me to ease in to the organisation. Having been unemployed for so long, I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope with being thrown in at the deep end of full time employment straight away. I don’t mind that I won’t get paid so much as everyone else. It’s not like I have family responsibilities or anything, I’m just getting on my feet.

This morning on my way into work I felt those usual nerves. It was probably worse than ever, as I knew that now I was really on the verge of proper work, and this was the moment I had been dreading all year. Though I hated unemployment, that old, sick part of me still would have loved to avoid work altogether. You get used to being at home every day. If I’m honest, not counting the odd hours I had to go into University, I’ve probably been  living the lifestyle of an unemployed person for the best part of ten years. It is great to be able to choose your own schedule, to do what you want with your days, to not be accountable or responsible to anyone except yourself. I only threw myself into the job search this year because I had to, because of all the debts I still have to pay off and the fact that I now have the jobcentre on my back.

I won’t say I can’t wait to start work next week, but at least my new employer has proved herself to have a personality, and at least I know I’m liked there. I have no real idea what the work is going to entail – needless to say I’ve never been involved with website development before – but apparently I’m going to get on the job training. The child in me is scared I’m just going to arrive there and be expected to get on with things by myself immediately. Of course that won’t happen, but until I’m actually there and getting the training I need, I can’t be 100% certain in my heart.

When I was completely feared up this morning on my way to Notting Hill I used a technique to calm myself which I’ve entirely learnt about through AA. I started to re-parent myself, which means I took my scared inner child by the hand and walked him to work, comforting and soothing him all the way. “It’s going to be all right, you’ll be fine, you can do this.” At first it sounds so silly and weird, but it really works. In the arena of work I never grew up from that terrified little nine year old boy, so for years I just kept being terrified. The only way I knew how to deal with the terror before was to run away. Thank God I didn’t run away today – I was sorely tempted to not turn up. If I had done what I normally do, I would never have been headhunted in the way that I was and chosen for the much better website development job upstairs.

I’ve experienced all manner of dark thoughts this week, not just about running away and not turning up to work. I’ve thought about drinking, drugging, jumping in front of the traffic and ending it all. Things that I guess any alcoholic would think in a situation as petrifying as mine. At the end of it all, I just cannot believe I’ve got to this point. I have a job; I don’t have to go to the bloody job centre to sign on any more; I don’t have to live on £7 a day any more! Obviously there’s a whole lot of hard work still to do. I still have to learn the ropes of my new job, settle in, see if I’m really cut out for this business or not.  But, right now, I feel OK about it all, and I didn’t expect to feel that way.

While I may have been feeling fairly positive about the situation this morning, that is not quite the case this evening. I’ve spent the day trying to run away from my feelings of deep apprehension and doubt; a long walk around Hyde Park didn’t do the trick; sharing about it at my old home group didn’t really help either. Tonight I attended the Hyde Park Crescent newcomer’s meeting for the first time in months, having just finished the literature commitment at the other meeting which has been my home group all this year. I had every intention of sharing tonight, and I knew I could only talk about my fears concerning starting work, even though it’s a newcomer’s meeting and there has always been a tacit agreement that you share positively for the newcomer. I needed to share honestly and openly and part of me thought the newcomers might need to hear some of this stuff.

When I got to the meeting I was almost in tears. All day my emotions had been up and down like a yoyo. One minute I’d be glad to finally have a job and the chance to pay off my debts; the next I’d be dreading what’s to come like a little boy dreading his first day at school. As soon as I’d managed to convince myself that everything was bound to be all right, doubt would swoop back in and drown the positive feelings out. Practically everyone in the fellowship knows I’ve got a job now – news always travels fast in AA – and there was the expected barrage of congratulations and well wishes. Before the meeting I couldn’t tell anyone how I really felt about the impending transformation in my life. Only when all the newcomers had shared and us old-timers were allowed to speak could I put my hand up and spew the toxic rot that had been clogging up my being all day.

Unfortunately in the middle of my share one of the newcomers at the back of the room seemed to burst into tears and ran dramatically outside, making a lot of noise on the way. I immediately felt awful and tried to swing my words round to a positive angle, but I couldn’t. A big part of me knows that honesty is the only policy that works in recovery. I’m more scared than I have ever been in my life right now: I have to talk about this. There isn’t anywhere else I can get it out of my system.

There are many reasons why I am so scared today. In therapy earlier this year I learnt how to sift through the myriad of problems that inevitably swirl around my head in circumstances such as these, in order to get to the core of what I am really feeling. The main reason I’m scared is that I am convinced I will screw this job up, like nearly every job I ever had in my life. I’m terrified of looking a fool, of making mistakes and being told off – of, worst of all, being laughed at. In reality I’m unlikely to end up looking a fool if I do everything I’m told and use the brain that I know I’ve got – but if by some misfortune I happen to make a mistake and find myself being reprimanded by a superior in the organization, what would be so terrible about that? What’s the worst that could happen? I could lose my job, but that isn’t the worst thing in my mind, because I could still claim benefits from the government in that improbable eventuality.  It’s the being reprimanded bit that I find the most horrifying. Being shouted at, made to feel small, stupid and unworthy were all things that happened to me from time to time at school. I hated the feelings those experiences brought up in me so much. But why? What is it about being told off that causes me to feel as if the ground is being pulled from underneath my feet?

It’s the idea that I’m hated which really gets under my skin. The idea that I’ve done something bad and I’m going to be punished, and ultimately rejected and abandoned. That’s why I felt so terrible tonight when that poor person ran out of the room in tears during my share – I felt as if I was solely responsible for their pain, and that any minute I would be pulled up by my hair and humiliated in front of everyone for committing the crime of scaring a newcomer. That sort of thing never happens in AA – I know it doesn’t – but in the part of my head that has nothing to do with reality, the childish part of me, this is exactly the eventuality that I fear all the time.

At the end of the meeting I was prepared to run off and cry, when a dear friend, Eleanor, stopped me to impart some useful words of wisdom. “Don’t worry about starting work next week, Josh. You will be absolutely fine. You will go to work and you will impress them all. You will find that it is the perfect job for you, as if it was tailor made for you! This time next week you’ll come back here and you will share about how ridiculous it was to be so scared. Trust me.”

Dearest, loveliest Eleanor. How I wish I could believe you!

In the midst of all this abject terror and violent self pity, there is a miniscule glimmer of what I am very reluctant to call ‘hope’. Hope that perhaps, actually, I am wrong and the job I’m due to start in a week’s time will be totally fine. All the experiences I’ve feared in recovery have turned out to be a hundred fold better than I could have predicted. Look at my creative retreat in the North last month – look how petrified I was in the days and weeks leading up to that! Of course my head is replying to these ideas with the fact that all of that was different. Nothing I’ve been through in recovery is quite the same as starting full time work. Yes, I was close to wetting myself the day I arrived at Lumb Bank and had to meet fifteen perfect strangers who I was going to be living with for a week. But I can’t convince myself that that is the same thing, even though it is.

While Eleanor was pep-talking me a few other members of the meeting tried to approach me with similar words of encouragement and advice, but before they could open their mouths I was running off, as fast as I could, desperate not to let anyone see me cry. I wanted to cry, so much, but like so many times before, I was too repulsed by the thought of making myself even more vulnerable to try it. So in running away, I once again deprived myself of the opportunity to get any of the support that I really needed. For two years I have secretly complained about the lack of support that I perceive myself to be getting from people in the fellowship – yet on the rare occasions when it is right there for the taking, I abandon it willingly in favour of isolation. This time next week I’m going to need a lot of support, more than I’ve ever needed – I’m probably going to have to pick up the phone and call someone at least once. Dear God, I don’t want to fucking do that! I want to see myself through this alone, mainly because in the end, I will be on my own. I’m going to have to learn to take on the responsibility by myself eventually, why not start learning now?

It’s just that kind of attitude which sends people to relapse in AA, you know. “I need to do this by myself, I can’t rely on other people to look after me.” Tonight, for possibly the first time in ages, the thought of having a drink crossed my mind momentarily. “If it all goes wrong next week, I could always have a drink and forget about it.” This thought was the one that brought me the closest to tears. It would be insane to throw my sobriety away over a job – if I can’t deal with starting work then how the hell would I deal with something really major like what Earl is going through right now? This is how fucking insane I am. If I carry on feeling the way I felt today, I’m either going to make myself sick or lose my mind. I have to get over this phobia of work, I really do. If I can’t stop myself from believing that everything is going to go tits up then it probably is going to go tits up at some point – it could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, right now I’m attempting to imagine things going right next week. A harder challenge I’ve never faced. Actually picturing myself still in the job after three months is like trying to picture myself on the moon. In spite of the initial difficulty in imagining success, little by little the process is chipping away at my anxiety, and those moments of feeling OK are beginning to come back. Very slowly, of course. I don’t know if by this time next week I’ll be any better at thinking positive thoughts, but I have to keep trying. If I don’t try then I’ll just go mad and that will be the end of any future I might have had.

I’ve had a really stupid evening. At 6 o’clock I want a meeting but I cannot decide where to go – AA, SLAA, SAA, or CODA. I could go to any but I do not have the conviction to choose one. I let a coin choose for me and it sends me south of the river to a SLAA HOW meeting that I have not been to before. I’m not entirely convinced that I want this meeting but I’m not convinced that I don’t want it either. It might be easier to go to a meeting I know, like the AA newcomer group in Hyde Park where I have not been for ages, but if I go there I will definitely regret not going to SLAA. So I arrive south of the river and find the church where the SLAA meeting is supposed to be quite easily. With just minutes to go before the start, I cannot walk in. I see other people walking in, none of whom I recognise, and a sudden terror that I’ve come to the wrong place hits me. I’m 99% sure that this is the right place, but the 1% makes me dither, and by the time I’ve been dithering for two minutes I have to walk away from the entrance because the thought of being seen dithering is too humiliating to bear. I just can’t walk into the room. The people going in past me don’t look like sex and love addicts – I’ve never known sex and love addicts to have a ‘look’, but tonight I expect them to – and my dithering is bound to have offended somebody, so I can’t walk in now that I’ve been seen to do something so heinous as dither outside for two minutes.

I’ve wasted over an hour travelling here but I don’t beat myself up for too long as it occurs to me I could still get a meeting in somewhere else. I’m still not sure that an ordinary AA meeting will be enough for me – SLAA is what I really want – but there are no other SLAA groups tonight and I only have an AA where to find on me, so I will have to make do. If I rush I could make it to Hyde Park Crescent and be half an hour late, but I can’t bring myself to do that. I need to be in a meeting from start to end. In the where to find I see that there is a late meeting at Hinde Street starting in an hour. Jump on the tube, spend more money than I wanted to tonight, and I land in the heart of London with quite a bit of time to spare. The only place in the vicinity where I can kill some time is a Lebanese café where I’ve sat once or twice in the past drinking expensive tea. I don’t want to be here, I want to go home and sleep, I want to get away to safety, but I need a meeting, I can’t let the whole trip into London be a waste of time.

Everyone else in the café is part of a group. I take a solitary table in the corner, try to ignore the nagging certainty that everyone is staring at me. They’re not staring at me, but that doesn’t stop me obsessing about it. A middle aged woman with tightly curled red hair and deep, smoky voice waxes lyrical to her male companion about the new St Pancras station. A girl fiddles incessantly with the zip on the pink parka jacket that seems to be drowning her. I tear myself away after finishing my tea far too quickly. Between the café and the church there is a pub outside which dozens of drinkers stand hollering brazenly at the unfortunate passers by. An old bearded man in a trench coat lies flat on his back in front of a side door, with an empty pint glass placed innocently beside him.

When I’m feet away from the church I hear that voice in my head saying: ‘the meeting will have been cancelled, you’ve wasted your time coming here, you might as well go home and not even bother going in.’ Why do I put myself through this? When I need a meeting the most, why do I find it so traumatic to go to one?  Entering the church’s side entrance and descending the stairs to the meeting hall feels exactly like walking through fire. I haven’t seen anyone else coming in this way, which makes me all the more certain that there will be no meeting tonight. The where to find I have is quite old. I don’t know why I so strongly feel that entering a building where there is no AA meeting on will get me into trouble, but I do.

Finally I come to the door of the main hall, and I can hear people inside. Relieved, I open it, and the first thing I see at the back of the room are the twelve steps with the Narcotics Anonymous logo at the bottom. Oops! I’ve stumbled into forbidden territory. Get me out before someone picks up a bow and arrow and shoots me! I’m so terrified that my presence is going to offend somebody, I literally run out of the room and back into the street. I’m so wrapped up in being judged negatively that the entire journey home is miserable. I resent everybody that I come across on the bus that takes me home. Being in close proximity with other human beings often makes me anxious and irritable; tonight it’s as bad as it can be. I want to hit the bloke who won’t move so that I can place myself in a more comfortable position by the window. I want to spit at the girl who keeps laughing violently into her mobile phone.

The problem with me is that I hate people. Deep inside I know that if I was the only person alive in the world, my life would be so much easier. I have to say this in all seriousness. I’ve shared it in meetings before and people have laughed; at first it seems quite a ridiculous thing to say. Unfortunately, there is a part of me that wishes there were no other people around to bother me like people do. I’m terrified of people; I can’t stop myself from obsessing on what they’re thinking about me, how I’m coming across in every single situation. After all these years, more than a decade since I left school, since I escaped from the only place where I have ever been judged and ridiculed for being me. Since school I’ve never had to face anything like the kind of abuse that I faced there, but ten years down the line I am still carrying that fear of abuse everywhere with me. I don’t know why I’m particularly angry about it at the moment, but I am, and I have to get it out. Every time I’m on a bus or a train full of bodies, trying to shrink myself to the point of invisibility so that I can avoid being looked at, I experience such a great deal of anger that has nowhere to go. I need to write about this stuff, random or screwed up as it may seem.

Sunday started off on a good note, went through a bad patch then ended up back on a good note. Not sure what the main reason for the bad patch was; can think of many little reasons. Didn’t sleep at all last night, due to a developing sore throat and cold. Wasn’t as tired as I thought I would be when this morning finally arrived, and the weather was gorgeous, so decided to go out for a long walk and enjoy what was sure to be the last of the year’s sunshine. Had a feeling the tiredness would catch up with me, and I was sort of right. Ended up in Soho at 3pm, realised that I could pop into the Covent Garden gay meeting where I hadn’t been for months and see some friendly faces. I forgot that the reason I hadn’t been there in ages is because I never liked the meeting. This afternoon I was reminded quite severely that it is my least favourite meeting IN THE WORLD. I hate the meeting room – it’s in an old people’s home that really feels like an old people’s home, not one of these bright modern places that tries to help its residents to forget where they are. I hate the sharing – all the happy clappy AA stuff that I’ve complained about many times before. I can’t say I hate the people because the same group doesn’t always go there – but just because I was in a bad mood this afternoon, I hated everyone anyway. I hadn’t slept, I was suffering with a cold and sore throat, and the clocks had gone back an hour meaning it was going to get dark significantly earlier. Wondering what the point in being there was, I got up and left after half an hour, just as the chair was finishing.

Got home, collapsed into my bed and tried to sleep for the next few hours. Couldn’t do it. Don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I should be really tired, but I’m not. I did drink quite a lot of caffeine yesterday (I’m trying to give sugar up again and yesterday realised that caffeine is a great replacement) but I can’t believe the effects of that would be this severe. It’s really quite alarming. In my head I’m already terrified I’ll never sleep again. I know I will sleep again, but knowing it doesn’t stop the terror.

I was given the opportunity to forget about my problems when Cole, my friend from the States, texted to let me know he was in town. Whenever he visits London I’m keen to see him as much as possible, because we built up quite a connection last year and I consider him a very close friend. We met in the Angel and sat in my favourite independent coffee house for three hours, chatting and snuggling up, laughing and bickering. Cole always picks up on the inconsistencies in the things I’m saying, and when attempting to explain why I think I’m sexually anorexic, there seemed to be a lot of inconsistencies to be picked up on. I was irritable from my bad afternoon and I suppose going into detail about the intricacies of having a problem as complicated and as subtle as sexual anorexia is never the best thing for someone who’s in a bit of a mood to do. I did my best, and I think in the end we managed to come to some sort of understanding about it, though it seems clear that the problem (hate that word), if there actually is one, is far vaster than one can describe in just a few sentences.

I had a lovely time in the end, thanks entirely to Cole. He asked if I thought there was any chance of me ever having with someone else in the fellowship what I’ve had with him – i.e. a romantic ‘relationship’ of sorts. I don’t honestly think there is a chance. Cole seemed disappointed by this answer. Well, it would be nice to think that one day I could have that connection with another recovering alcoholic. It is a profound, life-changing connection, and with Cole it came totally out of the blue. The day we met a whole set of helpful circumstances came together to make our ‘connection’ possible. Everything felt right; I suppose we were both in the right place at the right time. Experience has shown me that it is incredibly rare to be in the right place at the right time for anything – or perhaps I’m just pessimistic. Either way, I’m pretty sure I’ll never meet another Cole. At the end tonight he told me I looked beautiful, and my instant reaction was the usual disbelief. I’ve never thought of myself as beautiful, ever. I have had a haircut and a shave this week, and I’ve bought a nice new jacket, so I can see that looks-wise things are up rather than down. It’s going to take a long time for me to believe that I’m beautiful, though. Wish it wasn’t so, but it is.

There’s a bit of sadness in there, where there shouldn’t be. I should be feeling brilliant tonight. I have friends who love me, people who think I’m great. I have a life, I have a passion, blah blah blah. But there was a moment this evening, just before I went out to meet Cole, when I thought it was all over for me. I haven’t thought that for ages, since the depression that hit me in the summer ended, at least. After the isolating experience of walking out of the Covent Garden meeting, coming home to lie in my darkened bedroom for three hours, a mini-depression just seemed to settle on me. I’m sure it can’t help that I didn’t sleep last night. AND the clocks have gone back, signifying the onset of another dreary winter.

Oh it’s fucking annoying being depressed. I wasn’t depressed half an hour ago. Now I’m home and it’s like the whole fucking evening never happened. I need to sleep, but I’ll probably lie awake thinking. I have lots planned tomorrow. Just hope it will do the trick.

Today has been a bit of a mindfuck. Emmet is not happy with the way I have treated him. I’ve received a couple of text messages this afternoon complaining about my callousness. I shouldn’t have expected anything less. I have treated him poorly. The poor guy, I bet he’s regretting the day he met me. He wouldn’t be the first. This is why I prefer to dodge relationships altogether. This sort of thing always happens: I get intimate with someone, and I don’t like it, so I run away. Sometimes the other guy will be totally accepting of my abandonment, other times it will wound them deeply. There’s no knowing who will be wounded and who will be fine. That’s the problem with people: you can’t bloody predict their behaviour.

I haven’t replied to Emmet’s text messages. I can’t. It wouldn’t do either of us any good. I was quickly distracted from my preoccupation with the whole sorry affair when I was called into hospital this evening. My friend Earl recently had an operation to remove a large tumour from his neck. For a while it looked like the operation had been a success, and until today he was doing really well. But last night the wound started to bleed heavily and he had to go into A&E. He’s now in a ward in St George’s Hospital, Tooting, being looked at. I went to visit this afternoon. First of all it was weird walking into an NHS hospital in South London that looked and smelt exactly the same as the place in North London where my mother had her operation a few years ago. Secondly it was weird being back in Tooting, the town where I had my drinking rock bottom in April 2007. I had got really drunk at a party in Kings Cross, fallen asleep on three successive night buses and ended up in Tooting, this oddly-named suburb south of the river where I had never been before and where I had never planned to go. I came to in the middle of the road, my chin bleeding heavily thanks to a gash that I had sustained in falling. I had no idea where I was. It took hours for me to find my way home. I walked for miles; I had no choice but to walk as there were no more buses at that time of night. Eventually I got home safely, as I always did, and I realised that the drinking was taking me to increasingly dangerous places. I was sustaining more serious injuries; I was getting further and further from home on my drunken ‘walkabouts’. I would finally stop drinking a few months later.

Going back to Tooting today was weird because I recognised the streets that I had desperately stumbled down that cold April night. I remembered the fear of not knowing where I was. London is a frightening place to get lost in at night, mostly because it’s such a big city and public transport doesn’t run 24 hours a day. I walked past St George’s Hospital that night two and a half years ago. I probably would have got my bloody chin seen to there had I realised at that point how bad it was. It wasn’t until I got home hours later, and mum saw the state I was in, that I realised I had walked across London with my face covered in blood.

Earl was not in a good state when I found him in his hospital bed this evening. The nurses were trying to take a sample of his blood for routine tests; unfortunately Earl is petrified of needles and cannot have one near him without kicking up a great fuss. I sat down next to him and held his hand. He gripped mine so tightly that it hurt. Every time the nurse brought the needle close to him he flinched violently. Eventually after several attempts the exceedingly patient nurse gave up and called for a doctor to do it. All the doctors were busy at that time so we would have to wait. I stayed with Earl there for an hour or so. We talked about the normal things: friends in the fellowship, meetings, conventions that we’d been to. I don’t particularly enjoy going to hospitals and today’s trip wasn’t the most fun, but I certainly owe Earl my time for these kinds of things. He’s done an awful lot for me over the years – God, he took me to Sweden last year and paid for everything – sitting with him in hospital and holding his hand during terrifying injections is the least I can do. I gather that since his operation he has been bombarded with visits and gifts from friends in the fellowship. It’s no wonder. He ‘s practically given his life to helping other people.

I desperately wanted to go to a meeting tonight and at 6.45pm I realised I would have to leave Tooting sharpish if I wanted to get into town on time for one. I felt awful leaving Earl just as the doctors were about to try again with the needles. But another fellowship friend had just turned up so he wouldn’t have been alone. I went to the step meeting in Holborn where I used to make the tea. My resentment towards the meeting has all but gone now, perhaps because it is no longer attended by the same happy-clappy crowd that I used to loathe for no particular reason. I arrived five minutes late and the only seat available was in a cramped, extremely hot corner of the room. I tried my best not to let irritation at the size of the room and the level of the heating completely engulf me. I tried to listen to the sharing; to begin with I managed pretty well, but towards the end of the hour I began to feel shattered and it was all I could do not to fall asleep. When the meeting was over I walked out without saying goodbye to anyone, not because I wanted to punish anyone, just because I was too tired to even attempt sociability, I guess. It’s hard to isolate myself in that way without feeling bad, but sometimes you are just too tired. I wish I could have gone to a SLAA meeting tonight. I was all set to start looking for my new sponsor in my new fellowship, but I didn’t fancy walking late into a meeting that I’d never attended before. The latest chapter in my recovery will have to begin tomorrow.

I thought I was never going to see Emmet again until yesterday. We were supposed to meet on Sunday, after he had been to see his favourite team Arsenal play down the road at the Emirates Stadium. We were going to go for dinner, or maybe a walk, then back to his place for another night of fledgling romance. Only he got sidetracked by his mates at the pub, who wanted to celebrate an Arsenal victory, and I didn’t get to see him at all. He texted me at 7pm to tell me he was drunk, a piece of information I found disturbing and irritating. Not only had he stood me up; he’d stood me up to get drunk at the pub. I didn’t like it and I momentarily let him think that I couldn’t forgive him.

His pleas for forgiveness were numerous, and eventually I got over it, agreeing to meet him last night after work instead. The thought of not seeing him again was for some reason worse than the thought of being stood up. Last night we met in Camden for dinner, and it was a lovely evening. We talked about Sunday; he was falling over himself to apologise. I couldn’t continue to hold a grudge against him. He’s promised never to do what he did again. We ended up talking about alcohol and the reasons why I can’t drink it. I wasn’t planning to out myself as an alcoholic in AA, but it just happened. It’s a conversation that will have to come up at some point in every future relationship. I don’t like having the conversation and I had hoped to get to know Emmet a little better before freaking him out with my deep, dark secrets, but once the conversation had begun last night I couldn’t back out of it.

So I am officially dating again. Oh God, I didn’t think I would be saying that again this decade. I like Emmet a lot – he’s a nice guy, we get on, we want the same things out of life. He’s a typical Irish bloke who loves his drink. Just the type of bloke I’ve always fantasized about having, I guess. He was perfectly understanding and supportive when I told him all about AA. He did ask at one point how I can be so sure that I will never be able to drink again. Anyone who’s not in AA would ask the same question, I guess. I told him that taking another drink would be like playing Russian Roulette. I wouldn’t have any idea what was going to happen.

Before meeting Emmet yesterday I went to see the new pop art exhibition at the Tate Modern. I’ve always loved the Tate Modern. I’ve been there hundreds of times in the last nine years. It was quite expensive to get into the exhibition yesterday, but I could put it down to money well spent. A vast array of fascinating work by Andy Warhol, Damien Hurst and Tracy Emin was featured. I love modern art. Some of the stuff on show in the exhibition was really spectacular, mind blowing in some cases. I realised as I was standing in front of a gold encrusted sculpture of a cartoon bear that I was looking at the most expensive thing I’d ever seen. I had a great time. I came out feeling pleased to have persevered through the wind and rain on the south bank to give myself such a treat.

I’ve started reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. For ages I’ve planned to work through it with a few friends from the rooms. For anyone who doesn’t know, it details a twelve week creative recovery program designed by someone who got sober in America in the 1970’s. When I heard about it I assumed it would be something that could benefit me. Everything I’ve read and done this year has been spiritual in some way; reading this definitely continues the spiritual theme. After last week’s retreat I am well on my way to recovering my creative side. One of my course mates last week even mentioned The Artist’s Way, reminding me that I wanted to start it as soon as I got home. Now I am officially on week one of the program. This involves getting up every morning and writing three pages of rambling consciousness, taking oneself on an ‘artist’s date’ once a week, and writing out ten self-affirmations every day whilst ignoring the critical ‘censor’ voice in my head. I hate getting up in the morning and writing the first thing that pops into my head, but there is a useful benefit to be got out of this process. It removes all the crap from my head at the start of the day, so that I am free for the rest of the day to be whatever I want to be (hopefully). Yesterday’s trip to the Tate Modern counts as my artist’s date for the week. Doing things like that provide me with inspiration – in Julia Cameron’s words, they ‘feed the artist child within’.

When I got home last night I felt on top of the world. I was in such a good mood I told mum all about my day and we had a bit of a laugh about the more explicit things I’d seen at the Tate Modern. For quite some time I felt the child inside me running around, laughing. I was happy. Things are getting better. I don’t know if what I’ve just written makes any sense. My inner censor is telling me that I’ve just written 900 words of crap. Oh, who cares?

A week in the hills

It seems like a lot longer than a week since I was last here. I knew before I went away on Monday morning that time would feel strange all week. I knew time would slow down to a strangely low pace. Being so far away home with a large group of strangers, in the middle of nowhere, with no means of accessing familiarity was bound to make every minute seem like an hour, at least in the beginning. It seems as if I’ve been away for seven years rather than seven days. Nothing at all has changed at home, except me. Last Sunday I wondered if I would be a different person the next time I sat down at the computer to write my journal. Here I am, perhaps not an entirely different man, but something has definitely happened to me. After a long day of coaches and trains and cabs, I arrived in my accommodation early on Monday evening. Lumb Bank, the house where the creative retreat would be taking place, was situated at the very bottom of a large valley in the southern Pennines, about ten miles to the west of the city of Leeds. By world standards the Pennines are not huge mountains, but they were bigger than any mountains I’d seen before. There wasn’t a flat piece of ground there; the land rolled steeply up and down. Houses and roads were built into cliffs and gulleys. It was very romantic and English, like a scene from a Bronte novel.

The air was distinctly colder up north than down south so I didn’t much feel like exploring the landscape that night. I was told by the people running the retreat that I should be in the main living room area by 6 o’clock for the first group meeting of the week. I had an hour to spare. I spent the hour settling in to my room, a process that didn’t need to take an hour as there wasn’t much to settle into. It was a tiny space, around 8 by 8 feet, with a hard single bed, a rickety old chest of drawers that looked like it was from the 19^th century, an equally rickety wooden desk, and a few plants. A fly buzzed around the ceiling, trapped with me in the room because the window wouldn’t open. The noise was incessant, complimenting the noise in my head. I was petrified of stepping out of the door to go down and meet my course mates for the week. I could hear them downstairs, gathering sociably for introductions and getting to know each other. I took the whole hour to compose myself. I realised that I was feeling like the 18 year old stuck in his room on the first night of University, unable to go through to the kitchen and meet the flatmates because he was a just a child without clue what he was doing there. That was eight years ago, yet clearly I am still the same child, unable to move when I need to. Moving in with strangers evidently remains high on my list of anxious situations.

After an hour I’d had enough of the noisy fly in the room and forced myself to emerge into the hallway. Slowly I descended the declivitous stairs and ventured into the living room, where fifteen other aspiring writers were sat on sofas and chairs excitedly discussing the week ahead. A real log fire roared in the corner, a bay window looked out onto the rain-soaked Pennines; I’d never seen anything like it. Naturally I had to wait for someone to approach me before I could speak. I was quickly introduced to an array of names and faces. I noticed that nearly everyone was a lot older than me. There was also a lot of wine flowing in the group. Before setting off friends had tried to comfort me by suggesting that I would not be the only recovering alcoholic on a writing retreat. Alcoholism is of course rife in the creative world – surely out of a group of sixteen serious writers there had to be more than one person with knowledge of the twelve steps. Unfortunately I was the only one. I elicited a look of great surprise every time I was offered a glass of vin rouge, having to admit that I didn’t drink alcohol. It is very unusual for someone of my age to be tee total, I know that. It had been a long while since I’d been in a situation where I had to spend so much time thinking of reasons for my avoidance of alcohol. I couldn’t just come out with it and say “I’m an alcoholic” – though it would have been easier, I don’t feel the need to give something so personal about myself away.

Dinner was announced at 7 o’clock, by which time I had barely introduced myself to anyone, let alone had a proper conversation. I’m not normally nervous about eating in public, but due to the sheer volume of my social nerves on Monday night I was frightened of looking the slightest bit strange with my fussy eating habits. I don’t like salad, tomatoes, peas or fish; unfortunately they were the only things on offer. I had to force the food down my mouth. I was grateful for the fact of it being there – I hadn’t had to pay for it. I didn’t want it to go to waste. After about half a plateful though I couldn’t go on. A couple of older women in the group had perhaps noticed that I was shy, and they sat with me talking about themselves, which saved me the effort of having to talk about myself. After dinner we met our tutors for the week, Hannah Pool and Miranda France, both of whom are well established writers and journalists in the UK. Meeting them was odd as I had spent the month reading their books. To find that they’re ordinary people with personalities and quirks and was all at once disquieting and relieving. They read us a selection of their favourite works before we were allowed to go to bed for the night.

I slept surprisingly well that night, given the cold and the oppressive silence of the place. First thing on Tuesday morning we had our first workshop of the week, in which we had to pair up and interview each other. The result of the workshop was a piece written about our partners; I got to know a nice lady from Devon called Katy, who had spent the early part of her life travelling everywhere. I was pleased with what I managed to write about her. I was thrilled with what she wrote about me. She told me that I was an interesting person with an interesting story to tell. I liked Katy. For most of the week I would mostly talk to her more than anyone else.

Wednesday was a day of adventure. In the afternoon I decided to walk from Lumb Bank to the nearby town of Hebden Bridge. I’d heard that Hebden Bridge was famous for its large population of lesbians. I couldn’t imagine what a lesbian town would look like. I walked down a long, steep downhill slope with spectacular views of the town and the surrounding hills beckoning me. The weather was quite nice and I didn’t suffer much from cold that day. In Hebden Bridge I didn’t see many lesbians, but there were a huge number of quaint little organic cafés, discount bookshops and antique stores. It’s actually a lovely place, with an old cobbled town square and a bucolic stream running through it. I only got to spend half an hour there as I was supposed to be back in the kitchen for 4 o’clock. It was my turn to cook dinner for everyone that night. In a team of four I would be preparing food for twenty people altogether, a group which included both the tutors and the staff of Lumb Bank. Their ethos promotes the values of shared responsibility and team work. I could see that it would be a great bonding experience, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’d signed up for my shift early in the week rather than leaving it til the end as I didn’t want it hanging over my head all week. The first two days had been fraught with anxiety over this upcoming challenge. Though I would be with an equally nervous team of three others, I felt entirely responsible for the success of the evening meal. I decided to walk back from Hebden Bridge through the forest, having heard that there was a direct pathway linking the town and the retreat. Before long the pathway was turning into more of a weak trail, and eventually there was nothing to guide me. Whoever had told me that I would find it easy to get back that way had been wrong. There was no clear pathway through the deepest part of the woods. I was surrounded by nothing but trees and silence. The ground was bumpy and uneven, and I kept tripping over as I walked increasingly quickly in panic. After half an hour of not having a clue where I was going I began to pray. “Where the fuck am I, God?” I said to the sky in desperation. At that moment I saw a stream down the hill to my right, and I realised that it went past the house. I started to follow it carefully climbing over rocks and fallen trees. Eventually I got back just in time to start cooking. Dinner would not be until 7 o’clock but we had to be in the kitchen three hours early just to get everything done.

To begin with everyone got on with their separate tasks quietly, eager to get through this, the most challenging part of the week. I faithfully chopped onions for an hour, wiping the acidic tears from my eyes, willing time to start passing at a quicker pace than the slow crawl with which it had passed so far. After a while when it felt like we might be making some progress with the meal, the team started to talk a bit, and I felt like I might be bonding with them. By 7 o’clock we were all laughing and chatting normally, all the while keeping an eye on the two large pans of boiling broccoli, the last bit of the meal to be cooked. I even managed to tell them that I was gay, something I hadn’t planned to do. I could tell with some of the people on the course that I probably wasn’t the only gay person there – statistically there should have been two or three of us. But I wasn’t really interested in coming out. I wasn’t looking for sex or romance. It would have only been an added stress. My three kitchen teammates on Wednesday night were the only people I came out to last week. With everyone else it wasn’t something that naturally came up in conversation.

Having successfully completed the task of cooking for twenty people, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders as I sat down to dinner that night. I told Katy that I had passed a turning point, and she agreed with me. Others said they were glad to see me smiling for the first time; I was beginning to feel like myself again. The rest of the week passed by pretty uneventfully. There were a few more group workshops, in which I  learnt about voice, description, structure and truth. On Thursday afternoon I had a private tutorial with Hannah, and she read the first chapter of my autobiography, the bit where I out myself as a gay alcoholic in the first few lines. “Fuck, what have I done?!” I thought when I gave it to her. I was terrified but I had to give it to her because it was the only thing I had, and I knew it was a good piece of writing worthy of a professional’s evaluation. Surprisingly she loved it, telling me I had a nice style of writing and that I should start sending my stuff off to agents. She was really helpful, full of tips and advice for the big wide world of publishing. To be endorsed so enthusiastically by a professional writer was one of the highlights of the week. I’d been quite scared of Hannah all week. Her book is really good – you get to know a lot about her in it, but meeting the person who’s written the words is a different experience. If I become the success that I would like to be, maybe one day I’ll meet her again and be able to thank her for all her help.

On Friday night we were all given the opportunity to stand up and read things that we’d written during the week. Taking part wasn’t compulsory, but I felt it would have been a shame not to use the opportunity. It was set up like a proper professional book reading, with spotlight and glass of water perched helpfully on side table. Most read excerpts from their fictional novels; I decided to read out this thing I’d written about my experiences on the retreat. I’d discovered that I quite liked writing about myself, and I thought that maybe sharing about my fear earlier in the week would bring me closer to the group. It was rather like an AA share, except I had a script to go on and I’d tried to fill it with the techniques that we’d learnt in the workshops. I talked about sitting there in my room on Monday night, paralyzed to the spot, dreading the moment when I had to meet the people that I would be living with for a week. Afterwards everyone cheered and clapped, making it even more like an AA meeting. I took pleasure from the knowledge that no one could be aware of how significant the experience was for me. Hannah told me again that I was a talented writer, adding that everyone had been nervous in their rooms on the first night. When the show was over we adjourned to the living room where a few of us stayed up late talking about the week gone by and the lives we would be going back to. I was thrilled to find that I had things I in common with everyone. I started to feel like I was making friends.

Early on Saturday morning we all had to pack quickly in order to be out of the door by 10am, when the cleaners were coming. I caught a cab to Hebden Bridge with Katy and we took the train to Leeds together. She kept me company in a coffee shop whilst waiting for her train to Plymouth. My coach to London would not be leaving until 1pm; I had hours to spare. I’d specifically arranged it that way because I didn’t want to be in a rush. Katy and I talked about London; she used to live here and I gathered that she loved it as much as I do. When she left to catch her train I felt glad to have made at least one good friend this week. Everyone swapped e-mails on Friday night so I could keep in touch with everyone if I wanted to. I will e-mail Katy later to thank her for keeping me company in Leeds and for being a generally nice person when I needed people to be nice to me earlier in the week. I may not see her again, but whatever happens in the future isn’t important. I survived a tough, challenging week with my sobriety and my sanity intact. When I got back to London last night I stopped off at the Notting Hill meeting on my way home. It would be my first AA meeting in seven days. I needed to see some familiar faces. All my friends were there and they were all suitably thrilled when I told them about my week. Many of them said they wouldn’t be able to do what I’d done. I suppose going to the middle of nowhere to spend a week with sixteen drinking, smoking strangers is an adventure that should be reserved for those with some strength of character. Before last week I was convinced I had no strength of character; now I’m not so sure. I’ve certainly learnt a lot about writing, which is a great thing. I’m possibly slightly more confident in my writing now. I know where I’m going with it now.

At Notting Hill last night my friend Daniel asked me: “So are you a proper writer now, then?”

And I said: “Yes, I suppose I am.”

A change in the weather

On Friday I went over to Emmet’s house for the second time in a week. Emmet was the one I met last Sunday and enjoyed a lovely date with. It was like, romantic and everything. This time we had dinner in bed and watched TV until it was late and we got tired. There was some saucy fun, not an awful lot. He was able to climax really quickly; I of course couldn’t because that psychological block is still there. I really like Emmet but I don’t know if I like him as much as I liked Gareth. I shouldn’t be comparing all the men I meet to Gareth but I can’t help it. Gareth was the first man I ever experienced real feelings for, not silly obsessive infatuation but true reciprocated romantic feelings. Well, you might ask what the hell I mean by that and I probably wouldn’t be able to answer you. But I liked a Gareth more than any man I’ve ever met and I’m scared I’ll never meet anyone I can like as much again. I’m tempted to keep seeing Emmet, just to see what happens, whether my changing feelings settle down and I realise that he’s really good for me. I know he would be good for me; he’s a good guy, and God do I need one of those. I don’t want to run away from this one just because I feel like I’m getting bored after a week. I’ve identified myself as sexually anorexic this year and running away from relationships is an anorexic thing I have done many times over the years. I don’t want to abandon this new thing before I’ve given it a chance just because Emmet isn’t like Gareth, that would be really silly, though my head is telling me to do just that.

Today was my last day at home before I go on the spiritual writing retreat. I’ve been feeling a very strange mixture of profound fear and great excitement about it. The last time I felt anything like this was just before I left home in 2001. I’m only going away for five days but it feels like I’m leaving home again. How odd! I wonder if the sense of profound importance around this week is some kind of premonition. Will I be a different person when I come home next week? I was a different person when I returned to London the first time after moving to Norwich in 2001. My experiences back then proved that different places could change me. There was a special alchemy in that experience; I feel like there might be in this one too.

I wasn’t going to go to a meeting today, planning to spend the whole day writing at home as the upcoming retreat has caused me to have a rare burst of creative energy. I ended up at a meeting tonight anyway when I remembered the promise I made to myself to talk to someone from recovery once every day. I went to the SLAA meeting in Islington where I experienced a great deal of rage a few weeks ago. Somehow even then I knew I would go back eventually. Feeling anger in a meeting is often a sign that I am meant to be there. Tonight it was a lot busier, full of people that I strangely knew from AA, which was nice. I felt amongst friends, unlike a few weeks ago when I felt like the only sane (or possibly insane) person in the room. I also identified with all the sharing tonight, as there was a lot of talk about the shame associated with being gay in a straight world. Afterwards I spoke to people, got numbers, felt like maybe I would go again next week. I even spotted someone who I might consider asking to sponsor me. I really needed that meeting tonight. Afterwards I felt relieved of a whole lot of tension and anxiety. Now I am just looking forward to tomorrow. I don’t know what the hell the retreat is going to be like – they seem to have been deliberately vague about the specific itinerary. I don’t know who I’m going to be there and who I’m going to be when I get back in a week’s time; and it’s wonderful.