and that means that 31 years ago both the Jekyll and the Hyde in me screamed
"Enough, I'm done...sick and tired of being sick and tired" and the journey began.
Every step and every minute has been a miracle for me...every bit of it HP directed,
planned and desired.  My HP didn't like what I had done with what was given me
and since I was toast and ready tapped me on the shoulder and took me onto another
trail and into another room.  HP...more cunning powerful and baffling than alcohol
or my ego, pride and misconceptions on how to live life in any way, shape or form.
Alcoholism owned me and I didn't know that and didn't know that I didn't know that.
I needed others...hundreds of others to lay their experiences at my feet and ask
me (not tell) to check the similarities with my own life.   Alcoholism...who would have
ever guessed.  Certainly not me.  I knew nothing about alcoholic or alcoholism even
though the see of my existence was planted and watered with it.  I didn't know and
that didn't matter to my HP.  I got into the Al-Anon Family Groups as I was married
to an alcoholic who couldn't drink like me but wished she could.  It was her drinking
that cause so much trouble not mine and still I stopped drinking then without knowing
that my problem was me exclusively.  Nine years later after an entire world change
for me I took my first real, wide awake assessment after taking the assessment of
a patient and wondering why they were recommended for inpatient and I wasn't.
I took that anonymous assessment to inpatient receiving and the recommendation
was that I should be there "or the next time this person drinks, they die." 

When HP directs the event there are no normalities.  HP does it as HP wills and there
would be no "buts" from me only follow the suggestions and the suggestion was
a familiar one to almost all here.  I went to my first real for me AA meeting and sat
in the corner in the dark, 9 years alcohol free wanting to be invisable.  When the
identification came to me I couldn't speak so the meeting did the next best thing and
for that I am forever grateful.  They stopped the meeting and after I "came out" the
continued without skipping a beat.  I knew all of them and they all knew me and they
all loved me without condition and they welcomed me in silence and acceptance and
expectation that they would be apart of my recovery and I would be a part of theirs.
HP put me where HP willed me.

It all has happened just as HP has willed it from before I ever knew what the future
held for me.   I said the prayer for it before the drinking started and the solutions
came when I stopped...no longer could rely on a solution that made life worse.

Funny...I still have no greater goal than this day sober.   "If you keep an open mind
you will find help" was the first promise made in the Al-Anon Family Groups to me. 
That promised resulted in my doing the next right thing after my assessment was
analyzed.  Who could have guessed?  I didn't need to guess anymore.

I am grateful to all who have supported me on this journey including all who post
and respond to each other here.   Keep coming back AA does work best in my
experience.

(((((hugs)))))