A slip after a long time with no mettings, a month clean and sober again while going through a divorce, a serious hand unjury, a move out of my home and into an apartment, psychiatric issues, money issues, Group counseling at an outpatient facility, and a hellacious schedule of assignments and research papers due in college. How does a "Normie" (nonalcoholic person) deal with all this, let alone a fragile and exhausted recovering drunk?
Answer: meetings, meetings and more meetings.
I had got to a point in my recovery with a couple of years sober where "I no longer needed very many AA meetings or much outside help." I had it together, you see. All I needed to do was keep going to work, keep the house cleaned, and do a drive-by post here and there on MIP. Outside looked great. Inside was "FINE" (F%$ed up, Insecure, Neurotic, Emotional). Being "FINE" doesn't keep me sober. Strangely enough, being "sick", knowing it and admitting it, does.
You see, I am "sick" right now. And I acknowledge it. And every day I am striving to SEEK whatever help I can get. I don't want to die. I want to live. Peaceably, and in relative happiness and contentment. At least I am sick getting well now, and not sick getting sicker or sick getting dead.
Divorce is happening! How do you live in peace and contentment in that scenario?
Answer: I have no idea. All I know is that I am asking God to keep me sober every morning, and then going to meetings. And somehow peace and relative contentment are upon me (most hours of the day).
I don't have to understand this process before I go to a meeting. I don't have to understand why it works. Just like I don't have to understand the details of how gasoline is converted into energy in my car and therefore I get from point A to point B. (And I almost always get there, it's a Honda!! LOL) All I have to do is put the key into the ignition and I get to where I'm going. Keeping it SIMPLE. If I doubted the car's capability every time I needed to go somewhere, and got up under the hood and started to pull wires and screws out, I wouldn't be getting to my destination. I would be fooling around with it. If I doubt AA is going to work and mess around with it trying to figure out how or why it won't, I don't get anywhere either.
Put the key into the ignition of AA. Get to a meeting. Stop trying to figure out how this is going to work or not work for you. Just put the key into the ignition and go. I don't care to understand why it works, I just know that it does.
(((hugs))))
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~Your Higher Power has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
