Woke from a nightmare I can’t recall and just lay in the dark with my eyes closed and praying to get through another day.
And as if by swift grace or a sprinkling of magic, the mood shifted and I could get up and drink coffee, standing at the living room window watching the wind tear across the fields, hearing my housemate sing tunelessly in the shower, seeing the little feral cat grooming herself on a low sunny wall. I hope she is not going to attack all the new baby birds, sparrows and house martins, that learn to fly in the front garden, hopping from verandah eaves to the wall to the ground.
So difficult to feel this churlish within, a mix of irritability and dull misery. So ungracious. It isn’t as serious as depression, but rather like trying to row a heavy boat upstream, working oars against the current or incoming tide.
The answer, of course, is to go out and do something for others, something simple and practical and useful. And not to make much ado about it, just to do it. So I shall help out with the homebased carers and cook a large split-pea soup and then sit with those who might need some help being fed. It isn’t much and I am not good company but I won’t be self-stuck in my unhappiness all day.
Then I shall make an Asian supper with pork, grind up coriander seeds and star anise and fenugreek, chop lemongrass and garlic, play around with fish sauce and soy and sesame oil, squeeze fresh lemons, mince root ginger. Heat up the big electric wok. When I was in the UK, so much was readymade and prepackaged that almost nobody made their own food from scratch and that was very offputting. Sitting on the kitchen step and pounding spices and herbs in a mortar with a heavy granite pestle is the most heartening therapy imaginable.
What I really need of course is AA offline; to be able to sit face-to-face with others in recovery who are telling my story and reminding me why I need to stay sober and how they managed to do it. How I miss those draughty meeting rooms with old latticed windows that creaked and stuck, the dingy halls and circle of uncomfortable chairs, the nicotine-stained gurus, those palely loitering and despondent newcomers, the smiles and hugs and heart-rending confessions! No real-life nittygritty AA here and I am lost without it. But at least I have online AA and I am more grateful than I can say for the supportive emails and comments.
So I settle back onto my seat in the boat and take up the oars in their rusty fetlocks, resume what alcoholic poet Anne Sexton called ‘the awful rowing towards God’. The ‘awful’ is about us, the hope is all to do with God and coming home. At least I’m struggling in the right direction.
I didn’t realize you don’t have access to any meetings there.
Nowhere?
I suggest finding AA online (interactive). Google AA online.
somehow-I know exactly what you are talking about. There really is not a word for it though. Sometimes I just think of it as “mild discontentment”.
Hi Dave
No, the distances here are too great. I already do work for OIAA, helping translate in the Nguni languages when needed, and there is a mailing newsletter for AA Loners, as well as various online forums. They all help. When I get a chance to go through to Cape Town I go to meetings, but right now that isn’t a possibility.
with skype videocams you CAN have face to face. and then theres the phone. why not?
skype is COOL
listen to amaros talk called “The Never-ending Retreat” at 22minutes in. where he talks about nostalgia being ignorance.
its very good. well i think so.
also 20minutes in onwards of the talk called “Elephant in the living room’ is AMAZING. I’ve been listening to it over and over throughout the day today. cant get enough of it. love love LOVE it. but there you go..
i do not depend on meetings to stay sober. neither do sponsees. meeting dependence is not what i was shown by my home group. fellowship is just a part if the deal, and can take many forms. not just those in meetings.
one of my home group members lived on a tropical island and came to london once a year to say hello. not because his sobriety was at risk if he didnt.
why do you think the big book says
“though you be but one man with this book in your hand. We believe and hope it contains all you will need to begin.”
P161
That was no careless comment by the first 100 members. its the truth. for all of us. including you.
Also try ‘active imagination’ for ‘fellowship’. Type it in to the search section at the top of the blog bar and it will retrieve the relevant post. Hopefully!
Dearest,
Know that we all have moments of this stuff. And if we don’t drink, we get through it, and the next time it’s a little easier.
I know that being a part of the fellowship helps me immensely. I also know it’s not the fellowship that keeps me sober, it’s the program- the steps. And I know that even though sober is sometimes hard, being drunk is worse, for me.
Holding you in my heart….
I know exactly what you mean. Just the kind of mood that a meeting can snap me out of! Shaking hands, listening, the fellowship. I have put you on my sidebar and will keep in touch!