Step 2: Part 1

Step 2:  Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.


I was prepared for Step 1 to take a long time, as my sponsor said it would, prepared to be patient, but then I did the writing assignment she gave me: write how my life is unmanageable and how I feel powerless. But first, ask God to put on the page what He wants there, then write and don't edit.

I prayed, wrote, closed the file and didn't read it until the end of the day. Wow. It was ugly. Really ugly, and scary. I was going to share some of it here, but what's the point? It's all self-hatred and fear and...ugliness.

My sponsor read it (actually, I read it to her over the phone because I have kids and seeing her is a logistics issue, on which see below) and said, "Well, you've done Step 1. That is powerlessness all right." I said I thought I was going to be on it awhile, and she said, "You continue to surprise me."

My ego lit up, of course: I was the good sponsee, the best sponsee, the good girl A student I have always been. And of course my ego told me that I'd sail through Steps 2 and 3, too, and get to the meat of it, Step 4. The big one. The scary one. Well, the first of several scary ones anyway.

So in the week that followed I had been praying, really praying for the first time in a long time. I felt like there really was a power higher than me that could save me, or at least there could be.  So I meet with my sponsor and she says I'm going to be on Step 2 for a while yet. WTF? It says in The Big Book that you just have to be willing to believe that, and I was willing, god damn it, but she said I wasn't there yet.

She said -- and here's the thing that really pissed me off -- that this week, she wanted me to pray to my Higher Power about what it would look like if I wasn't doing this exhausting logistical dance trying to get to meetings and see her without telling my kids where I was going, which has been hard, since I am a single mom with a demanding job and I was juggling enough before I started trying to fit three AA meetings and a meeting with my sponsor into an already insane schedule.

Of course she's right that it would be easier if I told my kids, and my mom who could watch my kids, but I don't want to because telling them would mean telling my ex as well, and I can face being honest with my kids, but not with my ex or my mother, because both of them are very judgmental people who think therapy is Lola Granola bullshit and they'd think I'd be thinking that they'd be thinking, Why does she need to leave her kids and go to all those stupid meetings? Why doesn't she just not drink?

Because my ex has already said, "What kind of mother are you anyway? You're never home. You're always at work." I can just see what he'd say about this. And of course I can't ask my kids to keep something like this from their father.

Because my mother has already called me selfish, said I thought more about myself than I did about my kids. And even though she's not the model of motherhood I want to emulate, and even though I keep telling myself her criticism shouldn't affect me, it does.

Because I am afraid of being vulnerable to these people, who have knocked me down in the past when I dropped my armor and made a conscious decision to trust them and be vulnerable, expose myself to things that trigger my Bad Mother Shame.

Later that day, I got really angry. Angry at my sponsor, because AA is Alcoholics Anonymous. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be allowed to be anonymous and safe. And here she's telling me to tell the most judgmental people in my life my most painful secret.

Normally I would stuff that anger down and get resentful, but I called her instead, and was honest. Instead of getting defensive, she pointed out that she wasn't telling me to tell them. She was telling me to ask my Higher Power about it. And I said, "Oh, and God's going to tell me to go on being a chickenshit coward and do what I want instead of doing the hard work I need to? We both know there's only one answer to that question."

"And that's why you're not done with Step 2," she said gently. "You were so sure you knew the answer already, you didn't even ask God."

She's right, of course. I didn't. I didn't ask God. I didn't trust God enough to ask Him and hear whatever answer I got, in part because I didn't think I'd be able to tell what was God and what wasn't, but in part because -- oh, God, she so totally nailed it -- I think I know what's in the mind of God already.

So here I am, mired in Step 2. Trying to figure out how to let go of my fear and arrogance and ego enough to really, truly, humbly ask.

Step 1: Part 3

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

In the months that followed, I talked myself out of the God shot and into the coincidence. I talked myself out of the fear that had brought me to that meeting, telling myself I wasn’t that bad. Because I didn’t get a DUI or get fired or end up in strange men’s beds I didn’t really have that bad a problem. Yes, I got to work on time, and with make-up on. Yes, I put on a good show for the world, but I should have known better than to believe my own masquerade.

The fact was, when I poured “a glass” of wine and swore to myself it would be just a glass, it wasn’t. I worried about destroying my liver, because drinking an entire bottle of wine at least three nights a week had to be overtaxing its capacity to cleanse my blood of all the Malbec I was pouring into my system.

After I stopped drinking, I went to a meeting here and there, but didn’t do it consistently, didn’t get a sponsor. I told myself that I had stopped drinking because I wanted to, because I chose to, because I was strong enough to. I joined an online group where women like me – women who had good haircuts and drank good wine, who didn’t have bad teeth or bad grammar – supported each other in their sobriety. Some of them were in AA, working the steps, sponsoring and being sponsored, but others weren’t, having decided that online groups, podcasts and blogs were all the support they needed.

I thought so for a while, too. One of the blogs I read was by a woman who said enough and got sober, all on her own, with only her blog comments and Twitter feed for support. After three years of sobriety, she got a book contract to tell the story she’d been telling on her blog. It was a story of determination and accomplishment: I chose sobriety; I did it. It was the antithesis of AA, and I loved it, because I wanted to be the antithesis of AA. Yes, AA helped my dad get sober, saved his life, even, but I could save my own life, thanks.

Less than two months after that scary, awful, wonderful early morning meeting, I decided I wasn’t that bad, and was going to try moderation again. Aristotle said that every virtue is the mean between two extremes. “Moderation in all things – including moderation,” said with a sly wink, had been my motto, and I was going to prove myself a good Aristotelian who could moderate if it killed me.

I had “a” glass of wine, which turned into three or five or whatever it was that left me hung over, sick with shame and determined to go cold turkey again. I did it without meetings or the steps and so I didn’t do it for more than another couple of months, when I decided to “moderate” again. This time I was successful. I did have just one glass, and not every day, just now and then, one or two, being very Aristotelian and proud of myself. But having to think about it, which was exhausting and demoralizing.

The morning after the first time I had an entire bottle, I quit for good again. I can’t remember if I went to a meeting that morning, but I started going again, in a half-assed kind of way, not getting a sponsor, not doing anything that would require commitment or accountability, which being the daughter of a 12-stepper I knew was a bullshit way to do AA.

Bullshit notwithstanding, I stayed sober five months. Sober, but miserable, what they call a dry drunk in AA. As the one year anniversary of that first meeting, which sadly was no longer my sobriety date, approached, I was reading another sobriety blog, this one by a guy who had twenty years of sobriety and for all that time had been working the steps, both with a sponsor and as a sponsor. The things he wrote about service and sponsorship reminded me of the things my dad used to say when he was in his first decade of sobriety.  Back then, I would think, Oh, Lord, there he goes again with the 12-stepping, and try to look interested in “being of service” and all the rest of the recovery-speak. Two decades and countless gallons of ruby-hued poison with notes of ripe blackberry, warm spice and oak later, that recovery-speak sounded very different.  I looked at my reasonably affluent, reasonably successful middle-class self and thought, what the fuck is the matter with you? I knew what was the matter. Self-pity and ego and bullshit was the matter. I needed to work the steps was the matter.

So I went to a meeting early Saturday morning. I wanted to share, wanted to say I needed a sponsor, but there were a lot of talkers and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I went again the next morning. It was a huge meeting, the biggest I’d ever been to. One of my neighbors was there, and a lady from my Zumba class. No sharing that day either, but someone who did share was a woman, who had been a speaker at an earlier meeting I had attended. I’d gone to hear her because someone I met at my very first ever meeting texted to tell me I should go because she was an amazing speaker. She was. The things she said that day had stayed with me, and when she shared at that Sunday morning meeting, I worked up the nerve to ask her to sponsor me, and she said yes.

It was like that first meeting, almost exactly a year earlier. I got scared enough, desperate enough, to step outside my comfort zone and do something I felt as though I needed to do, because I couldn’t do it on my own anymore. That is admitting powerlessness. That is Step One. I thought I had taken it a year ago, then stepped back and spent a year in self-pity and ego and bullshit. I thought I had taken it again last week, but my sponsor said I might be on it a while. I said, as long as it takes.

Step 1: Part 1

Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

1a. I have a sponsor.

I was sober for more than 5 consecutive months before I got one, because, being a perfectionist, I thought I needed the perfect sponsor. Last weekend, I decided that I needed a sponsor now more than I needed The Perfect Sponsor someday. And as soon as I decided that, my Higher Power (can't get used to that term, which still sounds so AA Lola Granola to these old school Catholic ears) gave me the sponsor I needed. She is just about as close to perfect for me as a sponsor can get. We have a lot in common, and we have a lot that's different. We will no doubt get on each other's nerves from time to time, but it's still new enough that we're both on our best behavior. I know she isn't Perfect (and she wouldn't be the perfect sponsor for me if she was) but I think maybe I'm going to love her.

1b. I am working the Steps.

Well, I am working the first one, anyway. I titled this post the way I did because I think I may be on Step 1 for a while. Just as well, since Steps 4-9 scare the shit out of me, and even though I'm usually the type who wants to rush through everything at warp speed, there is something (Higher Power?) telling me to  s...l...o...w   d...o...w...n  on this one.

I took Step 1 exactly a year ago today, and then backtracked. So here I am, a year later, still in Remedial Step 1. Me! I was always a straight A student. I should have rocked this step stuff. I should have left Step 12 in the dust months ago and have 4 or 5 sponsees sitting at my feet in awe of my awesomeness by now, right?

I'm not sure whether AA is the first thing I've ever done that you can't ace and skip a grade in, or whether I'm just finally realizing that trying to ace everything and skip grades is kind of a half-assed way to do just about anything. And if I try to do Step 1 that way, I will fail, just as I failed last year.

Admitting I am powerless is hard for me. It's probably hard for most people. My very religious friends are able to do it. The Evangelicals do it best. They seem positively to revel in their powerless, positively luxuriate in their submission to the Lord. I see it, but I don't get it. You know what they say about Catholic girls. We're trouble. But my sponsor is one of those Catholic bad girls, too, so she knows what she's in for.

Sobriety Blogs

I've been reading a lot of these lately, some in bits and pieces, some start to finish like a book, beginning with the earliest posts and moving forward. Some bloggers like Mrs D make this easy by posting her early posts all together on one page by month.  It's to blog reading what Netflix binge-watching is to watching the episodes as they come out.

Other blogs I have to do it the old fashioned way. I'm doing that with And Everything Afterward,

I finished UnPickled long ago, and now have to wait for new episodes the way I had to do with Dallas when I was a teenager. (I thought I might die waiting to find out who shot J.R.)

On some blogs I don't have to read the old posts at all, because the authors have written books and saved me the trouble, like Mr. SponsorPants. I bought his Kindle book in part out of laziness (not having to go back and read the early posts) and in part because writers need to support each other's efforts financially. Not that I have a book for anyone to buy at the moment, but I'm banking karma just in case I actually do get my act together enough to have one published. Rather than working on my own writing, I have been reading his stories of conversations like this one between him and his sponsors and sponsees in AA. I've done a lot of thinking about my overactive ego as a result of these.

I wrote all of the above yesterday as a draft. This morning I went to a meeting. And got brave enough to ask someone to be my sponsor.

Oh. My. God.

This shit is real now.