Back
to Basics
It's four-thirty in the
morning and I want this day over with now. Why did I ever say
I would speak tonight? Brenda called last night to confirm our
meeting, and suggested that we get together for dinner first.
When she called a few weeks ago and asked if I would speak at
the anniversary of her A.A. group in Newport, I felt ok about
it. Today I feel like a foreigner removed from my native tongue.
When I first went to meetings, it was the language of these people
that keep me sober and coming back meeting after meeting to hear
more and more. It was the anniversary speaker that seemed to have
the command of this language that I hungered for, and today, twenty-ones
years later, I fear my translations of it tonight may not be understood.
The drunk-a-logs of yesterday just don't cut it for me anymore,
and now as I think about those old timers who come to anniversary
meetings for the food and a good portion of hard-core A.A., I'm
afraid they will be disappointed. Four-thirty, six-thirty, what's
the difference? I could lay here in bed and think my way into
the nuthouse or hit the shower. I hit the shower but avoid the
mirror. If I dare look at this haircut once more there's no telling
the outcome. Everyone in town knows I had this chop-chop job done
in New York. Where else? I'll never learn. My spirits were on
the rise with the energy and pulse of the morning people hurrying
in and out of the coffee shop. I had the window seat, a large
black, and The New York Times. A few stolen moments of privacy
before I face the real world where landlords, accountants, and
taxes are drying up my creative juices. Once I used to say, "No
harm can come to me if I do not pick up a drink." Today my thoughts
are, "If those guys would get off my back, no harm would come
to me!" How can I speak tonight? Like Tolstoy, I am frightened
and homesick for my childlike faith. That afternoon I felt the
hour to get dressed would never arrive. When it did, what to wear
became my next threat.''I'll wear my leather dress. Yeah.....with
my "Breakfast at Tiffany's" shoulder-length earrings, those dangling
stars will keep the focus off this hair." Newport, I hate Newport
even in the summer. Seems to me everyone who enters picks up their
script from either F. Scott Fitzgerald or Dennis O'Connor. One
of the pressures that helped me to stop drinking was acting out
too many of these same scripts.It's hard to believe that I was
such a jerk. Maybe I want to forget all about those days.....
Maybe I want them back, I don't know what I want, but I don't
want to go to that church tonight. I must have gone up Thames
Street for an hour before it was anywhere near six o'clock. The
Mooring, that's the place she said we'd meet. The hell with this
driving up and down, I'll sit in the lounge. I haven't waited
in a lounge to meet anyone in years. Not much had changed, I entered
early, as usual, before the bartender had had his first cup of
coffee. He and some other bar fly looked me over. I looked back
at them. ''Jerks,'' I said under my breath. I've been saying a
lot under my breath lately. My topic tonight, "How I've stayed
sober in and out of control." Yeah..... I did my homework back
then. My hard-core foundation of A.A. has stood many a storm.
Brenda finally arrived. ''You look beautiful'' was followed with
an A.A. fuzzy. A fuzzy is a bear hug that came out in the mid-70s
from the young people in the program. I'm only getting comfortable
with it now. I suppose we owe the young people a lot, for without
them there would have been no mirrors of ourselves. Painful as
the process was, without them we might have come to believe that
we were without original sin. ''Helen is coming too, she can't
wait to see you.'' I had to think about who Helen was. Helen came
in with the fast gait of an A.A. person, the ones that I remembered
from years ago. I knew who she was, but I remembered her with
blond hair and these funny hats. Her hair now was all gray, but
her eyebrows were black and thick. How old she was then I couldn't
remember. We ordered our food. Brenda and I had some kind of club
sandwich, Helen had clam chowder, even this type of food was from
the past. I hated being reminded of the past, even the sober past.
I'll never make it tonight. Helen was having some stomach trouble
before we ate, and after having her poor choice of clam chowder,
she had to ask to be excused from the table. If I had a case of
heartburn in my drinking days, I'd have ordered a dry martini
on an empty stomach. I followed Brenda over to the corner of Spring
and Dearborn Streets to the Mustard Seed Meeting at Emmanual Episcopal
Church and parked my car. My legs were stiff from wanting to isolate.
Once inside the church, there were several doors, stairways going
up and down, a dark, heavy mahogany door, and a deep silence.
If it was the time of King Arthur, I'd have looked for a light
with a tall beam in the distance, but this was 1990, and since
1932 with the beginnings of A.A., the only clue that there was
life was the smell of coffee. The scent lead me up two stairs
and toward a heavy door. When I opened it, there sat not the Knights
of the Round Table but a dozen members of A.A. sitting at a long
table. ''Are you having a business meeting?'' I felt I had to
ask for that is what it looked like to me.''No,'' they answered
in unison. ''Ruth..........." "How are you............'' ''It's
been so long.................'' Some of these people I have not
seen in almost fifteen years. Principal over Personality,"" was
a killer challenge back then, and many of these faces I had had
my fair share of trouble with. From behind me, and from the front
they came. " ''Ruth.................Come here, give me a hug''
Trying to get through one fuzzy, then another, there was a line
of them. Finally I found a seat and just sat trying to digest
that club sandwich I had ordered, with the fuzzies a la mode for
dessert. Oh God help me. I felt disoriented when Lil sat down
beside me. ''Lil, how are you?'' I managed to get out. ''Fine.......''
like she always used to talk. She was not a pretty women even
back then. I always felt it was just the pretty people that got
in all the trouble, not so, I found out. Lil had had her share
of trouble aggravated by her own alcoholism. ''How's all your
kids? How many did you have?" I asked. ''Five.'' 'That's right.
I remember you used to take your youngest to meetings. How's she
doing?" ''In prison, indicted on a murder charge.'' Somehow, I
felt at that moment so close to her. ''I'm sober, thank God,''
she said. "We all have our problems." My host was getting nervous,
so I sent messages to my legs that we have to move now...... to
the dais table. Holding on to my corsage of baby's breath and
one rose, I sat at the left side of the table just taking for
granted I l was going to speak last. My host, the secretary of
the group, was into-- what I'm sure she believed was-- heathy
control. She was a large women, but this did not hinder her choice
of dress. She wore a full shirt, a colorful blouse, and on her
head, a Spanish hat. Her strong presence as she stood and took
her place in front of the mike made dwarfs of me and the man sitting
next to me, my fellow speaker. ''I'm proud to invite you to the
first anniversary of The Mustard Seed Group. I'd like to ask you
all to hold your seats until after our first speaker, then we'll
have the raffle, and after our second speaker, I'd like to invite
you all to refreshments. Also, please form a line to the right
so this will all go smoothly....." She went on like a commander
giving directions. Another mirror, and I thought it was only my
hair cut that I didn't want to see. I came out of the fog when
she announced, ''Our first speaker tonight will be Ruth.'' I was
stunned. I just took for granted that I was going to be second.
My legs were kind, they raised me up and I looked out into the
faces of the people. ''I'm Ruth, an alcoholic which simply means
that I'm human with shortcomings like any other person, no more,
no less. I've learned through this program not to use a drink
anymore to solve life's daily problems. I turned 21 years sober
last September.What is important to me now is how I have stayed
sober over the years. I also want to share with you my story as
it has unfolded it-self to me up until this moment in time tonight
on this first anniversary of The Mustard Seed Group here in Newport,
R.I. I got here like most of us do: I was sick and tired of being
sick and tired, and willing to go to any lengths to stay sober.
I put myself in the business of staying sober and found a partner
who was just as committed to my sobriety as I was. My higher power
took the job. The two of us opened up shop every morning with
a prayer and then we went on to do the chores of the day. No prayers
without work, no work without prayer, that was our motto. When
things got tough, we argued and cursed and would fall into silences
that would demand humility in depth to break. Unlike a marriage
that was all honey at first, and then lapsing into painful reality,
we had all or most of all our disagreements in the first five
years of this business of sobriety. After working our heads off
for five years, we found we could expand and relax and take a
peek at the outside world. I could even go home to see if I could
try to be a parent. This was my first step toward the battle that
would turn an unhealthy family around. Not having a lot of discipline
myself or knowledge of such things as boundaries, the next seven
years were spent in building awareness. Something was wrong but
just what it was was not revealed to me until I got to my first
Alanon meeting. I walked, or did I run that day with a mixture
of pain and shock, and an urgency to get as fast as I could to
the safety of the same chapel I ran to two days before I stopped
drinking. There I learned that the problem was mine just like
the drinking was my problem. I had no control over my drinking,
nor do I have any control over other people. I had let go of the
drink, now I must let go of unhealthy control. There is a difference
you know, And learning to sort that out was not easy. As a mother,
I felt I should have control over my children, and my husband
should do what he was told too. All would go well if they would
just do as I say. My whole personality would have to be altered.
This was hard. During the first few weeks of these meetings, my
face was drawn: putting down the drink was easy, putting down
bad habits was an unreachable goal, but I hung in anyway. All
four of my children had substance abuse problems. My years of
sobriety cut little ice. Today I know that all these problems
were not all my fault. If I had been President, the war on drugs
would have been declared ten years ago. After fighting the drug-related
behavior in my own life for five years and winning a few battles,
I found myself with battle fatigue. Eighteen years sober, still
running my business, and a very mixed-up lady without self. So,
in January of 1987, with a lot of planning, I moved out of a home
I once had loved very much, that was three years ago. In the summer
of 1989, another crisis came. We sat in counseling once again
to face what was now getting to be an old problem. The Merry-Go-Round
of Denial. We were sitting in the window of L'Elizabeth's when
it came to me that I wanted out of this game and I made a request
not to see my husband for three months. It was during these three
months that I grew more than at any other time in my life. This
was the first time my husband and I had ever been separated physically.
May to September were filled with both pain and accomplishment
for me. I lost most of the dependency I had on him and he on me.
When we met that day for the first time, we chose to meet on Brown
campus since we felt that this was neutral ground. Neutral ground,
boundaries, emmeshments-- all new language skills for the both
of us. Shaking the grass off our blanket, we walked through the
wrought iron gates of Brown University with the hope of a new
future filled with many new beginnings based on a willingness
to practice respect and common courtesy with one another." Instinctively
I knew it was time to stop talking. I had mostly been looking
at this one fellow who seemed to be hanging on to everything I
was saying which made my words come easily. "I have told you people
this most intimate and personal story of the last eight years
of my sobriety because, so many of you out there tonight had walked
those early years of my sobriety with me, and if it was one of
you up here instead of me, I would want to know, ''Oh, tell me
what have you been doing, where have you been since I saw you
last? And mostly, how have you stayed sober during those years
that have changed you from a young woman to the woman I see today?''
And so tonight, my partner whispered in my ear while I looked
out into your faces, Tell them, Ruth, what you have seen and heard.
Tell them that the business of staying sober has been good, and
don't forget to mention me."
Copyright; Ruth Mahoney
31-Jan-90
