500th Post

This is my 500th post on this blog. And to think I started this blog just to communicate with one blogger - I wanted to talk about AA and my alcoholism - and didn't want to do that on my "other" blog. I intended to delete this blog in a day or two but instead I just kept going... and going... and going.... And, I have posted on my "other" blog only once in the last year. And this blog and the wonderful people I have met (some in person, some on the phone, and some only through e-mails, their blogs and comments) means more to me than words can say.

Yesterday I got to Clement Park and started to run, and I felt like crap. But I kept going... and going... and going... and I ran 13.1 miles!!!!! The distance of a half-marathon!!! I was slow, my average pace was over 11 minutes per mile, but I did it. I smiled when other runners would sprint past me on their one, two, or three mile runs... and thought: you go ahead, I am 55 years old, and I am going to run 13.1 miles today. In the last 10th of a mile, I had an emotional breakdown of sorts and just sobbed - and I didn't care who saw me. God is so good to me. I cannot believe the life I have today.

On July 24, 1984, I went to my first AA meeting. I desperately wanted to quit drinking, but I wasn't sure I wanted what you all had. I thought everyone was being phony and acting happy in order to impress ME (because it is all about me). But I kept going... and going... and going... and I realized that they were not acting, and soon I became one of those "phony" happy alcoholics and I still am! Today, 22 and a half years later, I realize that without AA and my sobriety, I would have nothing. Nothing. I would probably not be alive, and if I were, I would probably be an old hag at the bar with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, and with flesh that is years past being lovely on full display... trying to pick up young men.

Thanks to a loving God and Alcoholics Anonymous, today I am someone who can hold her head up in the world. I can go to church and not be concerned about the roof's integrity. I can go to work and be a "worker among workers", I can be a neighbor in my neighborhood, and I can be an AA member and a sponsor and a sponsee. These are the things I value and none of this is anything that I even aspired to!

"We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension." -- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 53