Morning After

I am going to my old home group this morning... Called the Morning After group. We/They meet at 7:30 a.m., each day. It is about 25 miles from here, so I don't go all that often - although I used to go every weekend. In the insanity of the intense winter weather we had last year, I got out of the habit of driving across town to a meeting.

This morning, I need to go somewhere that people love me. Somewhere that I am sure to run into a few people who have known me since my first day of sobriety, July 24, 1984. Sort of like a chicken noodle soup and jello kind of meeting. Not that it is a "gentle" group, it is certainly not that. It is a bunch of rough and tumble truckers and bikers and some executives and business owners, a jeweler, a landscaper, and a bunch of people who do God-alone-knows what. They are rough around the edges and there is a lot of colorful language used there. But it is where I belong this morning.

Yesterday was a hard day. I cried until I was sick. I cried until I had one of the worst headaches of my life. I was actually hanging over the toilet bowl, hoping to vomit - somehow I had forgotten to eat all day and I was very sick to my stomach... I didn't throw up though. By the end of the day, I felt like I had a terrible, terrible hangover. A person is not meant to cry that much, I am sure of that. I went to church last night and cried for an hour and a half there. I used an entire packet of kleenex just at church. I am not going to get into the specifics of what happened, but I will tell you not to worry about me or my family - we are fine. I was just hurt over something.... something a reasonably astute reader might be able to speculate about.

The good news? I didn't drink. I didn't want to drink. I didn't want to take my own life. I didn't want to take the life of another. I don't owe anyone an amends. I didn't say anything cruel to another person. I am not angry, I am not growing a resentment. I was just hurt. And thank God today I can identify that feeling and feel it.

They say "feeling is healing" but I know that I can take this to extremes and go right off the deep end... I need to move on and have a productive day. I cannot wallow in this. I am going to the meeting this morning, then to my favorite farmers market to get the stuff I need for a day of making salsa. This place is going to smell heavenly in a couple of hours.

"When ready, we say something like this: ' My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.' We have then completed Step Seven." -- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 76