What it was like: Year Twelve

This is where I stopped keeping my journal. I just didn't have much drama going on, or much time to write.  I was busy working, being a student, being an AA member, and generally living life on life's terms.  

Since I had started my job in September of 1994, things really started changing for me.  I had some real stability.  I actually had vacation time!  I actually had a little bit of money to go take vacations.  

I was hanging around with my old best friend - my first sponsor in AA.   I had made a wonderful friend in a man who had gotten sober just a couple of months after I did.  We would meet at the meeting on Saturday mornings and then go take day long hikes in the mountains.  When we were done with that, we would generally go to a movie.   I love movies, but for some reason, I usually go when it is someone else's idea - but it was great fun to know all the movies.

In November 1995, I rented a house in North Denver.  Oh, how I loved that house!  It was over 100 years old.  It was 2 blocks from a lovely old church, which I walked to frequently.   If you have read about my journey for the last eleven or so days, you might have a pretty good concept of why I was so excited to live in a pretty little house and go to the pretty church two blocks away.  I always paid my rent on time.  I never caused a problem for my landlady and landlord - who lived just next door.  (When I told them I was moving 3 years later, my landlady actually cried!)  The police only came to my door once - and that was when my house was burglarized.  

I was working in Southwestern Denver, living in North Denver, and going to meetings in a northern suburb.  I was doing a lot of driving.  

At that time, I also started having a lot of pain in my neck.  I was diagnosed with arthritis in my spine.  My physician looked at the x-ray of my neck and told me my neck had been broken in several places - and he wondered what the heck happened!  I couldn't begin to explain it to him.  He told me with a very sad face that I would be in pain for the rest of my life.  By that time, I already realized that.  And you know the really odd thing about that? It was OK.  On the spectrum of pain, I would rather have physical pain than be in a bad marriage or any other number of situations that I was no longer in.  Later I would have an MRI and find that I had two ruptured discs as well as the arthritis, but that was later.  

One night, I couldn't sleep because of the pain, and decided to try a meeting at 6:30 a.m. since I was already awake.  It was on my way to work, I could get there and get to work on time.  I was so excited when I found that I liked the group.  And they liked me.  I met a bunch of people who would later become my friends.  And I met a woman who was to become my sponsor.  

As I alluded to earlier, my house was burglarized on December 27, 1995.  I had been in a car accident on December 23, 1995.  Someone at work said to me on New Year's Eve, "I hope you have a better year next year, this has been a bad one for you."  I couldn't believe it!  I thought 1995 was stellar.  Are you kidding me?  No one hit me for a year!  I knew where I lived, I knew where I worked, I had relationships with all of my children, I could go to church without shame, I knew who I was, and I was happy about who that was.  A burglary and a car accident?  Constant pain?  These are just things that normal people have.  Just regular life stuff.  I was grateful for every second of my new life. It was the most wonderful thing!  

My twelfth birthday is probably the only one that I have no written journal entry for.  I know that by then, I had a new sponsor - the one who I am so blessed to still call my sponsor today.  I know that she came to my old homegroup for my birthday meeting.  I know that my best friends were there.  

I know that I was grateful beyond comprehension for what God had been able to create from the broken wreckage of my (sober) life.