March 21 was the 6th year of my sobriety. It
feels good. It feels right.
My mind is clearer and more focused on things that matter
rather than avoiding things that bothered me. No need to go into all of that.
It would be boring, I promise you! Besides most of us in Alcoholics Anonymous
don’t give up anonymity lightly. For me, I do. Anonymity can get in the way of
my accountability to others: family, co-workers, friends and neighbors. It is
not that I need others to celebrate my sobriety, but that others know the
effort to remain sober is mine to do. Should I fail, that is on me, not others.
So I enlist others only as witness to my continuing effort to remain sober.
This gives me freedom to explore other dimensions of life
and to participate as fully as possible. That’s where the business of life
resides. The experiences we amass living life openly and honestly are the ones
that teach and benefit us richly. Pressures and stress remain, of course; but
they are better handled sober. That alone allows the experience to be better
understood.
This year I noted my sixth year of non-smoking; the date was
January 1. Kicking smoking taught me I could do so; it gave me courage to
address the drinking problem. And I did.
Being gay doesn’t have an anniversary date. I just am gay.
Was born this way. Had inklings of it at an early age (5 or 6 years old)
without understanding what it meant. Had more feelings of difference at 12, 13
and 14. Began to realize the patterns of doubt and finally gave it a name (am I
a homosexual?) during my teens. Didn’t do anything about it. Waited for college
to maybe find some conclusions.
Didn’t want to be gay. Scared to death. Met a wonderful
woman; fell in love, got married and had a family. Those were good things in
life. They were wonderment. But they were also filled with angst and tensions.
I didn’t know the cause but by the age of 37 I finally admitted to myself that
I was gay and it was OK. I gave myself permission to be me. This was not selfish;
but it was a profound conclusion.
What followed was 13 years of more family life, career
building and the swirl of everyday life that engulfs most people. By the age of
50, however, my wife and I knew the marriage was over. She needed to move on.
So did I.
My daughter was a fresh college grad as we moved from the
family home to two separate dwellings. Ann’s was a temporarily leased condo
nearby while mine was a 3 bedroom townhome in which the kids, dogs, and cats
could make a home. Our son was in college and stayed with me for several years
through grad school. Our daughter found her first job and apartment in the fall
of that year and so our household shrank by one adult, one cat, and one car.
I continued my consulting career, a year later formed my own
consulting practice, and explored community life. I also explored what it meant
to be gay. Not an easy agenda! But one that needed to be addressed.
Along the way I got involved in our homeowners association,
local chamber of commerce and eventually ran for and won a seat on the city
council. These pressures built and I think led me to the drinking problem. I
was living in a glass house without any experience. Shy, raw and lots of good
intentions; but very, very exposed.
It took six years to work myself into an alcoholic haze. It
took a few months of hard work to kick the addiction. And it has taken an
additional six years of work and attention to detail to keep the addiction at
bay. Meanwhile AA provides the community and fellowship that enables a healthy
life. It exposes me to people in need of help. That reminds me of my past
struggles. Helping them helps me. And so the saga lives on through others.
Perhaps this telling of my ‘story’ underscores why I’m such
a devotee of ‘community.’ I feel it is magical. Community has the shared
experience of survival. It contains the tools and the nutrients for maintaining
a healthy life. And hopes and dreams are there also; not just mine, but those
of others as well. Those hopes and dreams are not so different from one
another. They speak of our commonality. It becomes a basis of trust and hope.
Maybe that’s what anniversaries are for: taking stock of
important dates in our lives spent together. Both the good and the bad.
March 22, 2012
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