Big Steps In Little Packages

I took a big step today. A huge step. It took guts. It took courage. It took willpower. It took three times walking in and walking right back out. It took distress tolerance skills and it took truckloads of self-talk and thought challenge... but today, I did something huge.

Today I walked through the doors of a church and attended my first ever Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

I was, to be honest, not entirely with it. I was so overwhelmed that I wound up stressed, confused and dissociated, so approximately only a third of what was said actually translated into understandable sentences. But let me tell you something...

Denial is a funny thing. I decided I would go along because I 'knew' that if I went, I would be proved right. I would go along, I would listen to their stories and I would see that my drinking? Well, it's just not that bad. Nothing like what an alcoholic's drinking is.

I was going through the motions because I 'knew' I was right and if I could show my friends that I'd been to AA and it really wasn't that big a deal, then that would reassure them and everything would be fine.

I didn't count on relating to almost everything I heard. I didn't count on hearing their stories and seeing myself over and over again, hearing my thoughts in someone else's words.

I have a lot to process, a lot to think about, but I wanted to jot this down right here, right now. No matter what happens from here on out, I went to an AA meeting (even if my motives weren't entirely 'pure') and that took real courage; and that, my friends, is huge.

Take care of yourselves until next time, and may we all find our own small fences along the way.