When I walked into my first AA meeting - age 23 - trembling, shocked, not knowing where the fuck I was or why. People it seemed to me wearing far too many pastel colors, though in reality it was probably just that everyone wasn't wearing black...but it was 1986, so maybe pastels...
Scared shitless, sure I'd made a terrible, terrible mistake but then that still, small voice saying calmly and persistently: stay. Just sit down and stay. This is where you belong. The running is over now. Just stay.
A week earlier I had gone to my first Al Anon meeting, which is for family and friends of alcoholics - because my mother kept saying I should try that because she had just begun AA herself after 2 disastrous years staying dry on her own, which led to a horrendous slip drinking a 'sip of champagne' that ended in drunkenness, a black out and a date rape.
I thought she was mad. But I was desperate. I walked into Al Anon and felt at home, people talking about feelings and thoughts I thought were only mine. And apparently no, millions felt that way, or at least the people in that room...
But without getting into all the details, that led me to AA, when I realized I too was an alcoholic, and because of that one moment, which for some weird reason stuck, I am still sober 25 years later, and alive. Sober longer than the young man I heard qualify at a writer's meeting tonight has been alive. He is 18 - and sober 3 years...and has as harrowing a story as anyone else in the room.
And he sounded just like my BCC kids I'm teaching now in the Bronx.
I am just so overwhelmed with gratitude...for being alive, for this fucking FREE program that saved my life and asks nothing in return - suggests I stick around for my own good and pass it on - but I could (and have) just fuck off and no one would come running after me. No money, no leaders...it just shouldn't work but it does and it saved my life and that of millions of other people.
How is it possible? These gifts? And why do I think I should have even the tiniest little bit to say about how my life should go when I have been given such a gift FOR FREE and with no strings attached. There is just nothing like it I've ever encountered on this earth.
There may be other things like it, but I've never seen it.
I have felt so sad at times over these past years due to losses of things, some of which have been large, but compared to this gift, they are small. I have been offered, was offered and was given the grace to receive a gift of life 25 years ago. And I am alive, still. And sober. And that just fucking amazes me.
Why me? I don't know. And I mean this in the 'why did I get this gift' way not the bring in the violins way. No one deserves it more than another and God/dess knows not everyone receives it. This will always remain a mystery.
And why do I get to now live in a Gorgeous part of NYC with bright orange red yellow leaves, a wetland, egrets, ducks, geese, eagles, bluejays, squirrels and all manner of beauty of rivers colliding, turning, churning still in Manhattan but the tip top tip and able to walk to work across a bridge over the Harlem River and I feel like Walt Whitman about this town which I love love love love love with a passion that makes no sense, which of course means it is love because why on earth would you love something any other way...and would it be love, no...
and I've sat through the loneliness and the discombobulation and there will be more of all that and the emptiness where Bill used to be and all of that...and there will be more but there is now also this - this sense of gratitude of joy of love and loving too the hardness of my work, the struggle to teach (sometimes and sometimes I just want to kill them all!) but then there it is - there they are - my kids. Not my kids but yes my kids...squirming out of seats, bilingual, English as a 2nd 3rd god knows what language, ADHD, learning disabled, freaking the fuck out, can't stop talking - 18-20 at a time, trying to teach of all things interpersonal communications...
and then the moments when at least one them Gets something and I cry almost, can't believe it - it's So Hard and I'm not writing writing...just dog paddling to keep up with my life cheered on in my heart by Rick Moody's words - no you don't need a writing schedule you just write when you can and the rest of the time: live. If you don't live what the fuck will you write about? Amen brother.
And there's even a cat, a cat I want to adopt who is still coming out of his shell in Washington Heights and who's original saver I've now met in AA of all things by amazing coincidence...
And so what could be better? To love where you live, what you do and to be so fucking grateful to be alive and love love love everything and everyone I see...I know this probably sounds almost delusional but it's not. It's real. And it's fantastic...
And it is REAL. There is nothing fake or fluffy about this. That's just amazing.
So thank you Universe all the gods and goddesses and all of you in my life who have manifested for this life of mine...I am so grateful to you All...
love...blessings...and more love....
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