I wasn't called on to share in my home group, and that's okay. To be honest, I don't believe in offering to share because I don't think doing so necessarily allows for higher power-driven commentary. I think that offering to share is a sign of one of two things: either I'm fairly fresh in sobriety and I'm not using my sponsor to the fullest extent of the suggestion, or I'm allowing self to promote some nonsensical ideology. Extreme, eh? I'm sure there are plenty who would disagree with me and some I might offend, but I also know that there are just as many who would nod in approval.
I write this because I was day-dreaming for quite a bit during the meeting, thinking about what I have to feel gratitude for... everything that makes me feel pleased and content. If I were called on to share, I might have mentioned a few of these things, but I doubt that I would have been able to formulate any sort of clear and concise framework from which to operate.
Of course, I'm happy for the grace of God and that, through it, I have a spiritual side that keeps me in tune with my daily reprieve from active alcoholism. I'm grateful for sobriety, for the program, for my program. I'm even grateful that I'm an alcoholic (in recovery) because that means that I have that very program, and I have things that I can do on a daily basis to cope with the slings and arrows, the bill collectors and the forbearances, the pain and the sickness and the catastrophic illnesses and deaths, the mean reds and the azure deep bottomless blues that sink one to the depths of that thing we call misery.
I have my writing and an outlet from which to work - both here and through the project I've been granted by The Shreveport Catalyst (not to mention through step work and journal-keeping and all the myriad other ways that I'm allowed to express myself technically and creatively each and every day). There's the world I'm creating through my soon-to-begin-publishing column and the world I've expanded on through the LASYPAA Bid skit. There's the billions and trillions of ideas that I have floating around my head constantly, so many that I can never wait to get them all down on paper, hoping to allow the idea to take flight at the first chance that I get to tune the real world out and build a life in a world of my own. I'm grateful for my love of writing and for being given an opportunity to do it.
I'm grateful for the first time I've begun a relationship and ever actually been sober, really sober and working a program and loving and fearing every move and every moment. I feel like a kid again, that sensation that you get when you're first falling in love and not sure what to do. I feel awkward and uncertain, impressionable and questionable, and I love every second that I have spent getting to know another person and wondering what's going to happen next and when it's going to happen. It's weird to feel all these things as an adult. I feel like we should be passing notes in between fourth and fifth period and slipping folded up pieces of paper, the boxes checked with the appropriate response, into a locker on the A-wing hall. That might be sweet or it may be sad, depending on your perspective. To me, it's purely magical.
My mother and my sister, brother, and their families all seem to like and to trust me and to be genuinely interested in the many accomplishments and developments in my personal and professional life. I'm still very much in the ninth step amends process, even though I've moved forward and onto the other steps. I'm fairly certain that step nine is one that I will continue to work, along with the founding fathers that are steps one through three, on a continuing, daily basis. I still have a ways to go, especially when it comes to the financial end of the process, but I no longer mind so much, and I feel good every time I resolve to take on another creditor. I have dental insurance and vision insurance and an excellent medical/prescription plan. In essence, I have all the tools I need and no reason to want for anything - even when car repairs and other unexpected expenses throw themselves my way.
Lastly, I'm grateful for the fond flock of friends with which I've been gifted today. Never could this ever be more apparent than in the events that transpired before, during, and following the big, gay prom that was Saturday night. Everything that could have gone wrong, was capable of going wrong, and potentially go wrong became not only mights or coulds or possiblies, but probablies and quite likelies and absolute certainities. After being stranded on the sixth floor of the parking garage at El Dorado, not moving for more than forty minutes before deciding to just park, go into the hotel, and find something to eat, we pulled into slots and my car immediately erupted a ghastly fog of smoke with a noise that Sarah Erickson described as "the angry bull" - funny, I immediately visualized exactly what she meant. "Is that my car," I asked her in shock and disbelief; to which she replied with her usual, flat self-assured speech: "Yeppp!"
In spite of taking too long to find the lever to open my hood, much to the chagrin of the gentleman Good Samaritan trying to help us, we just walked into the hotel. Then our cell phones started dying and we had other avenues that could have created anger and heat and crankiness and arguing, but not us, not with them. We were finally seated at a table and the service was awful and the food was overpriced and not that great, but we spent all the time laughing and joking and smiling at the fact that everyone kept coming to me for instructions or directions or to find something lost because I looked like a member of the hotel staff. When Bryan Sullivan came to sit at our table while his was waiting on its food, we told him about everything that had been happening, and he quietly remarked in his usual, inoffensive manner, "and yet you guys are all sitting here laughing and not worrying."
We looked at one another, the smiles still there, and I felt a quiet certainty pass between us. What good would not laughing do? If we were going to be stranded in downtown Shreveport by a string of unknown variables for an undisclosed length of time, who better to spend the time with? Who better to enjoy the gift that was the most memorable prom night of our lives?
I'm grateful for everything and everyone that plays a role in the amazing life in which I find myself currently living.
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