Big

Something big happened to me today. I'm hesitant to write it here but I've gotta put it somewhere.

I went to my usual AA big book study meeting tonight. One of the stories we were reading was about a woman who was homeless as a teenager and turned to prostitution in order to get by. Let's just say it hit very, very close to home.

This is the kind of thing that I don't talk about. Even writing that here is just...yikes...

Logical side of me knows I was doing what I needed to do to survive. But there's so much shame attached to those kinds of decisions/actions.

Unfortunately my turn to read came up right in the midst of this part of the story. The woman before me had had some very judgmental comments towards the woman in the story (she said that there "must be something wrong with this girl aside from alcoholism. No one would turn to prostitution for alcohol, even as an alcoholic." Totally missing the line that she was turning to prostitution out of desperation and then drinking and drugging to try to forget what she'd had to do). Everything was way too close to home and way too intense. I tried to read (we take turns each reading a paragraph and commenting on it) but a few lines in I realized it was not going to happen. I said I needed to pass and then proceeded to start sobbing. I tried to hide it and debated running out of the room out of embarrassment, but forced myself to stay in my seat. We've been talking about not running from strong emotions in IOP and simply staying in the room when stuff gets hard, so I figured I'd try that.

This all happened pretty close to the end of the meeting, so after we closed I was sorta stumped about what to do next. I wanted to run out to the bathroom or out of the building or to anywhere else, but I didn't want to run out since we'd been talking earlier on about celebrating my 30 days. (Oh, by the way, I'm back to 30 days sober and got a new chip. Yay! :)

While I stood there stupidly, a woman came up to me and said it was ok to cry. She asked if I had anyone to talk to about what was bothering me (no). She then asked if I'd feel comfortable talking to her about it if she called me. I knew I wasn't going to feel up to talking about it later or over the phone (not a fan of talking on the phone anyway, but especially about this stuff. Too impersonal). I told her I'd talk about it then if there was somewhere private we could go. This woman is a pastor (at a very liberal church so she doesn't scare me like some pastors/churches do), so she's experienced with counseling ppl and she's very kind, so I did feel comfortable with her. (By the way, everyone at this meeting is substantially older than me...like 60's+...so it's an interesting dynamic. I call it my grandma meeting).

We went to another room and I ended up telling her about being homeless as a teenager and doing what I had to to survive. It was the first time I've told any part of that to anyone out loud/face to face. It was scary as hell and terribly embarrassing. As expected the woman I spoke to was very kind about it but I couldn't even look at her out of shame. She insisted on hugging me multiple times and told me repeatedly that she understands and doesn't think i'm terrible or anything. I'm not sure how I feel about all this except totally in shock right now.

The interesting part is that I'd just been saying earlier...first to myself and then to my sponsor...that some stuff from my past is sneaking up and really getting to me right now. I've been thinking that it's getting to be time to start to tell someone about it, but I have no idea how to do that. So as hard as it was, maybe this too was a god thing.

I've been having a lot of god moments lately. Like a lot a lot. I've moved on to step 2 with my sponsor (come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity) and have been looking for and praying for god moments. I've had multiple surprisingly undeniable ones. I'll have to write about them sometime when I'm not quite so overwhelmed and exhausted. God is making himself really freakin' hard to deny though. I have a hell of a time coming to grips with the idea that god actually cares about what goes on in my individual life, but I just keep having way too "perfect" coincidences.

I have lots more to update but my eyes are starting to close on me. That's a good thing. I wasn't sure I'd be able to sleep after having something so huge happen/doing something so huge. Guess I should try to get some rest. More later.