4 Weeks on Step One

So strange that they are called steps, as if you simply elevate your foot, put it down on a solid surface a bit higher than the one you picked it up from and voilà, you are better off than before you started. But what else would you call them? The twelve stages? - This seems to leave out the work that's involved. The twelve actions? - It is hard to think of all the spiritual change, the adaptations of your psyche, you must inevitably go through as actions. And steps infer that you end up someplace higher - at a new level of your life - if you follow them. Assuming, that is, that you are ascending, rather than descending, the staircase. Though, depending upon how you look at it, descending might be necessary. You might need to go down twelve steps inside yourself, to explore the basement of your being - to put it in a bad metaphor with alliteration. Anyway, the point is, people who have already done these steps assure you that if you work them you will end up some place better - or in the same place with a better version of yourself to work with.

I think everyone who finds themselves at an Al-Anon meeting must have consciously or unconsciously accomplished the first step.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol---that our lives had become unmanageable. 

You just don't get to an Al-Anon meeting unless some shit has really hit the fan. The thing is, though, at first you think it is just somebody else's shit and you're tired of the smells. Someone is ruining your life with their alcohol. So, yes, you are kind of powerless, but in the back of your head you are thinking... they are the ones who are powerless, I'm just being subjected to their problem. A problem that they might not be willing to fix, so I've got to figure out how to fix it through Al-Anon. Well, then you actually go to a meeting and everyone says you can't fix it - unless "it" is yourself. Yourself is the only it you can fix, and it's your shit that's hit the fan. 

This first denial (that the problem is someone else's and not your own) must be the hardest to get past. I say this because I still haven't got past it. I blame my husband for the problems we have now. It is just so hard to distinguish between which problems to take responsibility for as a partner and which to assign to the other, as a personal challenge they must work out. 

I know that when I told my husband, "AA or divorce" I wasn't thinking about Al-Anon and how much my recovery would mean to the possible success or failure of our marriage. It's now been four months since I issued that ultimatum and he's been in and out (and now back in) AA. He's trying to do 90 meetings in 90 days and I hope it works for him. I do.

Meanwhile, I am on step one. Realizing that there's this thing (alcohol) that's bigger than my ability to control it. That I am powerless. It is difficult to even type the four words. I'm not accustomed to realizing and accepting powerlessness - about anything. I mean, I'll hardly admit to myself that I'm mortal. The evidence is everywhere, but the jury is still out! Of course, after the birth of my daughter, when I almost died from hemorrhaging, I felt very close-to and aware of my vulnerability - my powerlessness - but as I healed, the omnipotence of that feeling slowly dissipated with my physical symptoms. I became, once again, the powerful, living human. But what allowed me to live? It was not my own will, I can tell you that much. I was so exhausted from the delivery that when I began to go in and out of consciousness I felt only along for the ride, not "fighting for my life." 

I suppose that same type of surrender is needed now. Only it's complicated by my desire to protect myself and my daughter from my husband's drinking. I am in a situation where I need to both admit that I am powerless to an element in my life, and also guard whether or not I want to allow myself and my daughter to be subject to the would-be drinking. Because I am not entirely powerless about whether or not I stay in this marriage.

Aw! But I guess the step is about admitting your powerlessness to alcohol, not to the person who drinks or your marital state. Alright, fine then, I admit it. I am powerless to alcohol. My life is unmanageable!