I’ve decided to write myself free.  That’s what all these words are about.  I’m taking possession of my own history, telling it like it was and is, ‘with some stretchers,” as Huck Finn would say.

One time in an addiction unit a wise old facilitator said to me:  ‘Joe, you gotta tell your story, man.  If you don’t, it’s gonna kill ya.’  I didn’t know what he meant straight off; I had to think about it for a while.  How could an untold story do anybody any harm?  It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I’d been running from my own story for most of my life; that’s what addiction is all about.  Most addicts don’t want to know themselves, and they don’t want other people to know them, either.  It strikes me that human beings can only flourish in loving relationships.  Well, I certainly did not have one with myself or any body else, which is probably why I was alone.  It’s not that I hadn’t been in plenty of relationships, so called, but I could never settle into them.  If a lady liked me I thought she must be crazy.  How could I respect someone like that?  If a girl I liked had no time for me, then it was okay for me to dream and dote on her, simply because I knew nothing was ever going to happen.  I felt safe.

Maybe most self-destructive behaviour is learned.  We take it in with our mother’s milk.  Those first few years of life are not called the (de)formative years for nothing.  Not that I want to complain about my lot in life or my parents.  No, they did their best.  Like I say, I just want to get my history told so that I can let go of it and cease to be its victim.  Or maybe I want to assimilate it and discover that what I’ve been running from for all these years may actually be something that enriches rather damages me.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll have to keep writing in order to stay free.  I’m fine with that.  God knows, writing words – or sharing – is a helluva lot better than putting a bottle or a gun to your head.  Writing is on the side of life, at least.  It involves reaching out, making a connection.  In the song ‘I am a Rock’, Paul Simon sings of isolation.  ‘I have my books and my poetry to protect me./Hiding in my room, safe within my womb,/I touch no one and no one touches me/I am a rock I am an island.’  Of course, once those feelings are verbalised and shared the guy’s no longer a rock or an island; since language is communal.  No man in an island, says John Donne.  Besides real rocks die hard and silent and don’t go in for such creative human interaction.

All active addiction involves fear and flight – flight from one’s personal story or history, for a start, which is also a rejection of one’s personhood.  As Karen Blixen said, ‘to be a person is to have a story to tell’.   Addicts have a low tolerance for reality.  They don’t want to face past hurts or deal with present difficulties, even though reality keeps calling.  It’s like receiving those windowed envelopes the government send.  No, I don’t want to deal with that now; so you stick it behind the clock or better still in a drawer out of sight with all the rest.  That’s why writing takes courage, the courage to stop running and to face whatever needs to be faced.  I like these lines of Maya Angelou:

‘History, despite its wrenching pain

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.’

I see this writing as part of my recovery – and recovery in more senses than one.  Not just in the obvious one of being a friend of certain guys who started a fellowship in Akron, Ohio, all those years ago.  But also in the sense of recovering something that was lost.  It involves getting to know and accept my own history, coming to be at peace with it, and getting better – recovering – as a result of that.  It may lead me to see my life story differently; past curses might become present blessings.

 ‘I coulda been a contender’

Maybe I’ll lose that victim mentality, that secret ‘I coulda been a contender’ attitude to life.  Maybe I’ll come to see that there are no one way tickets to Palookaville, except in the minds of those who choose to linger on that way of regret, resentment and blaming others for their miserable lot.

A few years ago I came across these words that were written by an American nun:

A Prayer to Own Your Beauty

O God

help me

to believe

the truth about myself

no matter

how beautiful it is!

That last line really got me.  The idea that the truth about me could be something beautiful…  Well, it just had not occurred to me.  Straight away I knew I would definitely need divine aid to even begin to entertain such an alien notion.

Left to my own devices I would just go on treating myself like crap and not even consider the possibility that I might have something of value to contribute to life on this earth.  Of course I got something out of thinking this way; there was a pay off.  It meant that I could feel okay about isolating myself from others and not participating in life.  Sure, I’m no good anyway.  What’s the point?  But what if you are good?  What if objectively, say, you’re a potential Fred Astaire but subjectively your crazy head tells you that you have two left feet?  Does that change things?  If you have certain gifts, do you have a responsibility to use, develop and share them?  Might the negative thinking, so characteristic of addiction, just be one big cowardly lie that the addict tells himself in order to feel justified for not participating in the kind of real life that requires risk, love and commitment?

I’ve been in recovery for a while now, but the illness is subtle.  Get rid of drink and addiction starts to manifest itself in some other form; though not everybody in recovery sees that.  I was chatting to a guy before a meeting one night in a town I was just passing through.  He asked me how I was doing and I told him.  Okay, I said, but I seem to have a whole cluster of other addictions besides drink.  They give me a lot of bother and have the potential to destroy me.  That’s odd, with me it’s just booze, he said, before adding, I must nip out for a smoke before the meeting starts.

Recovery is about trying to live a spiritual way of life; which basically means, among other things, not being a selfish git, and coming to see that other people in the world actually matter, and also that I matter.  Not only is it crazy, but it’s also wrong to inflict harm on myself, even though it may feel so familiar and normal.

I have some good friends in recovery.  A few years ago I was working abroad.  I used to ring this guy and let him know what was going on.  One time I had got infatuated with a young lady and I rang a few times and no doubt sang her praises in a variety of keys.  I went on and on about how kind and gentle she was, wise and artistic, witty and compassionate.  One night my friend stopped me and said, ‘Joe, do you mind if I say something?’  ‘No,’ I said, but I was afraid.  I felt sure he was going to bawl me out and say, ‘Would you ever stop going on about that bloody woman?  Do you think I’ve nothing better to do than listen to that shite?’  What he in fact said was, ‘That’s how I see you, Joe.  You’re all those things’.  Wow!  That really shut me up.  I was speechless, gobsmacked.  It’s still just about the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.