My sponsor always told me that the alcoholic, me, was insecure, immature, and over sensitive. What’s the solution for that? For me it meant that, over time, I had to develop a thick skin. I was too easily wounded and upset by people and things around me. I had to grow up.
Not easy for a man, who had come in at 42, but was emotionally about 14 years old. Alcohol and my unmanageable life had frozen me into that state within. Someplace along the line my insides had not kept pace with my aging. And how was I to stay sober and develop a way of life in which I could be comfortable with myself? How was I to achieve a way of life, which would develop into peace of mind and serenity?
Of course I had to depend on the 12 Steps of this program to take me into a spiritual way of life, where I could have a dependency on my higher power and a meeting of the minds with my fellow sober alcoholics. But there was something else most practical. I was going to have to get over me.
That was to come from the example of my sponsor and the other old timers in here. I was to begin to learn what humility was all about. I remember one night, when my sponsor, who was about 20 years sober at the time, came into a meeting, sat in the middle of the group and told them that he had a resentment so explosive that he wanted to kill the man he resented. That almost took my breath away. But there he was, willing to expose himself and open to receiving the help he needed. At the time I was thousands of miles away from having that quality within me.
I had to learn to laugh at myself, when ordinarily I would have been humiliated. When I made a mistake, did it cause me laughter? Over time it did. Rule #62 in the Traditions, not to take myself so damn seriously came into play. When people up here began to play their favorite sport, “busting chops”, I learned to just laugh. One old timer, a curmudgeon of sorts, loved to do this. I remember one day going and sitting at a table, where he was alone. He looked at me and said, “Can’t you find someplace else to sit?” It cracked me up. I knew what he was doing. And there was more and always is. It all helps.
Oversensitivity has been fading within me. Just as insecurity is diminishing with the practice of this spiritual program. Emotional maturity has been moving along with the practice of placing my intellect over my emotions. Not letting my emotions do my thinking. Practice makes that possible. The continuous council of my sponsor and other old timers to do exactly that has been in my mind as I began to grow up in this program.
Nothing is perfect. I can very often slip up and fall flat on my face. But I have also learned to pick myself up and dust myself off and move on. Move forward in practicing this sober life I’m striving to live a day at a time.
Looking back through my time in sobriety in here, I can see where example and the suggestions of my sponsor and others have had an enormous influence on my being able to live a sober life. Not just abstaining from alcohol, but living a life within and without, which helps me to be open to working with others, as my sponsor did with me. I am so grateful for those men and women in here, who have been my teachers in how to live this way of life.