One thing I cannot help but think has contributed to my sobriety are the friends I have made in here. I was thinking about this today, because of the continuous contacts I still have with them all over, where they live now.
I can remember, back when I was a couple of years in, I unknowingly met one of my major relationships at a meeting one night, when they first had come in. That was when an old timer made me partake in helping this person to be able to sit and achieve stability and comfort, because of their shaking and trembling. Never forgot that night. It was probably the beginning of coming into one of my first breaking downs of the walls I had around me within.
Over time, looking back, I really never had permanent and close friendships with anyone before I came into this program. That was probably because of the circumstances of my early childhood, when where we lived there were no children my brother’s and my age around. So I think that close relationships were foreign to me. And my alcoholism, drinking in bars all over, continued to insure that friendships were not available to me. It was only when others in here reached out and began to break my barriers down inside of me that I began to be come open.
It was when other individuals in here began to share and ask for help with their programs that I began to become open, when I found myself responding to them. It was amazing how what my sponsor had told me that I was able to pay attention to my helping others. When he had told me that I didn’t know that I didn’t know and only thought I did, was what opened me to beginning to learn what this program was really about. When asked I had to become willing to open the BB and to be able to remember what I had learned from my sponsor and old timers in here. The beginning of friendships made me to do the right things in trying to be helpful. I became more dependent on what was really going on in how we come to achieve our sober lives in here.
Over time I still find myself being able to be open to others in the same way as I did, when I began these friendships back then. I still have to remember that I really don’t know in the way I once thought I did. When my egotistical solitary thinking made me believe that I had the answers. It helped me to learn to begin to slowly erase what I had come to make up was the truth. Took time but, through my experiences in here, I have come to understand that what that motto in here states, that time does take time. Both in learning what I need to know and growing along spiritual lines and forming true friendships.
Anyway I have come to understand how valuable and wonderful true friendships are. How I have come to be able to love and have true compassion for others. And just how my friends have contributed to my life. My growth and understanding. My sobriety. And I know that it is mutual. I have been able to accept that, where once that was not possible. Makes me so grateful to my Higher Power for helping me to open the door once closed within me. And my sponsor and those old timers, who gave me what I so desperately needed. And, of course, all those in here who have reached out and helped me to continue to grow in spite of myself. And how all of this has helped me to stay sober one day at a time.