Somnambulance

“Somnambulance”

 

            I’ve mentioned before that I go once a month to speak at a rehab in New Jersey with my sponsor.  I’ve been doing this now for three-and-a-half years.  I meet him there and he speaks to the men and I speak the women.  We go after to eat a diner and it is one of those staples in my month that I truly look forward to.  I recognize that it isn’t the norm for a woman to have a male sponsor, but this happened somewhat organically and he is a bit like a father to me and it works so take that for what it is worth.

 

            I was talking to a friend on the phone the other week on my way to New Jersey and she asked me what I was up to.  I explained where I was going and that after I got home later that night I had to finish a paper for school so I did not anticipate getting a lot of sleep.  She commented that she was impressed I was still going to speak given that I still had to finish a paper.  She stated that she sometimes worries I take too much too much.  I understand her concern, but I think I am so busy because I feel as though I lived my life before recovery in a partial state of somnambulance and I don’t want to waste any more time.  I smiled to myself because there are so many reasons why I would put speaking before writing that paper and so many reasons why getting a little less sleep would so be worth the sacrifice. 

 

            I look forward to this second Tuesday of the month even though it means I have to jump in the car right after work and battle through Philadelphia traffic to get across the bridge and it normally takes me about an hour-and-a-half to get there.  I look forward to invariably seeing my sponsor pacing back-and-forth helping yet another person on the phone when I pull up.  We hug, trade quick hellos and catch up briefly before checking in and getting badges and going to different meetings.  I walk across the beautiful campus to the women’s facility and walk in to greet the CAs who know me well by now.

 

            The meeting is held in a large, open room and the women are usually waiting for me in a circle of chairs and I sit at the top of the circle and look out over about an average of twenty to twenty-five broken faces.  I see myself in those broken faces.  I remember what they are going through.  Those feelings of hopeless desperation are all too familiar and I do my best to offer hope.   

 

I tell them about my history with sexual abuse and mental illness and alcohol and all about the bad choices my reliance on alcohol resulted in.  I tell them about my two stints in rehab and my periods of suicidal ideation.  I tell them about living in the recovery house and feeling like I would never make it out of the hole I had dug.  I tell them about marriage counseling and the fragility of my marriage to Frank during my climb back out of that same hole I had dug. 

 

I am sure then to start telling them about the journey out.  I tell them about the meeting I found that changed it all.  I tell them about the steps and how they re-introduced me to myself and how I learned to love myself for the first time in my life.  I tell them about getting an apartment and getting a job and deciding to get a divorce and buy a house.  I tell them about the kids and how well they are doing.  I tell them how Frank and I are friends and how we co-parent.  I tell them how I am now in grad school and about the book and I tell them there is promise and life is good but that it takes work and that you can’t do it alone.

 

I do all these things like I do every month and then there is time for the women to ask me questions if they like and they always do.  We talk for a few minutes and I tell them where my home group is and give them my phone number and e-mail address in case they want my help when they leave.  Then we close the meeting with the serenity prayer and I hug as many of them as will let me.  And with each hug, my heart swells just a little more because that room darkened by hopelessness and desperation has been lit by a tiny spark of hope and I got to be a part of it.

 

I walk out and back across the campus to find my sponsor and we ask each other how our meetings went and head off to the same diner we eat at each month.  We sit and grapple with the same menu and say grace over the meal when it comes and eat and catch up and something about the whole process feels like coming home. 

 

It was worth staying up late to finish that paper.  For one thing, it was my fault for procrastinating in the first place, but then I just proved to myself for the umpteenth time that I am undisciplined.  For another, I went to speak at that rehab so that I could write the paper.  I would not be in grad school in the first place if I wasn’t in recovery and I wouldn’t be in recovery if I did not give away what I have so freely been given by others who have gone before me.