Paying it Forward

The concept is easy, good works beget good works. It ain't brain surgery. This all came up because of my friend Bev's blog from yesterday, which you can read "here." She mentions a young woman who took up the theater because she was inspired by Bev's kids who, in turn, had been inspired by others.

It got me to thinking about my own life. You see, for many years... nay, for most of my life, I'd always thought of myself as "a person of no consequence." Growing up in an alcoholic family, my existence mattered for little, other than an inconvenience in the lives of others. I always felt like "the tolerated guest" in their lives. Something they endured. A reminder of their past mistakes. A person of no consequence. My needs or feelings counted for nothing. It was all about them. I'm not saying this in a self-pitying way. They were very sick people who didn't know any better and, all things considered, it could've been a lot worse. I wasn't beaten or starved.

Anyway, I grew up to believe that nothing I did or said or needed or wanted mattered. To anyone. It, literally, never occured to me that my actions or words had an impact on others. The first inkling I ever had that I MIGHT have a place in the world came in high school when the chemistry teacher, Mrs. Milbauer, actually talked to me like I was a human being.

It enthralled me that she never spoke down to me. She treated me like I was an interesting person who had worthwhile things to say. To this day it makes me want to cry to think about that.

The next inkling I got that I might have some sort of impact on others came in college while doing summer theater. It was 1974 and we were doing "Damn Yankees", "Death of a Salesman" and "Hotel Paradiso" in nightly rotating stock. One day one of my college roomies, who was also in the summer theater company, and I were at the supermarket, picking up stuff for dinner when, suddenly, a woman in the pasta section starting gushing, out loud, about having seen us in the show (Yankees) the night before. "I saw YOU..... AND YOU...." she said loudly, pointing at us accusingly. "You were WONDERFUL!!!!"

Who knew? Oh, sure, the audience applauded wildly when we came out for our bows... oh, and they laughed their heads off at us during the show, but to have someone in REAL LIFE come up and tell us (me) how much something I had done meant to her... well, it was a revelation.

Flash forward to 2000. It'd been a long time since I'd fleetingly felt like a person of consequence.

I'd been told by my first 12-Step sponsor that there would come a time when someone I didn't know would let me know how much of an impact I'd had on them. But I still wasn't quite prepared for the aftermath of it.

I'd been sober for two years at that point. I'd gone out on a lot of speaking commitments to other 12-Step groups in my first two years of my sobriety and shared my experience, strength and hope with them many dozens of times. I'd done this from one end of New Jersey to the other. Then, one night, it happened. After a meeting someone I didn't know came up to me and introduced himself. He smiled and said, "I heard you before. A year and a half ago at the [location deleted] meeting on Saturday night. I'll never forget it. I had two weeks sober at that point and was feeling really bad about myself until you spoke. It made a complete difference in my life. Thank you!"

Those experiences in high school and college had been ego-feeding propositions. But this experience was different. I felt humbled. My straight from the heart story had made a difference in the life of someone who was struggling to get sober.

That experience has been repeated several times over the last nine years. And it's never lost it's impact on me.

I've also had the experience of telling others the same thing. That their stories had transformed my life.

These days I really understand what it means to "pay it forward." I try to live my whole life that way. I'm not always successful. I fail a lot. But I definitely try.

It's the best way I know how to live.

9 Years....

Exactly 9 years ago today I had, what I hope will be, my last drink of alcohol.

I've changed a lot in 9 years. All the resentment and bitterness of the past (well, mostly) is gone. I've grown up and accepted things. Not just about myself, but about others too. I've FINALLY gotten over my childhood (an alcoholic mom and grandmom, a non-existent father). I've "dropped a lot of rocks" as they say in the recovery business, about an ex-lover, about a science fiction writer, even about Sister Francesca who may have gotten a little over-eager in her vain attempts to get me to learn Algebra in the 9th grade, to which I may have over-reacted just a teensy-weensy bit.

It's funny, now, to look back and see how deluded (and so full of self-will) I was about so many things. We alkies are a strange bunch.

For example:

Non-addicts are perfectly capable of modifying their behavior in order to achieve their goals. Addicts, however, happily modify their goals in order to achieve their behavior.

Trust me, that short paragraph makes total sense to anybody with an addiction problem.

Yes, I've experienced a lot of growth in these last 9 years. My life has gotten better "beyond my wildest dreams". When I first came into recovery my secret goal was to stay sober long enough to pay off my debts (a whopping $18,000.00) and then to die, peacefully, in a year or so.

Thank goodness my Higher Power had other plans for me.

In year 4 of my recovery I had to confront and deal with my ACOA issues (adult children of alcoholics). I spent a week at the Caron Foundation in a program they have for people dealing with that. It was a wonderful experience. Yes, and scary too.

In year 6 of my recovery I got to walk through open heart surgery which didn't bother me in the least, but scared the crap out of my close friends in recovery (my sponsor and my home group). But they got to watch ME "walk through" the fear of it, and come out the other side. My courage in the face of that gave courage to OTHERS to face their own nameless fears regarding doctors and medicine. I know of at least two people (and there were probably more) who, thanks to me, made doctors appointments because their fears were lessened by my experience.

In year 7 I had more surgery. Bi-lateral endarectomies (they cut open the arteries in your neck and scrape out the congealed cholesterol). It wasn't pretty and now, close-up, I resemble Baron von Frankentstein's High School Science Project. But I got through it!

In year 8 they gave me diabetes (because otherwise it would've been a boring year).

The point is, by publicly dealing with all this stuff, I never know whom I was affecting. For decades I thought I lived in an isolated bubble, neither being affected by, nor having any affect on, others. I thought I didn't matter, that nobody cared, that my actions were lost and meaningless. It never occured to me that other people actually cared about me and had feelings that were often hurt by me. By sharing all of my feelings about my medical experiences in recovery with others in my circle of sober friends, it lessened their fears, too.

It also increased their love and compassion for me. And vice versa.

I know so much more now than I did 9 years ago. Sometimes I think I don't, but I do.

But what I know right now is, I'm really looking forward to staying sober...

Just for today.

(thank you, God!)