Catch

"We turn to God when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them" them" -- Charles West

Things have been miserable, and as usual I have been trying to get rid of feeling bad by drinking too much.

I was kind of flailing about, not comforted by the wine I was drinking out of a jug. I started to cry, then moved to my bed and stayed there, crunched up in a ball. I was horribly tense, and have been for weeks. It was this worst it's been. It felt like there were there were many different urges in me locked in battle, and that I was being physically torn apart. There were these voices in me  "you will, you will " and this knowing, darker voice that insisted, " No she won't".

I thought about the therapist's encouragement to go to an AA meeting, and went in to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face, stumbling around, and made a decision to go.

I went down the street about a 20 minute walk, felt much longer because I was wasted, and found this church which I've walked by several times. There were all these people outside it; this woman waved me over.

Her name is L.  When I went in to the meeting she sat with me, and during the meeting I burst into tears, and afterwards, all these women came up to me, hugged me, and gave me their numbers.

L lives around the corner from me, so we walked home together with this guy R. I felt like we were 3 ghosts in Greenpoint. We were talking about drinking,  and he kept saying, "it's not a game, it's not a game", and the ground felt like it was moving.

I stopped into a store, and when I came out L said " Will you take this pack of cigarettes and smoke instead of drink this evening? If it gets to hard, you can come over".

So I took them, and then later in the evening, I went over to her apartment.

She is older than me, used to be an actress, and her birthday, like the therapist who sent me to AA,  is on Halloween. She has become my interim sponsor.