Amends

“Be careful about the advice you give to people. Because you may be right.”

I laughed with my dad for an hour tonight. We were re-living a conversation we had. Conversation may be the wrong word. It was something far more personal than that. Not as father and son. But as men. The uncomfortable conversation (that word again!) that happens when you have both lived long enough to see the world not for what you want it to be, but what it actually is.

The details of our conversation from that day – for you – are unimportant. It was a matter that my dad and I needed to resolve. And we did. On that day, I stopped being a boy. My father ceased to be a superhero. And he became my best friend.

Tonight I needed to remember that conversation. Not because of something he did. Because of what I have done.

**

“Be careful about becoming holier-than-thou. Because it’s really easy to become assholier-than-thou.”

The sins of your past never quite wash away. They never leave the rearview mirror. You can’t outrun them.

I’ve accepted that. Sobriety has allowed me to understand that. We will not regret the past, I was promised.

And I’ve come to realize that truth. It’s a burden that I don’t think is always clear in my writing. At least it’s not clear to the non-addict. I know this because I write things, I disclose things, I am honest about things and that brings a level of worry to my friends about my sobriety.

Because sobriety doesn’t that same acceptance to those in my life.

They see the pain dripping from my words, resonating on the blog or on Facebook or on Twitter or from a conversation. It touches them. It scares them. It confuses them. It annoys them. It bothers them.

It does all of the things that human interactions of all kinds do to us each day. But addiction comes with that extra burden – that fear that if they don’t respond, maybe this is the time I slip and end up dead.

Addiction is the worst form of selfishness.

My friends, the people I love, the people who love me. These are the people who face to worst of this selfish addiction because they are in some state of worry about something for which they have no control.

**

“These things say more about the people who tell these stories. But maybe they show us a little about what we did to them as well.”

My life before sobriety was one that in many ways cannot be justified.

Bad decisions. Mistakes. Irresponsible behaviors. The kinds of actions that when added up over a lifetime create an equation for who I was. Who I am. Who I will always be.

The changes I have made, am making and will make won’t, for many people, alter that equation. The sum total of my life will always include that x factor within it.

This is not different than those people who exist around me. We are fallible, frail people who cause damage – many times unknowingly, but just as often with intent. Mine are simply laid out in public. Not just through my life online, or my class disclosures, or my writing, or my presentations. Through the stories that others tell. Easy fodder for manipulation. Actions that can be framed in ways that tell a story about me.

Which of these are real? Which are not?

It’s the eternal questions my friends, the people I love, the people who love me are forced to answer. To defend.

A friend asked me if I would always wear my addiction and my sobriety so publicly. I responded that I didn’t know, but I couldn’t image a time when I didn’t. Because it reminds me daily that my first job is always to stay sober. And my second job is to relieve the burden from my friends who must deal with these questions.

**

“People mistake my goodness today for a strength of character. They don’t understand it’s an act of desperation.”

Addiction has humbled me. Forced me to face the defects of my character. The failings of my actions. The frailty of my life.

It’s boot camp for life. Addiction broke me down. Completely. Wholly. Totally. I can’t claim one ounce of me survived the destruction of sobriety.

Every idea I had about myself. Every value I held. Every action I’d taken. They were summarily deconstructed as I went through detoxification. I came out the other end utterly empty, broken. There is nothing but humility as you shake in the darkness of your house, too weak to move as you vomit on yourself, unable to think, sweat pouring out of your skin.

Those never-ending moments, the ones that stretched for months as my body relieved itself of the psychological trauma of sobriety just enough so that I could relive those traumas in healthier ways, resonate with me today. The pain of those days, those weeks, those months is just not as visceral to the outside world.

But those moments have allowed me to view the people around me in a different light. Particularly the ones, the few, who have been so damaged by my life that they can’t relieve themselves of the burden of my actions, my words. Not that I have ruined anyone. That’s arrogance. Simply that I have created a pain that, like mine, resonates through time, across geography.

True amends, the act of contrition addicts – that I –  must go through to accept the responsibility for the pain I have brought – even those who have been so hurt that they lash out in ways that are dangerous to my sobriety, maybe especially to those people, are not the actions of moral strength. They are the actions of somebody who has become so broken, so desperately broken, that they can finally accept the true nature of their actions.

Amends, particularly amends of this type, are the cornerstone of sobriety.

**

“Sobriety doesn’t make you perfect. It makes you sober.”

Tonight I sit and type my second amends letter of the weekend. One that my sponsor cajoled me to write almost a year ago. One that I was unable to write. Because I wasn’t ready to understand my role in the pain. Wasn’t able to accept the responsibilities that were mine.

I may still not be ready.

But you don’t get to dictate the terms of your apology. That’s what I told my dad. Unfortunately, I was right.

The reality is that every day I go through sobriety and don’t make amends for the pain I brought is a day of selfishness. One day of relief for me that I take at the expense of not accepting my role in the pain I have created for other people is a selfish reminder of my addiction.

Every day that I avoid that harsh reality, I am simply searching for an easier, softer way to be sober.

At the expense of those who endured so much of the pain I created.

I forgot that. And for that, I am sorry.