Love Hurts, Love Stings, Love Endures

Yesterday I remembered something the priest said during his Homily at our wedding: “You marry the person you think you know, and spend the rest of your lives really getting to know each other.” Another priest at another wedding eight years later told the bride and groom: “Your job is to get each other into Heaven.”

Mood music:

[spotify:track:6iCCvEH7xhkcsFTXnLVLIK]

Sometimes you get to know each other and you don’t like what you see. Then things fall apart. Two family members I care a lot about are going through that very experience. Sometimes, it happens. Hell, Al and Tipper Gore split after 40 years of marriage. Nobody saw that coming.

It all makes me think of my own marriage and how lucky I am. But it hasn’t always been easy. I’ve learned that marriage is a lot of work, and it always will be. And it’s always a two-way street.

A deacon friend of mine once described helping out your husband or wife as “dying of self.” On the surface that doesn’t sound pleasant, but it’s actually a fabulous thing: It means taking on extra burden — chores around the house, for instance — so your spouse can get a break.

That’s something I’ve always done to the point of obsession: Clean the house, making the kids’ lunches and all those things husbands supposedly don’t do (though I’m told I’ve become more of a slob since starting my recovery). The problem is that I always thought that was enough.

To this day I can be an emotionally closed-off person. I probably get it from my father. He’s one of the most loving guys I know, but he has always had a tough time showing his emotion. I’ve seen him cry once in the last 40 years: when my brother died. I’m sure he’s done it other times, especially when my sister was having her troubles. But I only saw that one time.

I’ve also never been good at talking back during an argument with Erin.

Erin and I have a strong marriage. I’d say it’s getting stronger by the day. My love for her is, anyway. But like every married couple, we argue sometimes about all the typical things: Money, how to parent the kids, etc. When it’s a routine day, I often keep my feelings to myself, and fail to SHOW her my feelings on a daily basis. Then, when we argue, I shut down and sit there like a stone as she tells me everything I’ve done wrong in the last day, week, or month.

A therapist once told me I needed to argue back. Not yelling back. Not name calling. Just calmly pointing out my own feelings and side of things. The first time I did it, I think Erin was really taken aback. That was scary. I was always afraid if I did that she’d leave me. That was never a danger, but I can be stupid sometimes. I think I’ve gotten a lot better at this stuff, but I know I still put that wall up at times. Putting up a wall can be a bitch for any relationship, because sooner or later bad feelings will race at that wall like a drunk behind the wheel of a Porsche and slam right into it. Some bricks in the wall crack and come loose, but by then it can be too late. The relationship is totaled.

I’ve come to realize this will always be a danger we have to watch for. It’s a danger in any marriage. Carol and Mike Brady never really existed. If they did, they could have used a few good fights. They wouldn’t have wasted so much time sitting up in bed reading boring books.

This shit is so complicated. But this much I do know:

I’m not the same guy Erin married. She’s not the same woman, either. Much to my father-in-law’s chagrin, she’s become a lot more liberal in her political views.

If I were the same man I was back then — imprisoned by an OCD-fueled haze of fear, insecurity, self-loathing and self-destructive behavior — I’d either be dead or divorced. I had to change for this thing to work. The thing is, I wanted it to work badly enough that I started doing what I had to do in that cold, dark autumn of 2004, when all the cracks in my soul began spilling blood all over everyone around me.

I’m better now. But to say I still have a long way to go is an understatement. I still keep that wall in my closet next to the other skeletons, and sometimes I bring it out for some more trouble.

But as much as love can hurt, I’m going to do what I must to make it endure.

October 3, 2010

43 Years Through The Minefield

Today is my sister Wendi’s 43rd birthday. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the day than to explain what she’s been through and how far she has come.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MceneYWgPc4&fs=1&hl=en_US]

A Sister’s Battle with Depression

This blog is chock full of my own experiences with depression and addiction. I even hint here and there about how the addictive behavior runs in the family. But I’ve avoided the story of depression among siblings until now. This post is about my older sister, who had it much harder than me.

I haven’t mentioned it up to this point because it’s her story and her business. I didn’t want to violate her privacy. But recently I’ve realized her story is an important part of my own. So I sought and received her permission to tackle it head on. Hopefully, this post validates the trust she’s putting in me.

Since this blog focuses on my own experiences, I’m not always effective at pointing out other people’s success stories. But Wendi is a success story, whether she realizes it or not.

Growing up, me, Wendi and Michael had our individual problems. I had the Crohn’s Disease, Michael had the asthma that eventually killed him, and Wendi had the misfortune of catching abuse from a mother flustered by all the chaos.

I remember the routine at 22 Lynnway well. Early in the morning, before school, Wendi was required to do a lot of chores. I particularly remember the sound of the vacuum. To this day, I get rattled by the sound of a vacuum because of the memories it brings up. If she missed a spot on the rug, she caught my mother’s physical and verbal wrath. Because me and my brother were sick so much, we also got a lot of the love and attention while Wendi was off on the side trying not to piss my mother off.

When my parents divorced in 1980, things seemed to get worse. When my brother died, things got worse still. In my mother’s defense, there was a lot of hell and heartbreak she had to live through, and to be honest I’m not sure I would have handled it much better if I were in her shoes. Mental anguish makes you do stupid things.

When my stepmother came along, my mother’s jealousy grew worse, and so did the abuse. Wendi caught the brunt of it.

Like me, Wendi had a lot of ups and downs with weight. Like me, she tried to control it through reckless means.

Sometime around 1991, things started coming to a head for my sister. She started plunging into deep depressions. Between 1991 and 1998, I can remember three occasions where this led to her hospitalization. She talked openly about wanting to kill herself. One such occasion, in 1998, was a couple months before my wedding. Since it was only two years after Sean Marley’s suicide, this made me more angry than anything. My anger was a selfish one. How dare she get suicidal and hospitalized and put me through this all over again. And how dare she do this while I was getting ready for my wedding.

I realize something now that I didn’t realize back then: Depression and the collateral damage it causes to others is never really in the sufferer’s control to stop. And it can care less about timetables. Mental illness doesn’t take breaks for holidays and weddings, for the convenience of others. Given my own battle with depression in subsequent years, I get it now.

I’m sorry for getting angry with her back then.

There’s something else I feel sorry about: Because of my own mental turmoil, I chose to avoid situations that made me uncomfortable. Wendi’s depression made me very uncomfortable. The result is that I wasn’t the helpful younger brother I should have been.

In 2003, Wendi caught a bizarre infection the doctors couldn’t make sense of. She spent a couple weeks in ICU and pumping her full of antibiotics didn’t seem to help her much. A couple times we were certain she wouldn’t make it. But since then, things have gotten better for Wendi. Not easier. Maybe not even happier. But better.

A couple years earlier, she had announced to the family that she was gay. It took some family members by shock, but not me. When I thought about a couple of the more “normal” relationships she had tried to nurture in past years and the depression she went into when things didn’t work out, it all made perfect sense to me. She was trying to live a life that didn’t gibe with her true nature.

When she came clean about that, her life didn’t get easier. But I suspect, because she found a way to be truthful with herself, that some things got easier to deal with. She’s been through her ups and downs since then. A marriage didn’t work out. She suffered some nasty complications from gastric bypass surgery. But she has moved on from those difficulties much more quickly than in past difficulties.

Like I said, dealing with one’s issues doesn’t mean you live happily ever after. Putting up with difficult people doesn’t get any easier. Peace is never an absence of conflict.

But when we get better at facing those challenges, life in general becomes a little sweeter.

That’s what I’ve learned from my own struggles. And I think that’s what Wendi has learned as well.

I know a lot of people who have fought the demons and gotten bloodied and grown a hell of a lot stronger in the process.

Wendi is one of them.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

September 30, 2010

Say Hello to My New Limit

Another mood swing this afternoon. The dark, brooding sky appears to be rubbing off on me. The happy lamp helps, but if I sit in front of it too long I get the sweats. And it’s not the same as sunshine.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMWhk4u2c4g&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I’ve been having a lot of these episodes lately, and it worries me. It’s most likely the result of my sleep pattern being out of whack. I alternate between too much sleep one day, not enough the next.

The clouds don’t help. It seems like we’ve had a lot of gloomy weather lately, and too much of that will fuck with my head every time.

My biggest concern is that something’s off with the medication, though probably not. One thing I’ve learned is that if you don’t take care of yourself in other ways, like having a consistent sleep pattern, it will blunt the effectiveness of the drug.

The other problem is that I’ve overextended myself, being on team for a Catholic retreat, doing a lot of extra service in my 12-Step program and keeping busy on the work side, along with all the activity that comes with having a first and fourth grader.

Since shaking off the fear and anxiety and cleaning up my act a couple years ago, I’ve had a limitless appetite for new experiences. And so I’ve gone on the road a lot and taken on many projects in and outside of work.

It’s been a blessing. It still is. But it’s possible I’m starting to find my new limit. Perhaps I’m a victim of my own success. There are far worse problems to have.

This is actually a good thing. It’s healthy.

The trick now is in figuring out how to stop over-reaching and achieve the right balance.

It’s too bad I suck at balance.

But it’s never too late to learn how to do it right.

September 21, 2010

Happily Ever After Is Bullshit & That’s OK

Often, when depression slaps me upside the head, it’s on the heels of a prolonged period of good feelings and positive energy. Especially this time of year, when the daylight recedes early and returns late. These setbacks can be discouraging, but you can survive them with the right perspective.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/NqTuN-35580

It’s easy for people who fight mental illness and addictive behavior to go on an endless, futile search for the happily ever after, where you somehow find the magic bullet to murder your demons, thus beginning years of bliss and carefree existence.

I’m sorry to tell you this, folks: That line of thinking is bullshit.

There’s no such thing as happily ever after. If you want it that badly, go watch a Disney film.

I used to grope around for eternal happiness in religious conversion. But some of my hardest days came AFTER I was Baptized a Catholic. I eventually found my way to abstinence and sobriety and got a pretty good handle on the OCD. But there have been plenty of sucky days since then.

The slide back into depression this past weekend was an example.

I like to think of these setbacks as growing pains. We’re supposed to have bad days to test the better angels of our nature. We’re supposed to learn how to move forward despite the obstacles that used to make us hide and get junked up. When you can stay sober and keep your mental disorders in check despite a bad day, that’s REAL recovery.

This is where I consider myself lucky for having had Crohn’s Disease. That’s a chronic condition. It comes and goes. But you can reach a point where the flare ups are minimal.

It’s the same with mental illness and addiction. You can’t rid yourself of it completely. But you can reach a point — through a lot of hard work and leaps of Faith — where the episodes are minimal.

The depression flared up this weekend, just like the Crohn’s Disease used to. But I’m better now. And I didn’t have to take a drug like Prednisone to get there. I just needed a little extra sleep.

Prozac, therapy and the 12 Steps have helped me immensely. But they don’t take the deeper pain at your core away. These things just help you deal with the rough days without getting sucked back into the abyss.

The depression I experienced this weekend felt more like a flare up of arthritis than that desperate, mournful feeling I used to get. It was a nag, but it didn’t break me. It used to break me all the time.

That’s progress.

Maybe I’m not happy forever after, but that’s OK. My ability to separate the blessings from the bullshit has improved considerably in the last five years.

That’s good enough for me.

September 7, 2010June 26, 2015

A Sister’s Battle with Depression

Wendi’s is a success story, whether she realizes it or not.

Growing up, me, Wendi and Michael had our individual problems. I had the Crohn’s Disease, Michael had the asthma that eventually killed him, and Wendi was caught in the middle of all that.

Sometime around 1991, things started coming to a head. She started plunging into deep depressions. Between 1991 and 1998, I can remember three occasions where this led to her hospitalization. She talked openly about wanting to kill herself. One such occasion, in 1998, was a couple months before my wedding. Since it was only two years after Sean Marley’s suicide, this made me more angry than anything. My anger was a selfish one. How dare she get suicidal and hospitalized and put me through this all over again. And how dare she do this while I was getting ready for my wedding.

I’m sorry for getting angry with her back then.

This post is my long overdue hat tip to you, Wendi. I love you.

August 18, 2010

Sometimes, You Gotta Cut Ties

A friend of mine asked Facebook friends if it’s right to cut ties with someone you care about when the relationship is too laden with dysfunction. I’ll keep the person’s name out to protect privacy, but it’s something I’ve had to confront in my long, messy road to recovery from mental illness and addiction. So here are a few thoughts.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNdagpIgItw&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I come from a family full of addictive behavior and mental illness. Since high drama is a constant guest in this type of family, it can be hard to be around family and just feel comfortable. On the one hand you want to smack a few people around — and they want to smack you around as well. On the other hand, you love them and badly want to please them.

In my recovery, I’ve found it a lot easier to peacefully co-exist with family dysfunction. Truth be told, I enjoy some of it. Most of all, I’ve gained a new appreciation for some of them in recent years, because I’ve been able to see their side if the situations we quarreled through [For more on this, see my compilation post on my Revere attitude.].

But some relationships bent and broke along the way as well. The most glaring example is the fractured relationship between me, my mother and some step-siblings, aunts and uncles when, inevitably, sides were taken.

I’ve wrestled mightily over this one.

We often look at abusive relationships in black and white. There’s the abuser and the victim. But it’s never that simple. I forgave my mother a long time ago for the darker events of my childhood. I doubt I would have done much better in her shoes. Her marriage to my father was probably doomed from the start, and the break-up was full of rancor. Me and my brother were sick a lot, and one of us didn’t make it.

I didn’t fully appreciate what a body blow that was until I became a parent. After Michael died, she became a suffocating force in my life. I did the same to my own kids until I started dealing with the OCD.

I think she did the best she could under the circumstances. So why has the relationship been cold for four years? There are many reasons. Some her fault, some mine, and a lot of other relationships have been bruised and broken in the process.

There’s a lot I can get into about this, but the simplest answer is that this relationship is a casualty of mental illness and addiction. This one can’t be repaired so easily, because much of my OCD and addictive behavior comes directly from her. She is my biggest trigger.

This is an old story. Mental illness and addiction are almost always a family affair. I was destined to have a binge-eating addiction because both my parents have one. They were never drinkers, though my step-father was. Food was their narcotic. And so it became for me.

My friend on Facebook is in a much different situation from mine, of course. I have no idea if addictions and mental illness are factors in that relationship. And those things don’t have to be a factor, either.

All I know is that you try hard to love your family and everyone else around you. But when the relationship makes life unmanageable, it can’t go on. That’s my own uncomfortable reality. It’s always worth trying to make things work, but when abuse continues despite all your efforts, it’s time to make a break.

That doesn’t mean you toss that person in the trash heap forever.

I still have my hopes that one of these days I can repair the relationship with my mother. But for now, for the sake of my recovery and for my wife and kids, I have to stand my ground. I don’t have to like it, nor should I. But it’s an unfortunate, sucky necessity.

That’s going to be the case for some relationships whether addiction and depression are part of the problem or not.

My Faith tells me to honor my mother and father. Every time I go into the confession booth at church it’s the first thing I bring up.

One priest put it this way: “Honor thy mother and father doesn’t mean you roll over and allow abuse to continue.”

Yet still I wrestle with it.

But for the sake of my immediate family, recovery has to come first. Without it, I fail EVERYONE.

I hope that’s somewhat helpful to my friend.

July 25, 2010

Learning to Fight Well

In every marriage there are arguments. They can be good for you, but only if you learn to do it with skill. I’m working on it, but I’m not there yet.

Mood music for this post: “Hysteria” by Def Leppard:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SluRyO4EA4&hl=en_US&fs=1]

I’ve always steered clear of this topic because nobody likes to talk about arguments with a husband or wife. But there’s a lesson to be learned, so in I go. And since I’m one of those people who are still trying to get it right, this is good therapy for me, too.

Erin and I have a strong marriage. I’d say it’s getting stronger by the day. But like every married couple, we argue sometimes about all the typical things: Money, how to parent the kids, etc.

Yesterday was one of those days. The trigger for this one, I think, is the stress Erin’s feeling about our tight finances. Money is tight because we decided to take a chance on her quitting her job late last year to focus full-throttle on starting an editing business.

She’s still trying to find the right balance in all this, and it can be a real test of her self confidence. Meanwhile, I’m in charge of the family budget and paying the bills right now (we alternate on that chore every three months and I took it over a couple weeks ago). She has good reason to feel stressed about that one, because I really suck at saving money and processing numbers.

I even had to ask my father for financial assistance a few weeks ago, and that was a killer for me.

In my view, she has nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of. Sure, money is a problem. But there’s a lot of love in this house. We love each other madly, and Sean and Duncan raise the happiness level a hundred-fold. We have a roof over our heads, food on the table and I have a job that I love. And, most importantly, we have God.

As a sponsor in Overeater’s Anonymous and as a longtime journalist, I’ve seen many people who don’t have these things. I also see a lot of people who have it far, far worse when I volunteer in the church food pantry. And, finding out that a childhood friend is on the streets and jobless because he’s a sex offender really puts things in perspective.

Still, life can be no less difficult in one’s own little world. So yesterday we argued.

I used to avoid arguments at all costs. There was a lot of yelling in my house growing up, and my instinct is always to avoid situations where there is yelling. A lot of earlier spats usually started as a result of all the stupid things I was doing as a result of my OCD and addictive behavior.

So, I really sucked at marital spats early on. I don’t want to say things that will be taken the wrong way, so I throw up a wall and sit there in a tight-lipped rage. It’s especially easy to do that when the thing that started the fight is usually something that was my fault.

This would be especially frustrating to Erin, because she would literally be talking to a wall.

I still have a habit of doing this sort of thing. But I’m trying to change that.

I’m trying to open up more about what I’m really feeling. I still try too hard to put it into the perfect words, though. That can cause problems. I’m trying hard to not make an argument about all the things I think I’m doing right and she’s doing wrong because that never ends well. I know she’s working hard on that, too.

There’s one thing we’ve always been pretty good at, though, and that’s making sure we resolve an argument before going to bed.

That’s something we learned in Pre-Cana before we got married: Never go to bed angry with each other.

Have we ever let that happen? Sure. But we’ve followed that Pre-Cana advice most of the time.

We’re also a lot better at talking through things and finding some sort of resolution. Erin’s still a lot better at it than me, but I’d like to think I’m better at it than I used to be.

This much I’ve learned: When spouses don’t communicate and let their frustrations build, it almost never ends well. We’ve seen this happen to several couples in recent years. One or both sides deny any fault on their own part and make no effort to resolve things.

That’s what happened to my parents. Happily, both parents have had more success in their second marriages, both of which are going on 30 years.

As a kid I always thought happy families never fought. The truth is closer to this: Happy families fight frequently, but they do it well and always walk away from an argument stronger than before.

In Ted Kennedy’s memoir, “True Compass,” he recalled a conversation his niece, Caroline, had with Rose, the Kennedy family matriarch. Rose noted that she never fought with her husband, Joseph P. Kennedy.

“Then how did you work out your differences?” Caroline asked her grandmother.

“I would just say ‘yes, dear’ and then go to Paris,” Rose responded.

My Nana and Papa fought all the time. But their fights were more the stuff of family comedy. Papa would make a crack he knew would set Nana off. She’d yell some profanity-laced sentences back at him, and he’d look at me with a wicked grin and wink. The truth is that they loved each other deeply, and though I couldn’t see it at the time, they knew how to fight well. It was a double-edged sword, though, because others in the family have tried to argue the same way and the results have often been a lot less successful.

Anyway, I have a lot to learn about the skills of a good argument. But I’m working on it.

As for yesterday’s argument, we didn’t go to bed angry at each other.

And, as is always the case, fight or no fight, I woke up this morning loving her more than I did the day before, or the day before that.

July 21, 2010

The Kid Sister

The 80s weren’t all bad, thanks to the kid sister who came along.

Mood music: “Nobody Told Me” by John Lennon. I used to sing the “Everybody’s smoking, and no one’s getting high” line to my kid sister, much to her dismay.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBCdlBrgEmE&hl=en_US&fs=1]

I’ve written about a lot of the darker parts of my childhood and teen years and how they factored into an adulthood of mental illness and addiction. But those years were brightened by a particularly strong ray of sunshine. Here’s the story of my kid sister, Shira.

Shira’s 15 years younger than me and was born nearly two years after my brother’s death. I was sick with the flu the day she was born and was also going through a Crohn’s flare up.

To say she brightened the mood at 22 Lynnway would be an understatement. She was an especially adorable baby and was a welcome distraction from everything that was going on at the time.

She’s grown up now and I don’t see her much these days, but last night we got a chance to catch up at my father’s birthday dinner. She was telling me about her current job teaching English and how she wants to use her teaching skills to work more with the disadvantaged. She recently got back from Mexico, where she lived for several months. Before that she lived in South America for quite awhile, teaching the locals.

She’s quite a kid. If not for the big chip on my shoulder, I might have been more like her in my 20s. I’m happy with how my life turned out and believe I had to go through the dark stuff to get here. But Shira has really been an inspiration to me. She crisscrosses the globe without fear and has an easygoing way about her that’s nearly impossible to crack. I know, because I’ve tried.

I’ve always been the teasing sort of brother. I tell everyone who will listen that I remember when I could fit Shira in a beer mug. I remember once, when she was about 4 or 5, she told me to stop teasing.

“I can’t help it,” I said. “I tease you cause I love you.”

“Then don’t love me,” she shot back.

Naturally, I told everyone about that exchange, and with more than a little glee.

Around the same time, I was having a lot of parties in the basement of the Revere house. The morning after, Shira would often make the rounds, stopping at the various friends who would be passed out asleep on my bed, on the couch or on the floor.

Even back then, no matter how much I drank the night before, I would always wake up early so I could sneak cigarettes without being seen.

I’d always enjoyed watching her make the rounds. My guests didn’t always enjoy it, but that was fine with me.

She brought a lot of joy to a family that was reeling from a string of bad breaks. She brings a lot of joy to the family today.

This post is my little thank you note to her.

July 18, 2010

The Perils of Service, Part 2

Volunteering can be a bitch, especially when you forget who you’re there to help.

Mood music for this post: “My Way” by Limp Bizkit:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ8Qi86i82s&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Once a month, I spend a couple hours on a Saturday volunteering in the food pantry run by our church. It can be a frustrating endeavor.

Part of the frustration is my own fault. I should be there more often, but I’m only there once a month because I’m spread so thin these days between family, work and sponsoring people in my 12-Step program.

A lot of new people are working the pantry these days. They’re not that new, mind you. They just seem new to me because I’m not there enough to be used to them. They’re good folks, but in my head — when the rush of people come in for their food — I pick apart how they do things. I’ll get annoyed if they try to process multiple orders at once because the bags of food get mixed up and chaos ensues. One guy is very serious and doesn’t laugh at my jokes.

The Saturday crew is always bitching about the Tuesday crew leaving a mess. The Tuesday crew is always bitching about the Saturday crew for the same reason.

And there I am, on my own perch, picking apart how everyone does things because I want everyone to do it my way. I am a control freak, after all. Not that I have a right to be.

These people are there every Tuesday and Saturday. I show up once a month.

If anything, they should be annoyed by me, and they probably are.

Clashing egos is pretty common among those who do service. On the recovering addict side, everyone in the room suffers from compulsive behavior. People like us usually have bloated egos. Mine is especially bloated. This makes me an asshole at times.

But I press on and do what I need to do, and things always work out.

The friction that’s always present among the volunteers at the start of a shift always eases off and we’re all getting along midway through. You can pick on how different people do things, but they’re all giving up their time to make something work.

And once I get out of my own way, things start to fall into place.

At some point in the shift, it hits me. The people in line are there because they can’t afford groceries. They’re down on their luck and doing the best they can.

And when you hand them the bags of donated food, they are GRATEFUL.

And they help me as much as I help them. When I see people who need to live on donated food standing tall, helping each other carry bags to their cars, picking up food for someone who may live at the other end of town from where they live, enjoying time with the children they have in tow, they bring me back to Earth and remind me what life’s all about.

The other volunteers — the ones who are there practically every week while I just breeze in once a month — help me too.

When I see how dedicated they are, it makes me work harder at being a better man.

July 12, 2010

You Can Learn a Lot from a Dummy

Sometimes, addicts look and talk like dummies. But they can teach you some surprising things about yourself.

Mood music for this post: “Dumb” by Nirvana:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CYC8w-qstc&hl=en_US&fs=1]

When you first walk into a 12-Step meeting, everyone in the room seems strange. People may be off the food, drugs and alcohol, but their speech may still be slurred. You dismiss them as dummies, failing to see you’re the same as them. They can teach you more than you can teach them.

Or so I’m discovering.

As I mentioned last week, I’m up to sponsoring three people in OA. It’s been a classic case of me feeling inconvenienced about helping someone else. The selfish side of me kicks in and I start getting pissed if someone has to call me five times a day to be talked off the ledge.

I may have found God and recovery, but I discover on a daily basis how much work I still have to do to become the kind of person I should be. Working toward redemption can be a bitch.

And yet, in a lot of little ways, I can see how I’m being pushed in the right direction despite myself.

The sponsoring is one piece of the puzzle. Being the jerk I’m capable of being, I found myself looking down on my sponsees at first. I had a stronger recovery than them, I felt. I was the teacher and they were the ones who couldn’t talk or walk straight. That’s a bullshit notion, of course. And I’m learning the lesson quickly.

The more I get to know my sponsees, the more I see what THEY have to teach ME. Two of them have been in and out of 12-Step programs for the better part of two decades. Hell, two decades ago all I cared about was getting wrecked in my basement in Revere.

They’ve been to the brink of death more than once at the hands of their multiple addictions. As the reader knows by now, binge eating is the main addiction I had to do something about, and I’ve enjoyed too much wine in the past, along with the pain pills prescribed to me for the constant back pain I used to have. But I have nothing on these folks. My other sponsee is somewhat new to the program, but he’s much more in tune with his Faith than I am at this point, so I’m learning from him, too.

I”m driving two of my sponsees to the Saturday-morning OA meeting these days, and one of them, a life-long resident of Haverhill, is teaching me a lot about the city. As we drive by all kinds of obscure buildings, he’ll tell me about how one used to be a shoe factory and another place used to be a bar he’d hang out in after 10-hour work days for two bucks an hour. He’s a big bear of a man with a heart of gold. Yesterday he left me the following voice mail:

“I just want to say two things to you: THANK YOU. I love you, buddy.”

This, from a guy who has only known me for a few weeks.

Just in case I needed any more convincing that sponsorship has become a necessary tool for me, the Gospel in Mass yesterday was The Parable of the Good Samaritan:

Luke 10:30-37: Jesus answered, “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, ‘Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.’ Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?” He said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Father Michael Harvey expanded on what the Gospel means in his Homily. This was the children’s Mass, so he broke it down in terms that the dumbest among us adults could understand. His last line seemed to be pointed straight at me:

“Giving help was not convenient for the Samaritan. One might say it was a pain and that this is what it’s like when someone proves to be very needy. God puts these people in our lives because we need them as much as they need us.”

So I’m learning.

Yesterday afternoon, a couple close cousins — Sharon and Martha — came to visit us and we were sitting out back, talking about this blog. Sharon apparently keeps up on it more than Martha does, and Sharon said something like, “I tell Martha all the time — you can learn a lot from Bill.”

To which I chuckled, remembering the old commercials with the crash test dummies, and said, “Yeah, you can learn a lot from a dummy.”