Thursday Thoughts …
Courtesy: We Heart It
They say it is going to rain tonight … The skies are still clear at this hour. (9:43pm) And it is 29c with a humidex of 35c. It is still sticky and humid outside.
I was going to run tonight, but instead I took myself to a meeting. I was up and ready to go early and so I walked up to the bus stop and just made a Westbound bus. It was a beautiful night over all and there were lots of people sitting outside St. Matthias before the meeting.
Grasshopper says that my writing has changed since leaving FWE, and that may be true. I don’t usually write up the Thursday night share but I will tonight.
Our man was fresh in the program. 3 years in and he had a really good share. He had a really great understanding of our text and he spoke confidently and spiritually.
It is interesting how us men start out as itty bitty bad asses, wanting to be alone, to be defiant and not care one iota about family or friends, once the addiction to substances begins. Our man was one of those angry, insolent and violent insubordinate men about town.
Having been indoctrinated in AA as a child due to family being in the program, none of it stuck or made sense until a lifetime of abuse had taken place. It was said about said family member that he was a good man who spent a lifetime helping those who needed and wanted it. But he couldn’t help his son who was on the fast bus to hell.
From the age of 18 until well into his 40′s a lifetime was spent drinking and drugging. Taking hostages and collecting wives and populating Europe with children that he did not care about. Multiple divorces and a handful of children in far flung places, our man was a master of the geographic.
We all know that story. It is not a good thing when your reputation in town is one of the blackout drinker who would fall asleep at some dumpy bar having to have friends come and rescue him to sober up only to start it all over again the next day after one hell of a hangover.
Our man hit his bottom and finally admitted the truth that he was inept to pay attention to, he admitted he was beat. It is sad that he lost his younger brother to suicide from the drink and drugs a couple years prior to coming in and also loosing his father and not being able to make amends to the living, but in the end he had to visit a cemetery to make amends to them both once he got sober.
The first 164 pages of the Big Book are required reading and best done in the company of other men and women who have trodden this road to help carry us along while we study the book and work the steps ourselves.
He also stated that yes we go to meetings, we drink our coffee and pay our seventh, but what is more important is that we step up and DO something. If you have time to live and time to spare, get out there and contribute to our community. The phones, which we can now do from home to guarantee that when a suffering person picks up that phone, there is someone there to answer that call. There are too many hours vacant with nobody on the phones here in Montreal.
Take a meeting into an institution. Visit the prisons and share what you have with those on the inside. Spend time working at inter-group working in the archives. There aren’t enough workers across the board.
Our man spends his Thursday nights at Bordeaux prison here in Montreal.
I haven’t committed to doing anything at this point because I worked the phones for two years and at the end of that run, I had had enough with the same old drunks calling over and over again. I just couldn’t do it any more.
When I first got sober I was doing prison meetings. Then I stopped because the men taking people in, stopped driving and coming to the meetings. I never re-engaged.
I have made a commitment to making myself better. I go to meetings, I work with others and I am part of a home group. I hit three meetings a week, along with the three days that I am training for the 5 K run in September. That’s all I am allowed to do at this point. I have to get to the point that I cam sustain a 5 k run confidently, and in this heat, I am not running at my optimum level.
After the meeting I grabbed the 104 home. I don’t usually take that bus because I wasn’t sure where it ended – but I got on anyways because it was going in the general direction of home, and I got off at Alexis Nihon and walked home from there.
A good night was had by all. It needs to cool off, sooner than later. Hopefully we will be purchasing an air conditioner the first of next week. Hubby has promised me some cash so that I can buy one because I showered three times yesterday, once before the run, after the run and before I went to bed.
I don’t do heat very well. Being POZ has it limits. I wish we had the care program we had in the states that helped us get air conditioners in our homes to help us beat the heat. It was a successful program for people with aids in Miami. There aren’t those kinds of social assistance programs here that I know of.
So that was the day in a nutshell. I hope grasshopper is pleased with this.
Bye for now, more to come, stay tuned…
