My First Al-Anon Meeting

The Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

I heard this prayer a lot growing up. While I thought it was another piece of poetry to simply help me ignore anything in my 'reality' and distract myself with thoughts of 'heaven,' I was always intrigued by it...basically from the standpoint of not understanding the last line.
With the realization from home that no one else would take care of me except me and the teachings from school that one person could change the world, I thought the last line was sort of a trick. "haha," I would think, "I get it--the difference is that there is no difference! Anything I can't directly change I can affect by changing other things..." Painfully, I’m now realizing this isn’t the case…

What I’m learning now is that even in all my ACOA self-centeredness, I haven’t spent enough time changing the only thing I do have power over—myself. Yet, I guess that’s the point of being self-centered—everything else revolves around you and changes according to your will and choices, as opposed to you, the person, doing any changing and letting ‘everything else’ fall into its own place. I had a hunch that I was missing something regarding only myself over this past summer.

This summer was supposed to be easy. I was supposed to have an easy internship that raked in some cash to make for an easier transition into my first apartment. This nice arrangement was supposed to give me plenty of time and peace to set everything up in my apartment exactly as I wanted and in plenty of time before the school year started so that I could have no excuses as to why I wasn’t able to perform to the level I knew I could. If you read my recent post, you know this didn’t turn out as it was “supposed to.”

I disdainfully noticed exactly what was happening—things weren’t going my way! I grumped around (and still do…) complaining that "no matter what I try to change, still nothing goes how it’s meant to!" These feelings were particularly noticeable in my relationship as between my boyfriend and me, we attended six summer weddings. When we weren’t at one together, I couldn’t function the entire time he was gone. I found myself paralyzed in my wonderings of his every thought, word, and action—was he excited to be there without me? Was he excited that he could get away with having a few beers without me knowing? Did he think of me with every sip of alcohol? Did he care about how every sip my parents took worsened my life? Even though I know he’s not getting drunk, does he care that others are? Does he wish he could get drunk too? Etc, etc, etc… Suddenly, my morning, afternoon, and/or evening was gone; I was exhausted, and just plain sad. This made it particularly difficult when he would call after the celebrations and ask, “How are you?” What was I supposed to say? It was even more difficult when I would ask, “So, how was everything?” and only hear, “it was good!” As you can imagine, I felt like I was left completely hanging, even though my boyfriend had no concept of anything that went through my mind the entire time he was supporting a happy occasion.

Of course, when I would share such feelings and distresses with him, it left both of us feeling frustrated, guilty, and confused.

Because of all this stress I felt my personal issues brought to our relationship, when my boyfriend’s birthday came along, buying any kind of ‘present’ for him seemed meaningless. Even though I got so frustrated and worked up about his personal actions and choices, I still recognized that he did make a lot of effort to help and support me---not to mention love me without condition. I wanted to show him I appreciated him and that I didn’t want to bring any more stress to our relationship. As I searched through my ‘barrel,’ I realized I already read a ton of ACOA books, had him read books on ACOAs and relationships, talked to counselors, and performed my own research, but nothing seemed to better the situation. Then, at the bottom of my barrel, I found ‘Al-Anon Adult Child meeting.’ As I considered the option in light of my situation, I accepted it as an undesirable and inconvenient. Yet, when I thought about how much I loved my boyfriend—and how much he loved me—I realized it would be very selfish of me not to do something that could help our relationship (and ultimately, me) just because I didn’t feel like it, or because it might actually take some effort on my part. So, I bit the bullet and went, bringing him some literature from the meeting as a symbol of my gift. I described the experience to a reader of my blog in a recent email response:

“After a long summer of a countless number of weddings, I was feeling particularly exhausted from the emotional turmoil I was experiencing regarding my boyfriend's participation in such weddings. I know he was feeling exhausted from the turmoil as well, and I recognized the strain it placed on our relationship. So, for the sake of his birthday, I thought I'd take a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE personal step and attend an Al-Anon Adult Child meeting. These are few and far between, but I made the drive to learn how my upbringing has affected me as an adult, and how I should still consider the alcoholics in my life. Well, I have continued to attend these meetings and have even started attending another general Al-Anon meeting during the week. While the program is not the ‘educational’ venue I wish it could be (there is nothing to ‘teach’ in terms of recovery), it has helped me learn more than any ACOA book I've read. It's almost like I'm finally being held to all of the things I realized through those other books. It has also helped me cope with struggles within my relationship and find out that certain ways I was POSITIVE were great ways in thinking (or absolutely never questioned) were some of the most destructive behaviors in my life…I was reading books for over a year and only growing more frustrated, along with my boyfriend. These Al-Anon meetings have been the first thing that has caused me to think in terms of ways I can take action to improve my behavior. It wasn't until my 5th meeting that I stopped thinking, ‘When am I actually going to get anything out of this?’ but after that meeting, I've taken something away from EVERY meeting. Check out http://www.al-anonfamilygroups.org/meetings/meeting.html to find a meeting in your area. Ones marked "AAC" are specifically tailored to Adult Children of Alcoholics, but if you can't get to any of those in your area, any general Al-Anon meeting would suffice.”

Now I have much to say from my Al-Anon experiences (positive and negative), but I think I will keep some of the thoughts for future posts, instead of bombarding you with anything and everything I’ve thought thus far… But, I would like to share with you the reflections I wrote in my notebook after my first meeting (below). I hope they’re helpful to you, or at least thought-provoking.

More ramblings to come!

7/20/08 – First AAC Meeting

Memorable quote from the meeting: “If you planted a seed, stop pulling it out by the roots to see if it’s growing…”

~The meeting wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be. It was clear that everyone there had a general understanding of what to do and what everything was about—an understanding that might take me awhile to achieve.

~I felt awkward when everyone clapped for me when I had to announce that it was my first meeting. Thank God I’ll only have to go through it once more for the second meeting.

~S— said [my boyfriend] should come with me to the meetings because he, too, has obviously been affected by my parents’ drinking (through me). I know this kind of thing would make him SO uncomfortable, but I really hope he’s willing to do this with me.

~Of course, what sucks is that there is no general “learning structure”—no “lessons” to be taught or learned. That means healing could take a long time.

~I couldn’t help but giggle when various speakers would introduce themselves and everyone would respond, “Hi,_____” I wanted to break out into that song from Rent… “there’s only us, there’s only this…”

~It was slightly uncomfortable for everyone to stand in a circle and hold hands while saying a prayer at the end, but it was comforting to hear something familiar…

~The weirdest part was when everyone chanted something while still holding hands—something about 'keep coming back it works if you do, it don’t if you don’t'… but I can probably get over it…