As many of you know, I’ve been around AA for many years and have attended many meetings. I did have a period where I stepped away, as I let personalities get in the way of principles. I still struggle with that aspect of meetings, as I allow myself to be distracted quite easily. In fact, in many meetings I have to remind myself to pay attention to the message of the speaker and not the person near me shifting in his or her seat endlessly or the giggling behind me or even the people texting and playing games on their smart phones. (I still don’t get why people do that!). I know if I don’t pay attention, I am eventually heading for a relapse of some sort. The goal for me is to never again end up in an alcohol and drug detox and treatment center.
So far so good.
So, back to the meeting I attended. The focus of the meeting was creating order from chaos. This is something I can relate to while growing up and even in my current day. I seem to have a love hate relationship with chaos. It’s something I know, and I am often times more comfortable there than elsewhere. I think this might be common with children of alcoholics, which is what I am.
Without getting into the speaker’s story, I should tell mine around this topic. My earliest memories are of our first home. I remember we were very poor and the home we lived in lacked indoor plumbing. We lived in northern Maine and the winters were cold. I know there was heat; otherwise we would have probably frozen to death. There was my mom, dad, and my two older brothers. We lived on a farm and my dad was gone a lot; he was a truck driver. When he did come home from long-hauls across the country, I would always be fearful. My parents both drank and my dad was violent. I don’t remember the violence but I do remember being fearful of him. Later in life I asked my mom if he ever hit us kids, and she said not that she remembered. So, I was probably afraid from them yelling at each other.
One early morning, or late, late evening my mom woke my brothers and I. Our dad was off on another long-haul and she had loaded the station wagon and then loaded us in as well. We headed 8 hours south to southern Maine, almost to the New Hampshire border. Yes, the state of Maine is big, and no it is not that big. I think at the time there probably wasn’t a direct route like the I-5 here in California.
My mom and we three boys were now living away from everything we knew. Our dad was no longer in our lives, we were away from our grandparents on both sides, away from kindergarten, where I’d just started, and away from our new home. We’d just moved from the home without plumbing to a two bedroom home the previous year.
All of it was gone, and we were starting all over again. It would not be the last time we started all over again.
Stay tuned for the next chapter in “Order From Chaos | Pt 2”
Recovery Rob BIO
Recovery Rob is a 48-year-old man who has more than twenty years of sobriety, whose drugs of choice at one time were alcohol and drugs, and he has worked in and around the field of addiction for more than 20 years. Having just recently launched his own website, www.askrecoveryrob.com, he hopes to reach out and continue to help others who work through their process of addiction and recovery. Recovery Rob is a professional writer who has published two novels and is currently working on his third. He has been writing and working as Pat Moore Foundation’s premiere blogger and content writer, which helps keeps Pat Moore Foundation’s addiction and recovery blog top-rated.