Finding A Home in AA

To be home, really home, is to be yourself. The place called home is an illusion. It's always been inside of us.

How do I "be" myself when all I have been doing is lying about my drinking and doing drugs. Oh yes, and lying about the money I spent and where I got it from. And, maybe lying about how I feel because I am not in touch with my emotions, yet. Still, I do have emotions, two. Anger and ecstasy, mostly anger and rage if I think about it.

So how do I become myself through becoming honest with myself and why, oh why, did I not know how important this was in the first place? Now that I know, what am I going to do about it? It is the basis of recovery. When I look over my journey, I think of the story of the two elderly aunties, who were Catholics and who wanted to help their nephew get sober. So, they traveled every day to their church and lite a candle and said a prayer and made a donation to the donation box. Then one day during conversation, they found that their daily effort had been rewarded and that the nephew in question had three months sober. But then upon further investigation they were told that "it was one day at time" to which they remarked, it was becoming too expensive and that moving forward they would split the day's candle.

How sweet a story that they recognized Higher Power's part in their nephew's reprieve and, as he heard other people make their confessions in the meetings, that the nephew grew more and more honest about his dishonesty. As the days went by, and, to make a long story short, he got better and by that I mean, he got honest. He found a place where he could be himself without apology.