Everybody has their own plate of.......

I have found my home group. Monday night's are awesome. I like the people, I like the format, I love the discussion. We also had two anniversaries, two months and one year. You know what that means? CAKE! really good cake too, but I wasn't paying attention and drank way too much coffee, and was up until 3:00 with caffeine withdrawal. So 2 1/2 hours of sleep is not doing me justice today. I'm taking the afternoon off for a haircut, grocery shopping and the library. I know, I know, you are all just jealous of my glamorous life :) Last night as I came home, feeling all the good feelings of a great meeting my daughter met me at the fence gate with the news that my coworker had been to the house looking for me and was crying. I headed in and my husband said, "get a hold of P as soon as you can, I don't know what's wrong but she needs you to call her". So what happens I open my phone and the last ounce of battery drains out and sends me that cute little message "good-bye". I plug it in and it didn't even have the energy to let me pull her number up. So I grabbed my son's phone, made a call to her boss, got the number and spent the next hour listening to somone's heart break. Her son is back at it again, she had checked him into a local facility to dry out, the cycle that I was afraid of is happening. He's slowly loosing everything and everybody. He's alone, afraid, and not ready. To listen to a mother sob because she can't help her son is heart wrenching. I felt helpless until I began to use what experience I had. I didn't lie when she asked if I thought that maybe he had enough. It's tough to tell a friend, that their child may or may not be near bottom. I hate the reality of this disease. It just keeps taking, and taking, with no concern for those in it's path. My friend asked me what the defining moment was for me "how or when did you know?". I had to think about it, there was a chain of events that happened that led to my going to AA but the actual defining moment had to be the day I woke up and realized that I could not endure another year like the year before. I knew that I would have either drank myself to death or chose to exit out some other way. I had never admitted that to another human being before last night. I was too scared to admitt that I was in that much depression and despair. Thank God, my God did not let that happen. He led me through the doors of AA. I finally faced a truth that had been scaring me to death. We talked some more about Al-Anon, talking to someone, taking care of herself etc...at least to the point where she was more calm, and had agreed to eat something and try to get some sleep. I hung up and just wanted to throw something. I wanted alcoholism to have a real form, so I could grab it, yell at it and throw it across the room! Today we are back at work. Our tired eyes, and drawn faces revealing nights of little sleep. Trying to act normal. I remember many days last year, trying to appear normal. Not hungover, and emotionally spent. The fake smiles and laughter. Recently a friend of mine commented on a friend of hers by telling me that her friend has the "perfect life". I smiled and said, "I no longer believe that of anyone, we all have our own plate of problems, you just don't know when it's going to be served".....I gave up the elusion of perfection. I had chased that pot of gold for years. I have learned to accept imperfection, it's strangely beautiful and perfect in it's own way.....