I want to write about some things that have been culminating for me this last week. I celebrated a year and a half sober yesterday, sitting by the river with the woman who's been helping me through the steps, wind in our hair, life stories on our tongues, sun on our backs. Deep summer and things are changing in my life. I was beginning my 5th step, which is "admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the nature of our wrongs." It sounds all moralistic and heavy-handed in the Christian-inspired language of the 1930s when it was written, but the process has actually been something quite different. In the 4th step, you look back through your whole life and write down your fears, resentments, and the ways you've hurt people, looking for your part in all of it, asking where you were selfish, inconsiderate, dishonest, proud, afraid, etc. It is not about beating yourself up – it is about coming to know your patterns, and getting your story on paper, and becoming willing to let go of the coping strategies that don't help you anymore. They refer to it as a "housekeeping" step. Clearing away the wreckage of the past. It is a very powerful thing. In the 5th step, you read this list to someone you trust, usually your sponsor, and talk it all over. You let go of all your secrets and connect with another human being. The listener might be very quiet, or they might help you sort out some of your patterns and see how the pieces connect, how you got to be the way you are, why you made the choices you did, and that you have the option of making different choices now.

So much has changed in me that I am even able to write this list, and that I trust anyone else to hear it. As I've been writing down the bits and pieces I've had to see some parts of myself that really make messes, like avoiding conflict and minimizing what I actually feel, and I've started trying to change them on a daily basis: asking my housemate who's frustrated with me if we can sit down and talk about it now instead of putting it off for later; letting someone know how upsetting their behavior is instead of trying to pretend it's ok with me. Things like that. It's actually a pretty new thing for me, getting close enough to people to have arguments and work through them. Most of my adult life I've held everyone except my romantic partners at sufficient distance that we wouldn't get into any fights. Lots of acquaintances, and lots of sharing the revelatory closeness of an early relationship, but not the follow-through of sustaining a connection over time, through the turbulence of living and learning together. Lots of running away.

This week I had a particularly triggering Wednesday night. I went to a young people's AA meeting here in the valley, and folks were celebrating their anniversaries. They were a tight-knit community of people who had a lot of solidarity in trying to turn their lives around together. It was really inspiring, and also left me feeling really lonely. Most of the young people in AA around here come from a really different lifestyle than I do. I have massive respect for their recovery, but they just don't really feel like my peers. I drove home inspired and sad, wishing that I knew more people in the DIY/activist community who were sober. And then I got a phone call from one of my housemates asking if it was OK if her friends came over and drank a bottle of wine. I said no, and got really angry. When we all moved in we agreed it would be a sober house, and people keep pushing that. It's really triggering for me. I've tried to be OK with it, cause I don't want to spoil other people's fun, but it actually leaves me feeling disrespected and alone.

When I got home we actually talked about it. We ended up having a big old confrontation about everything that had been falling apart in our house for months, and my unacknowledged part in it, and her part in it, and the desire to drink, and everything else that wasn't fully being said. At one point I started freaking out really badly so I left the house and went for a walk under the stars, screaming at god that I don't want to be an alcoholic, I want to be able to just drink a glass of wine at the end of the day, and why does everyone else get to check out of reality at the end of the day and I'm not choosing that path and why can't I have more support in that, and on and on and on. Crying and screaming and actually expressing all my grief and anger.

And then the most amazing thing happened. When I got to the end of our long driveway I knew I should open the mailbox. There were 2 packages from Icarus Project members in Buffalo and NYC, one sending me 4 pages on how to handle anxiety and the message that I am a mystic who can make the choice to surround herself with peaceful people, and the other a writer sending a copy of Thomas Szasz' The Politics of Experience. I sat down in the moonlight and read the pages on anxiety, and came back into my body, and walked home, and we worked things out. It feels so much better to actually get angry when I'm angry and face the hard conversations instead of hiding. It feels like a lot of growth. I realized that I really am committed to this path: I don't want to go backwards. I don't want to drink and check out. I don't want to give up. I don't want to hide. I want to be fully awake, even though it's painful. I don't want to relapse. I don't want to pretend. I want to be here, growing fully alive and present.

I'm really excited.

This morning I'm heading up to a retreat on zen and activism. In a month I'll be heading to Tassajara to join the monastic community there for a few weeks. I am doing what my heart actually wants to do. It is so very, very liberating.