Why I still go to meetings.....

My next post will be my 100th post. To celebrate the fact that I have kept up with this for 100 posts, I have asked a guest blogger- cause I'm so damn modern.... he has accepted, but now I am fretting that he will change his mind and realize that I'm just not good enough for his writing.
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This morning I dragged my ass to an Al-Anon meeting. I haven't been in at least a month, I think. And I have no really good reason other than I just have things to do on Saturdays. Upon walking in the door (early!) I was greeting by a few regular attendees. I sat alone and quiet and waited for the meeting to begin, all the while wondering if I even belonged here?- maybe I would leave at the break, maybe I would leave before the closing prayer. The meeting always starts with 1/4 of the people in attendance. There were about 7 people when it started, about 25 people about 1/2 way through, and maybe 20 people at the end. I can't explain that.
I love this meeting though.
There are usually anywhere from 5-10 men in attendance, which is nice because it feels good to hear a man's perspective. Alot of the attendees also go to some different meeting, maybe AA, NA, or a different 12 step program, as well as a few people in counseling. While in general, the topics stay focused on the Al-Anon principles, we do share on psychological things too. One of my favorite meetings were about 'self-parenting' and 'my inner child' in which I stated that my inner child is a scared little whiny bitch who I just try to keep quiet....
Anyway, being early to the meeting, you usually get picked to read some of the literature- which I always love to do, because sometimes when you read it outloud, you really READ it- and not just listen to someone else read what you have heard a thousand times over. So today I managed to pick out the longest reading there is, Understanding Ourselves.
I don't remember if I have shared a section of this literature before but I'm going to do it again. Each meeting can 'choose' it's own literature to read, but I have never been to an Al-Anon meeting anywhere what does not read this one. It bears repeating again and again...

Perhaps the most severe damage to those of us who have shared some part of life with an alcoholic comes in the form of the nagging belief that we are somehow at fault. We may feel it was something we did or did not do- that we were not good enough, not attractive enough, or not clever enough to solve this problem for the one we love. These are our feelings of guilt.

For newcomers, who hear this for the first time- it is usually at this point in the reading that the crying starts, if they were not crying when they walked in the door. I know for me, I felt that it was my fault because for all my efforts, I could not help him. I have said this many times... "Nothing that I did EVER stopped him from doing whatever it was he wanted to do" It means that all of my best efforts never made a damn difference to an addict who needed his fix. And while I know that, I also remember that it still felt like hell at the time, and still feels pretty crappy today.

So anyway, I was reading this literature and I realized why I still go to meetings. Because it reminds me of where I've been. It reminds me that what has happened in my marriage and happened to my LIFE, has made me into the person that I AM, good and bad. The shot to my self esteem, the loss of my self image, the crippling of my spirit, the damage to my very soul- can be explained in that first sentence. "Perhaps the most severe damage to those of us who have shared some part of life with an alcoholic comes in the form of the nagging belief that we are somehow at fault." I know a lot of people who have parents and siblings who are addicts, and they are not anywhere close to being damaged by it. Perhaps it's because they never blamed themself for it. I salute these people, but I am not one of them. Not by a long shot, baby.