The rocks looked the same. The light in the sky at sunset was as I remembered it; the stillness and silence of the pinyon-juniper forest had not changed. This was the day I returned to the windswept landscape of northern Arizona from which I had fled five years before.
When I left, I was running from my alcoholism. I went 4,000 miles north of this land of open skies and silence, only to find that my disease came the distance with me. Once into recovery, I stayed where I had landed, building a foundation through the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for a life of sobriety and serenity.
But I knew, during the years I stayed in Alaska, that I would one day return to the scene of my crimes, for I had an amends to make there. So I found myself, during a vacation in the Southwest, driving the familiar road toward my old home. The time had finally come to face a ghost from the past.
In Sedona, I passed that same laundromat where the violence had first erupted, back in 1981. I should have left him then, but I didn’t. There were a million reasons for me to stay, but the most important was that he was my drinking buddy, my provider. We drank and battled and made up for three more stormy years after the laundromat scene. I had been too fearful to leave him, too addicted to turn my back. The heart-pounding fear of his violent nature came back to me as I drove through town. I found the nearest meeting.
Appropriately, the topic of the meeting was fear. When I was called on, I told the group that I was going to make amends to a man I feared; I confessed it was possible that he might hit me again, or worse. Although five years had passed since I had escaped from him, I was not at all convinced that he would greet me warmly. Nevertheless, the amends had to be made. Step Nine said that I had to admit to him where I was wrong. I chose to do this face to face.
A man sitting across the table from me spoke next. “Fear keeps a lot of us from making amends,” he said. “But I have found no other way to resolve those conflicts which arise from the harm we do to others. You can face the man with courage.”
He smiled at me. “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”
In Flagstaff the next morning, I sat in a restaurant where I had sat a hundred times before, drinking coffee with shaky hands. The ghosts were moving and talking to me from the walls, and the fearful part of me wanted to run away again. I prayed for courage and went on.
Closer still to my old stomping grounds, I stopped the car along the highway, deciding to walk a couple of miles to reach a volcano crater. I hiked along, lost in my own thoughts, hearing voices from the past. Once over the lava wall, I entered the volcano crater quietly. An eerie wind blew, creating jet stream highways for the birds and sweeping the air clean. The sun passed behind a tall spire of rock at noon and a shadow fell across my lap.
The volcano crater was a place of stillness and meditation. Five years before, I had come to this same place to make the decision to leave the Southwest for Alaska. I had felt at once terrified and aroused by the prospect of a major change. On that fateful day, lacking the perspective of distance and sobriety, I had taken a long look at my life and made a guess about the best path to take. I remembered these things now, as I admired the silhouette of a big old ponderosa pine against the curve of volcanic basalt. And I asked again for the courage to go back to face the man I had hurt by my choice of paths.
Later that afternoon, I cruised slowly through the neighborhood in which he and I had once lived. I looked at each little wood house for a clue as to which was his. Part of me secretly hoped he would no longer be there.
When I saw it, I drove past, backed up, pulled into the driveway, and then very nearly pulled back out. His car was there. Children’s toys littered the yard. His name was on a sign next to the door.
Maybe he’s at work, I thought, panicking. Maybe his wife doesn’t want me around. My feet walked toward the door of their own accord. My heart was pounding. My face stung as though he had already slapped me.
When he came to the door, he recognized me immediately. With only a slight hesitation, he invited me in, introduced me to his children, and offered me a chair. Visibly nervous, I told him I couldn’t stay long, but that I had some things to say.
He went to get a beer, offered me one. I suddenly wondered what I was doing there. His home was a slippery place. Sending up another quick prayer for my Higher Power to put the right words in my mouth, I began to speak.
“I’ve come to tell you what happened when I left you,” I said. “I told you I’d come back. I was lying to you when I made that promise, because I knew in my heart that I was never going to return. My disappearance hurt you, and I apologize for that.”
He began to protest, to rewrite that five-year-old piece of history, to tell me how it happened. I had to interrupt him and ask him to let me have my say; for a moment, it felt like old times, me arguing with him about the facts.
“I am sober now,” I told him, “and it’s important for me to come back here and tell you that the problems we had in our relationship were at least fifty percent my fault. I always blamed you for everything–for my alcoholism, for my failures, for my misery. Those things were not your fault. You were good to me in many ways.”
He didn’t, know how to answer me. So instead he drank some more beer and asked about my family. As I sat in that man’s living room I watched his stature diminish before my eyes. No longer was he a cruel and vengeful lunatic. No longer did he possess the power to terrify me. He was just a man with an alcohol problem. The moment I saw him for what he was, I could forgive him, for his problem was no different than mine. He just hadn’t found a solution yet. He wasn’t looking for a solution yet. I asked my Higher Power to be with him, and all the anger and fear dissolved into pity for a man still battered by his disease.
Soon I got up and prepared to leave. I thanked him for taking the time to listen to what I had to say. Shyly, he stuck out his hand toward me. I grasped it, then impulsively stepped forward and hugged him.
I drove away from the house without looking back. My shoulders felt light, as if a giant weight had been lifted. Until it was lifted, I hadn’t even been aware it was there.
The tortured autopsies I had performed on that relationship were finally behind me. For the first time, I was able to let him go. He did not hit me. He did not seduce me. His power over me was broken at last.
I enjoyed a buoyancy of spirit after that visit. By admitting where I was at fault, I was given the ability to forgive a man who had held me in bondage for years after I had left him. With forgiveness came a freedom that I had not anticipated. The amends had required nothing but courage, and a faith that my Higher Power would carry me where I had been too afraid to walk alone.