Learning to be open did not come easily for her
WHEN DO one’s liabilities evolve into one’s assets? And when do one’s weaknesses become one’s strengths? For this alcoholic, the journey began at the very moment I opened my heart and my mind to the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Somewhere along the way before AA, I picked up the idea that to be vulnerable was to be defenseless and totally exposed to the elements of hurt and bewilderment. My avoidance of pain at all cost was the major force that drove me through our doors. Throughout my life, I built a wall around myself, until I was so protected and so safe, my loneliness was exceeded only by my frustrating efforts to end it. My life was spent in the pursuit of one goal: the avoidance of emotional responsibility and the pain that sometimes accompanies it.
When I was new in AA, I found that learning to be open did not come easily for me. Our fears, our insecurities, our desperate needs cannot simply be plucked from us in a moment. They must be tended with tenderness and care.
I consider myself very fortunate to have found a sponsor–she prefers the word friend–who could advise me of the routes and detours ahead on my journey. And she is a friend, indeed. Through her kindness, her patience, and her constancy, I have found a part of me that I thought I’d left on the streets long ago.
I came into AA a defeated and angry child, devoid of any feelings. I could no more identify those feelings than I could acknowledge them. I was afraid to let you in, or to let me out, to let you see, or to let “it” show. I was paradoxically both distrusting and dependent, both fearful of love and in desperate search of it.
Today, with the help of the program, I have found an unconditional, all-encompassing love that has torn down the barriers I built. Most important, I have found a God of my very own, who has brought people like my sponsor into my life and has supplied me with my every need–even those needs that I scarcely knew I had.
If you are about to embark on this very worthwhile journey, I hope you will dare to be vulnerable. For myself, I know that once I began to let go of my defenses, life began to have meaning, and I could feel love and let it into my heart.