A broken record?

This has got to be the greyest, dreariest summer on record. Where is the sun? All the kids are getting ready to go back to school and summer hasn't even arrived yet. Today it's raining. In August. In southern California. It's muggy and heavy and wet, with a warm drizzle keeping everything moist. This is not great weather for my lungs, but they've been surprisingly good for the last week. I had a couple of bad lung days, but not as many as I would have expected, given the climatic conditions.

This morning I had to take my car to Santa Barbara Volkswagen, to have my passenger-side headlight replaced. When I bought my car I didn't realize how expensive it would be to maintain. I've owned many Bugs, all of the older variety, and they were cheap and easy to fix. I could do a lot of the work myself. Now I have a 2001 New Beetle and I can't even replace the headlight bulb myself. They have to remove the entire housing just to get to the bulb, so it costs me $45 every time a bulb goes. And then there was my $200 battery -- $150 for the actual battery and $50 for them to put it in for me. Two hundred dollars for a battery! Highway robbery! But it's a special kind of battery and that was how much it cost. Apart from the expense, though, I love my car. It's just like my old Bugs except that it's safe, quiet and comfortable, and it handles like a dream. And it's not a gross polluter. This is the first "nice" car I've ever owned, and I don't think I could go back now. I've grown used to having AC and electric windows and door locks and a sunroof and a Blaupunkt stereo. My favorite car in the whole world is the mid-seventies BMW 2002. I love those cute little boxes like nothing else and have yearned for one for at least twenty years. And now I suspect that if I got one I wouldn't like it because it isn't luxurious like my Beetle.

While I was wandering around downtown waiting for my car to be fixed, I bumped into a friend and fellow addict I haven't seen in awhile. We chatted for a bit and caught up, and then I asked her if she was planning to go to Matt's memorial a week from tomorrow. She said, "I don't go to the memorials of people who die of the disease." I was appalled and found myself arguing with her, but eventually I saw that not only was I not doing any good but I was making her angry. We simply disagree on the subject. As far as I'm concerned, blaming someone for relapsing or for dying of the disease of addiction is perilously close to taking credit for your own abstinence. It can be argued, of course, that those of us who stay clean do so because we choose to do the things that keep us clean, like go to meetings regularly and work steps and help other addicts, but underneath that is still the mystery of why we continue to be willing to do those things and others don't. I can't take credit for my own recovery. I can only be grateful that I'm still clean and still willing to do what it takes to stay clean. When someone I care about dies, I get angry at the disease, but not at the person. At the moment I'm trying to stretch my mind to see the other viewpoint. The woman I talked to today has stayed clean for eleven years. Obviously she's been doing something right, and she's not an arrogant person. I respect her opinions on other subjects. I want to be able to see other people's sides to questions. Actually, I can see her side, but I still think it's wrong. I can apply my criterion for grading an English paper: could a reasonable person hold this opinion? and answer yes to it, and I still think it's wrong. It's not an academic subject. It's literally life or death.

I thought about it on the way home and saw, suddenly, how much fear is behind my friend's opinion. When someone whose recovery seemed to be in good shape relapses after a long time clean, it's scary. It reminds us of the reality of the disease. All we can really say is, "There but for the grace of God go I." Relapse is a reality of recovery. People do it all the time and there are no guarantees, so it's natural for those of us who are still clean to want to reassure ourselves that it won't happen to us by pointing out to ourselves all of the things we do that the other person didn't do, or that the other person stopped doing. But that's just a sneaky way of taking credit for our own abstinence. It's the shortest route to ingratitude. My attitude on this is inflexible, apparently. I feel, to my core, that I'm right about it. Matt lost the willingness which had been granted to him when he got clean. He is to be mourned and pitied, not blamed and vilified.

It's now time to get ready to go to my sponsor's house for one of our infrequent gatherings of sponsees. I have no idea what to expect but usually it's a workout. Kim generally has some difficult topic or other for us to explore, and usually I'm a puddle of tears by the end of the session. Last time it was, "How do we set ourselves up to be victims?" and the time before that the topic was relationships. I don't know what it will be today, but I can almost guarantee that there will be some kind of catharsis.

I just realized that I said almost the same thing in this post that I said last week. Oh well, I suppose I just wasn't finished with that subject. Perhaps now I can lay it to rest. There wasn't much about Hep C or Interferon in this week's ramblings, but in a way that's a good thing, since it means there's nothing wrong this week.