Confessions #1...

A couple of hours after writing this post, I was reading an issue of The Sun, a non-profit literary magazine I subscribe to.  In every issue, they have a section called Readers Write, where they publish true stories sent in by readers, and related to a different topic each month.  At the bottom of the first page of the Readers Write section, I saw the list of upcoming topics and submission deadlines, and I thought, Well here's a ready-made list of ideas for whenever I have a day like today where I can't think of anything to write about.  How perfect!

So, I think I'm going to start trying to do that for a while.  As always, we'll see how it goes.  The first topic on the list is "Confessions," and the submission deadline is May 1st.  I've got a few ideas, and we'll see how many I post in the next couple of weeks.  For now, here's my first submission:

...

"I'm Suzanne, and I'm an alcoholic."

"Hi, Suzanne!"

My mother and I had always been very close.  I was her first-born, and my father worked three jobs to support our family, so my mother practically raised me herself.  She was my best friend, and we shared everything with each other.  So when she finally had to give up drinking and drugs, after her gall bladder had failed and had to be removed, it seemed completely natural when she invited me to attend some of her AA meetings with her.  I was ten years-old.

I think she wanted to share this new world of hers with me.  And I imagine that she wanted to show me that she was different now, that she was getting better.  I was curious, too, and I enjoyed being included in her new grown-up world of church basements and coffee urns and chain smokers.  And I have to admit, there was a definite voyeuristic thrill in spending an hour listening to strangers' sordid tales of addiction and despair.

Every story began the same way.  The person would stand up and state their name, followed by, "...and I'm an alcoholic."  Then the entire group would respond by saying, "Hi," always using the person's name back at them.  "Hi, Suzanne!"  And then they would tell whatever story was on their mind to tell that day.  There was no judgement, no disapproval.  Everyone understood what everyone else had been through, because they'd all been through the same thing at some point.  They were there to take care of each other.  "Keep coming back," they'd say.

We weren't Catholic, but I'd seen the ritual of confession enough times in movies to understand that these meetings served a similar purpose.  Everyone there all seemed to feel very guilty about who they'd been and the things they'd done.  And so they were confessing their sins.  Not to a God, but to their peers; people who had suffered in the same way, who understood their pain intimately, and who could provide immediate feedback in the form of reassurance and support and compassion.  And forgiveness.

As I got older, I stopped going to the meetings with my mother.  And she stopped going, as well.  Over the next ten years, she would fall back into drinking and getting high again and again.  And in her brief periods of sobriety between relapses, she would go back to the meetings for a while, until the next time she fell back off the wagon.

On December 31, 1999, she went to her last meeting.  She left that particular basement room that day, checked herself into a local Holiday Inn, and took her life with a bottle of sleeping pills purchased at a nearby grocery store.

Now it's my turn to stand up at the front of one of those rooms and state my name.  But I can't bring myself to do it.  Because I can't find any comfort or solace in that ritual of confession.  Hearing those familiar calls and responses, all I can think of, is the life I've lost.