willing to surrender

Life is about choices now, at every activity’s juxtaposition. Today you chose to go to your first meeting of a twelve-step program. You walked up the stairs after passing through a non-descript doorway, pushing the buttons to be buzzed into the club. You wore your pearl earrings so you’d have something to fiddle with as you input new information, scared-stiff. You sit down in a stackable chair with it’s brown pleather seat cushion. People are hugging, smiling, as your heart-beat races and you stare at the warm diet coke in your hands hoping they ignore you. The lights are dim in the front room of was probably once a house, it’s huge floor to ceiling windows looking out at the busy street in DC, cars and buses crawling into the merge. The club smells like drip coffee and the street, the windows are open and warm July wafts in.

It was dogmatic like church: reading the nicene creed, prayers of the people, collection, reading of the gospel, and closing just like at church. The thought of a meeting terrified you, so many thoughts in your head about why you were going, what you wanted from it, who you wanted to be.

Sitting down, you pulled off one of your earrings. Your mother always told you to bring pearls when you might be nervous, the weight and the warmth would comfort you. The earring worked for about the first twenty minutes, until you thought you had to introduce yourself. The guy who was sitting in the chair at the front of the room looked straight at you and asked if anyone wanted to introduce themselves by first name only. You faltered. You were there with 18 days, there was a guy with three days. Next to you sat a guy with well-manicured hands and there were two people sitting behind you who kept giggling through introductions, which was distracting.

After the meeting, lots of people were standing around outside the club, laughing, smoking, talking. A young woman approached you and handed you a slip of paper. She explained, “Call me. You won’t know why you’re calling me. You won’t know what to talk about, but call me.”

To take a suggestion and call the woman, do your laundry when you get home turn to page 11.

To reject assistance turn to page 5.