I was at a low ebb in my life, and I had nothing but more low ebbs ahead of me as long as I continued to believe that the answer to living this life lay in "working a program."
I was pushed into the long-term nightmare of AA following my return from UC Irvine.
I had just returned from college, and I had very few prospects, beyond going to school for another degree.
This time, I would get a teaching credential. So, at least there was a plan to keep going to school.
Still, life was not all that I had hoped that it would be.
I had no real ideas as to what I was supposed to be doing in my life.
Only recently have I learned that trying to live by the Twelve Steps pretty much assures that you will not be living life at all. At the time, I was just trying to stay afloat in the house.
I needed to get a job in the mean time. I applied at a fast-food restaurant nearby, which turned out to be a mistake. At first they told me that I was hired, but then they kept me waiting for about two weeks. When I went to talk to them about it, the assistant manager told me that I was hired, then they trained me, then they made me wait. I would show up to work, then they would tell me to go home. The staff was also very rude. I did not really like working there. Everything boiled over for me when they started scheduling me to work days without telling me. Of course, I had also misread the calendar for work. I got a phone call from one of the staff, who accused me to my face that I had missed work. I hung up the phone, I was so upset and startled by the sudden accusation that I had misread the calendar. In those days, I was not able to admit that I would make mistakes, so concerned was I about just getting by and not failing.
The ,managerial staff did a poor job of training the other staff on how to behave, as well. The whole thing was a big mess. I eventually quit, so fed up with the mixed messages of poor leadership and name-blame.
I stormed home that day, telling everyone what had happened. "I quit!" Looking back on the whole thing, it was clear from the outset that working there was not a good idea. The interview process was very chaotic, and they were going through a really tough time, dealing with the loss of a beloved staffer who had died in a car crash. I should have not bothered with the job.
My mother then went up to my room and shamed me, telling me that there was something seriously wrong with me. At that point, I was too busy just taking directions from her, a biproduct of the AA program, which is always telling its members that they have to run their lives by other people. I just assumed that that is the way the people are supposed to live their lives.
Now there was pressure. I was expected to find and keep a job, not lose it or else. I was getting some ugly, heavy threats from my mother, as if she was threatening to throw me out of the house if I did not find a job.
I next walked into another job, as a stock-boy at a department store. That was a terrible job. I was worn out every day. The sales staff were deplorable and unbearable. Moving stuff was a terrible job. So uncoordinated was the receiving, so messed up were the administrative staff, so frustrating it was to get nothing but dysfunction from a working crew that was more interested in pressing sales, even if that meant walking all over other staff.
I have never learned the important skills that come with working on the job. I had received the impression that I was supposed to just put up with people's bad attitudes or disrespect. I had never learned that the antidote to fear is not "try harder" or "run your feelings by someone", but instead trusting in the perfect love of God the Father, who is always looking out for me.
I lasted for about a little over one month at that job, then they let me go. I should have left a lot sooner, but at the time I was just doing whatever my mother or some other "authority" figure would tell me to do. She was motivated by fear, pure and simple, that I would never get a job, that I would never leave the house, that I would never amount to anything. In Christ, I can do all things. That has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with Him. Only now have I learned this.
When I told her that I was let go from the department store, even though the staff had told me that I was a good worker -- the Christmas hours were over, and they did not need the additional seasonal help, which I was. So, they let me go.
My mother thought otherwise. She was convinced that I lost that job because I was an arrogant, entitled reprobate. I did the best that I could at that job, and the result was still nil. On top of that, I had an abusive parent who made it all my fault, while the other parent said nothing about it. A real tight mess, to say the least.
For my mother, though, it was the last straw, and she threatened me -- that either I would start going to AA meetings, or she would throw me out of the house.
I was abused into going to AA. I had a ruthless parent, goaded by fear rather than love. I understand why she acted the way that she did. Religion, rule-keeping, all of these things make people mean, always walking around with the evil, alienated mindset that we are on the tab to keep up accounts with God, or He will be made and withdraw His fellowship from us.
So, I was forced to go to AA -- not because I was an alcoholic, but because according to my mother "I needed to learn humility." I needed to learn how to take direction from others, she thought. Sadly,though, she did not realize that I had been taking direction from her for so long, and it simply was not working out. Like many people in AA, she and later I was convinced that I had to work the program better than I had been working it.
So, off I went to AA meetings.
Insane but true! To only one person I admitted that I was not an Alcoholic, Jessie T. -- and he told me not to tell anyone, but just hang out until they could figure out what to do with me.
I was so down on myself. I had graduated from college, yet I was still living at home, and I had nothing to show for it, and now I was trudging off to AA meetings.
I will never forget the first day that I was there -- some of the people who had been going to those meetings had been attending for six months, and already they were sharing that they had gotten tired of hearing the same stories from the same "Old Timers" who had nothing to add but the same stuff that they had been living through before they got to AA.
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