Step 8

On my mind a lot lately:

"Made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all."

This is where my step work stalled out way back in maybe August. I had begun a painstaking process of "doing the steps" starting around October of 2016, via a very thorough and sometimes maddening workbook called Big Book Awakening.  A small group of men and I got together every Monday night for about a year and worked very slowly indeed through steps one, two and three out of that workbook. When we got to step 4, we split up into sponsor/sponsee dyads and we have never reconvened since. 

Step 4 hit me right around this time last year, with perfect timing. My resentments toward A and her new paramour were at their peak, as well as a lot of other obsessive and bitter thinking. I worked through 4 but didn't do step 5 until after the summer, and it took more than 9 hours stretched out over several nights. 

When I got to step 8, I hit a wall. Even in the face of so much thorough step work, the most in depth I have gone in the recovery process in 13 years, great solid walls of defense came up when I thought about putting A on the list of people I had harmed and becoming willing to make amends to her. The Big Book recommends we "ask until the willingness comes" when we are not willing, but I wasn't even willing to fucking ask for it. 

Mostly, the little poisonous mantra that went through my mind was "I didn't harm her at all. I was 100% victim." Again and again when I tried to turn my attention to this step regarding A, the door would simply slam shut. In fact, even looking in that direction summoned demons of resentment back to my chest, so I stopped trying. Time to put it aside. I just couldn't deal.

The Big Book, in step 4, takes us to the highest level of the inventory when it says that we put aside the wrongs others had done *entirely* and resolutely look for our own part. And in the step 8 and 9 section, the book has this passage: 

"The question of how to approach the man we hated will arise. It may be he has done us more harm than we have done him and, though we may have acquired a better attitude toward him, we are still not too keen about admitting our faults. Nevertheless, with a person we dislike, we take the bit in our teeth. It is harder to go to an enemy than to a friend, but we find it much more beneficial to us. We go to him in a helpful and forgiving spirit, confessing our former ill feeling and expressing our regret.

Under no condition do we criticize such a person or argue. Simply we tell him that we will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past. We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do. His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own. If our manner is calm, frank and open, we will be gratified with the results." 

Of course, the book also says: "We should be sensible, tactful, considerate and humble without being servile or scraping. As God's people we stand on our feet; we don't crawl before anyone."

The blunt fact is I do hate A. I hate her. It's difficult for me, especially raised as I was to be Mr. Nice Guy, to stare that stark flat out hatred in the face and admit it's in my heart. Getting honest with myself has probably been the most difficult part of sobriety. Finally, however, I feel willing to get rid of that hatred to the extent that is possible at this time, and I know from very powerful past experience that the way to get rid of that hatred is to make amends. 

It's typical how the self help movement sometimes harps on the necessity of forgiveness as a path to happiness and freedom, but often stops short of the concrete, tangible, observable actions that forgiveness often requires. I do not have to cultivate warm and fuzzy feelings toward A in order to forgive her. It has been very important to realize that *forgiveness is not a feeling*, I do not have to excuse her treatment of me. I do not have to agree to a continued relationship with her after the amends (which I doubt she would ask for anyway, but it is one of my fears). All I have to do is 1). identify my own wrongs and 2). make direct amends to her for my own wrongs, putting aside hers entirely. 

Forgiveness is real when the other person simply takes up less room in my head and heart. It's not a feeling and it's not related to justice. It is in fact absolutely removed from concepts of justice and mercy. It is simply the freedom from resentment. It is nonattachment. I can *try* to forget the wrongs someone has done me all I want, but forgetting those wrongs is unlikely and doesn't constitute forgiveness anyway. Because no matter how thorough the forgetting might be for stretches of time, unless I do the work, here comes the memory again. This is the very shape of resentment, which, after all, comes from the French resentir, which means "to feel again." And again. And again and again. Goddamn it, no matter how hard I try. So I am going to need a much more powerful set of tools than simply claiming not to give a shit about some asshat or other who fucked me over, or trying to be nice, or forgetting, or getting revenge, or hoping for justice, or pretending I have mercy. I am going to have to find a way to let the other person off the hook. Because when A is off the hook, then I will be off the hook. This is how I interpret that brief phrase in the so-called St. Francis Prayer: it is by forgiving that we are forgiven. And it turns out that making amends for my own wrongs without regard to hers is the way that *she* ends up off the hook. Because I am free in the situation then. I have done my level best to right the wrongs I have done. And in that *action*, which is why the book says "direct amends," I am off the hook, whether she "forgives me" or not. It's very powerful voodoo. 

My experience has shown that this is all that forgiveness takes in a situation like this. The work is much more difficult in even more painful situations, such as sexual abuse, violence, backstabbing betrayal. In these cases where we are actually not at fault in any way, the process is more mysterious and also quite powerful. But we don't have the gift of making direct amends to the people who caused us nothing but harm where we were truly innocent. 

However, in an intimate relationship spanning years, of course it is delusional for one person to judge himself to be white as driven snow and hold the other person in 100% contempt. It is understandable, of course, in many situations. 

Just yesterday I was remembering the days of February last year during which A had completely cut me off and was utterly refusing to speak to me and had become a horrifying kind of automaton, cold and steely and absolutely distant. I am not done recovering from the trauma of that experience or the ways in which I felt humiliated and eviscerated by it. One early dark morning just after she had returned from her visit to her paramour, she bustled her usual bustle getting ready for work, as I sat on the bed and sobbed uncontrollably, soaking tissue after tissue with snot. And the entire time, she completely and totally ignored me. She didn't even say "I'm sorry you're in pain" or "hey, look, even if things don't work out with us, it's okay, it's okay." Nothing. Steely and cold, officious, efficient, as if I wasn't even there, let alone hacking sobs in the dark on the edge of the bed we had shared for five years. In the face of a humiliating and excruciating experience like that, it's difficult to become willing to make amends for my own wrongs. 

But the simple fact of recovery is: it has to be done. I have no choice. 

I am motivated anyway by the repeated experience of these traumas from the relationship with A coming up in current relationships. And excavating old, old, old wounds way down deep in the basement of my psyche. I want all of it gone. I don't want to re-enact the same old harms anymore. I want to be free. 

So I head back to my sponsor this week to hash all of this out. How can I make direct amends to A while protecting myself as much as possible? 

I know what the exact nature of my wrongs were as far as I have been able to determine through intensive inventory work.

I took her for granted. I lied to her. I ignored her. I resisted showing physical affection to her for about a year. I was depressed and didn't take responsibility for that and seek help. I acted on a deep sense of entitlement in exchange for providing hours of childcare and housework. I was selfish, self-centered, dishonest and afraid. 

There may well be other specific ways I wronged her that she will want to discuss. 

But I wonder if perhaps the best way to make amends in this situation is via some kind of mediated communication. The thought of sitting across a table from her and doing the amends in person is nauseating to me. I'm not afraid of it in any way— I have done far more difficult in person amends than this. I just do not want to see her. 

We'll find out what my sponsor thinks. I don't even know if A will be willing to hear an amends. She may well reject my offer to have an amends conversation. I have had this happen before and have had to find other ways to sweep off my side of the street. Anyway, in addition to a direct amends to her, I have already made living amends in regard to relationship patterns of mine, including getting help for depression, starting recovery in CoDA, working on cherishing anyone to whom I'm attached and cultivating love and not taking them for granted, and realizing more fully that showing up in relationship is not an exchange in which one builds entitlement. Huge lessons in regard to all of my relationships and significant behavioral change. 

Let me tell you, recovery is a fucking trip.