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rainbowfic2012-02-21 10:45 pm
bookblather) wrote in rainbowfic2012-02-21 10:45 pm
Metallic Gold 9, Rust 11: Twelve Steps
Author: Kat
Title: Twelve Steps
Story: In The Heart
Colors: Metallic gold 9 (method), rust 11 (Glass bottle left lying around) with Sara's paint-by-numbers (An offbeat collection.).
Supplies and Materials: Miniature collection, yarn (this picture), seed beads (Russell), fabric (this picture), pastels (hunger), brush (copious: full of thought, information, or matter).
Word Count: 1200, not including the twelve steps.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Russell stops drinking.
Warnings: Alcoholism, an implication of sexual harassment, one quick mention of rape.
Notes: The twelve step program as listed belongs to Alcoholics Anonymous, except for one small rewording to avoid ableism. As always, if you find fail, please tell me gently; I promise I did not intend it, and will do my best to make restitution.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol— that our lives had become unmanageable.
It took waking up in the literal gutter.
Before, he could justify it. He woke up in jail a few times, but what young man didn't? Anyway, his friends had his back. Most of the time he woke up in bed with some asprin nearby-- not that he took it. He usually had a hair of the dog.
Everything just looked better when he was buzzed. He relaxed, got better with people, sang better. That was worth some hangovers.
Nothing was worth this; his face pressed against the asphalt, with someone's shattered glasses reflecting the dawn in crazy, jagged lines.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to normality.
After his first AA meeting, Russell was convinced that all the God nonsense was outdated bullshit. Who the hell believed in God anymore? Not him. Not when children died of hunger, when women were raped and no one cared, when men killed each other over a piece of bread. If there was a God, He didn't give a shit about the world, and He certainly didn't give a shit about Russell Lee.
The other members of his AA group, weirdly enough, did. They leaned forward when he talked, nodded and patted his arm.
They didn't even know who he was.
3. We have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
No, he certainly didn't believe in God, and he didn't think he ever would. But after four meetings of AA, he knew what he did believe in.
The other men and women in his groups didn't really know him. They didn't know his last name, or what he did for a living, or how stupid and rude he'd been. They didn't know anything except what he said. They had no reason to care about him, no reason to listen, and they did anyway.
He wouldn't surrender his will to a nonexistent God. But he sure as hell would to them.
4. We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Okay, so he'd fucked up.
Lots of times, if he's being honest. Yelled at people when he didn't mean it. Hit on girls who were clearly not interested. At least he'd never gone further than that... he respected no, even drunk.
Anyway, his friends always took him home first.
Hah. Friends. Some friends they were, to leave him face-down in the gutter and not even care what happened. Aaron had told him it was the last time, but what the hell kind of friend gave ultimatums like that?
No, fuck them. He didn't need "friends" like that in his life.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
He told his AA group what he'd done, every little thing from failing to get an A on that test in first grade to getting in a fistfight three weeks before. He left out being angry at his so-called friends-- because that was their own damned fault-- and the fact that he was still drinking-- because they'd be disappointed, and he just could not take one more person being disappointed right now.
It was only a little bit, anyway. Only a beer or two, just to keep the shakes away. He never got drunk anymore, and wasn't that the point?
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
One evening, the topic was cravings, and a older man Russell knew only as Leo said something that stuck with him more than he possibly could have imagined.
"It never goes away," he'd said, leaning forward, wrists loose and hands dangling. "I pass by a liquor store and my mouth starts to water. And I think just one couldn't hurt, but it always does, every time. It never goes away."
The others had murmured in agreement and compassion; Russell had done some hard thinking.
That night was the first time since he turned twenty-one that he didn't have a beer.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
No one ever mentioned the nightmares.
The fucking nightmares. They were so vivid and so real, screaming hallucinations that woke him up in the middle of the night sweating that peculiar foul sweat that he had been warned about. Dreams of his parents, looking down their noses at him-- a 98, Russell? Where's the other two points?-- his so-called friends leaving him in the gutter-- it's just Russell. Him drinking, while his AA group looked on with disappointed eyes.
It got so he was afraid to sleep, even to close his eyes.
"Somebody help me," he whispered, into the dark.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
The nightmares went away eventually, without any alcohol. The more days that went by without them, the more Russell relaxed-- the more he relaxed, the more he thought about the people he'd hurt.
His family-- he was still pretty angry with them, but he'd hurt them too, and they deserved to know he was sorry. The girls he'd hit on, the ones who'd said yes, he'd probably hurt them, and he would apologize to the ones he could find.
Not his so-called friends, though. Friends helped each other. Friends didn't leave you to rot.
They didn't deserve a goddamn thing.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Three AA meetings and two discussions of enabling later, Russell was beginning to think he might have been wrong about his friends.
After the first one, Leo had pulled him aside and said, in an undertone, "I understand you're angry, but think about it. Would you have gotten help if you hadn't faced the consequences?"
After the second, he'd realized he wouldn't have.
Not that he'd forgiven them yet. A real friend would have at least seen that he got home safe on his own, maybe put him in a taxi. But still.
Maybe they could be friends again someday.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
He apologized to them at the first band rehersal he'd attended in months. He'd been afraid to walk in there, but the moment he did Penny shrieked and threw her arms around him. "We thought you were gone for good!"
"Good to see you, man," Lars said, and Aaron only patted his back.
Jay saluted him, and handed over a guitar. "Think this is yours," he said.
He stood there with the guitar in his hands, feeling so right it hurt, and blurted, "I'm sorry?"
They exchanged glances, then Aaron said, "It's cool," and just like that, it was okay.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
He stood in front of his dining room table, looking at all the bottles.
They weren't full. The first thing he'd done when he decided not to drink anymore for good was pour all the beer down the sink. But he'd kept the bottles, a reminder of what he'd given up, a reminder why he'd given it up. All that money, all that time, all that pain in a little glass bottle.
He still had the cravings. Leo was right, they never went away. So he'd keep one bottle, just as a reminder.
The rest, he smashed.
It felt glorious.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
He still went to AA meetings.
It wasn't about drying out anymore, and if he was honest, AA had never been about drying out. It had been about having a community that didn't judge him, for once in his life, about having an almost family who understood what he'd been through. They understood; that was the greatest gift he ever could have gotten.
He glanced at the newbie in the corner as he stood to speak. He could give him that gift, too; the gift of knowing he was not alone.
"Hello. My name is Russell, and I'm an alcoholic."
Title: Twelve Steps
Story: In The Heart
Colors: Metallic gold 9 (method), rust 11 (Glass bottle left lying around) with Sara's paint-by-numbers (An offbeat collection.).
Supplies and Materials: Miniature collection, yarn (this picture), seed beads (Russell), fabric (this picture), pastels (hunger), brush (copious: full of thought, information, or matter).
Word Count: 1200, not including the twelve steps.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: Russell stops drinking.
Warnings: Alcoholism, an implication of sexual harassment, one quick mention of rape.
Notes: The twelve step program as listed belongs to Alcoholics Anonymous, except for one small rewording to avoid ableism. As always, if you find fail, please tell me gently; I promise I did not intend it, and will do my best to make restitution.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol— that our lives had become unmanageable.
It took waking up in the literal gutter.
Before, he could justify it. He woke up in jail a few times, but what young man didn't? Anyway, his friends had his back. Most of the time he woke up in bed with some asprin nearby-- not that he took it. He usually had a hair of the dog.
Everything just looked better when he was buzzed. He relaxed, got better with people, sang better. That was worth some hangovers.
Nothing was worth this; his face pressed against the asphalt, with someone's shattered glasses reflecting the dawn in crazy, jagged lines.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to normality.
After his first AA meeting, Russell was convinced that all the God nonsense was outdated bullshit. Who the hell believed in God anymore? Not him. Not when children died of hunger, when women were raped and no one cared, when men killed each other over a piece of bread. If there was a God, He didn't give a shit about the world, and He certainly didn't give a shit about Russell Lee.
The other members of his AA group, weirdly enough, did. They leaned forward when he talked, nodded and patted his arm.
They didn't even know who he was.
3. We have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
No, he certainly didn't believe in God, and he didn't think he ever would. But after four meetings of AA, he knew what he did believe in.
The other men and women in his groups didn't really know him. They didn't know his last name, or what he did for a living, or how stupid and rude he'd been. They didn't know anything except what he said. They had no reason to care about him, no reason to listen, and they did anyway.
He wouldn't surrender his will to a nonexistent God. But he sure as hell would to them.
4. We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Okay, so he'd fucked up.
Lots of times, if he's being honest. Yelled at people when he didn't mean it. Hit on girls who were clearly not interested. At least he'd never gone further than that... he respected no, even drunk.
Anyway, his friends always took him home first.
Hah. Friends. Some friends they were, to leave him face-down in the gutter and not even care what happened. Aaron had told him it was the last time, but what the hell kind of friend gave ultimatums like that?
No, fuck them. He didn't need "friends" like that in his life.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
He told his AA group what he'd done, every little thing from failing to get an A on that test in first grade to getting in a fistfight three weeks before. He left out being angry at his so-called friends-- because that was their own damned fault-- and the fact that he was still drinking-- because they'd be disappointed, and he just could not take one more person being disappointed right now.
It was only a little bit, anyway. Only a beer or two, just to keep the shakes away. He never got drunk anymore, and wasn't that the point?
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
One evening, the topic was cravings, and a older man Russell knew only as Leo said something that stuck with him more than he possibly could have imagined.
"It never goes away," he'd said, leaning forward, wrists loose and hands dangling. "I pass by a liquor store and my mouth starts to water. And I think just one couldn't hurt, but it always does, every time. It never goes away."
The others had murmured in agreement and compassion; Russell had done some hard thinking.
That night was the first time since he turned twenty-one that he didn't have a beer.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
No one ever mentioned the nightmares.
The fucking nightmares. They were so vivid and so real, screaming hallucinations that woke him up in the middle of the night sweating that peculiar foul sweat that he had been warned about. Dreams of his parents, looking down their noses at him-- a 98, Russell? Where's the other two points?-- his so-called friends leaving him in the gutter-- it's just Russell. Him drinking, while his AA group looked on with disappointed eyes.
It got so he was afraid to sleep, even to close his eyes.
"Somebody help me," he whispered, into the dark.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
The nightmares went away eventually, without any alcohol. The more days that went by without them, the more Russell relaxed-- the more he relaxed, the more he thought about the people he'd hurt.
His family-- he was still pretty angry with them, but he'd hurt them too, and they deserved to know he was sorry. The girls he'd hit on, the ones who'd said yes, he'd probably hurt them, and he would apologize to the ones he could find.
Not his so-called friends, though. Friends helped each other. Friends didn't leave you to rot.
They didn't deserve a goddamn thing.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Three AA meetings and two discussions of enabling later, Russell was beginning to think he might have been wrong about his friends.
After the first one, Leo had pulled him aside and said, in an undertone, "I understand you're angry, but think about it. Would you have gotten help if you hadn't faced the consequences?"
After the second, he'd realized he wouldn't have.
Not that he'd forgiven them yet. A real friend would have at least seen that he got home safe on his own, maybe put him in a taxi. But still.
Maybe they could be friends again someday.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
He apologized to them at the first band rehersal he'd attended in months. He'd been afraid to walk in there, but the moment he did Penny shrieked and threw her arms around him. "We thought you were gone for good!"
"Good to see you, man," Lars said, and Aaron only patted his back.
Jay saluted him, and handed over a guitar. "Think this is yours," he said.
He stood there with the guitar in his hands, feeling so right it hurt, and blurted, "I'm sorry?"
They exchanged glances, then Aaron said, "It's cool," and just like that, it was okay.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
He stood in front of his dining room table, looking at all the bottles.
They weren't full. The first thing he'd done when he decided not to drink anymore for good was pour all the beer down the sink. But he'd kept the bottles, a reminder of what he'd given up, a reminder why he'd given it up. All that money, all that time, all that pain in a little glass bottle.
He still had the cravings. Leo was right, they never went away. So he'd keep one bottle, just as a reminder.
The rest, he smashed.
It felt glorious.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
He still went to AA meetings.
It wasn't about drying out anymore, and if he was honest, AA had never been about drying out. It had been about having a community that didn't judge him, for once in his life, about having an almost family who understood what he'd been through. They understood; that was the greatest gift he ever could have gotten.
He glanced at the newbie in the corner as he stood to speak. He could give him that gift, too; the gift of knowing he was not alone.
"Hello. My name is Russell, and I'm an alcoholic."
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Awesome work!
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Thank you.
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And oh, man, poor guy. I feel for him, even though he's done so much crap because of his alcoholism. I wish him the best, really.
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He's a better person after he gets sober, I promise.
Thank you!
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Thank you.
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