Friends

 

One of the best blessings of my recovery is the quality and quantity of good friends that I have now. They are the best friend relationships that I have ever had in my life—by far and away. I do best with a routine. Lately my routine has been a walk and a meeting with Leslee on Sundays, afternoons with Charlie on Mondays and Fridays have dinner and a meeting with Sandy.

Thanks to the progress I have made with my abandonment issues, when one of them is busy with other activities, I can easily find an alternative if I am willing to pick up the phone. For example, Sandy went away for a 4-day weekend to see family on Friday. Carol was more than willing to serve as a stand-in for dinner and a movie when I called her.

Carol and I had a great time on Friday night. Dinner was at the Café Firenze with delicious Italian food. The movie was so-so. It was the Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 3D. I think it was based on a ginned-up story for the movie instead of being based on a book by CS Lewis like The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. After the movie, we went to Barnes & Noble for a little book browsing.

There might have been a book on gratitude at B&N, but I did not see find it. I did find a nice leather-bound sheaf of lined paper about 8x10 inches that would be ideal for journaling. Carol found another journaling book that had 6 prompts for topics for each day. It (apparently) was supposed to be a two-year journal when the first year was written on the outside column and the second year was written on the inside column of each page. I got it for Carol as a belated Xmas gift. She committed to sending me an email after she journaled. So far, so good. It has been two three days and she has sent me two three emails (I just checked my email to find she had emailed me 5 minutes ago that she had journaled).

Carol and I became friends years ago doing volunteer work together at Echo Glen. EG is essentially a prison for wayward minors. We stopped going out there after a year or so due to scheduling confusion on their part.

In the last five months, I have gone to EG three times for 12-step meetings with the kids in a 'recovery lodge'. I even applied to get clearance to become a regular volunteer again at EG when I went there for the third time on Saturday. It is an experience unlike any other working with the kids at EG.

As much as anything, it seems the most common offense committed by the delinquents at EG was to have been born into families that were not able to provide responsible adult supervision for their children. That lack of supervision manifests itself in a variety of crimes from drug use to car theft to assault and so on. Often the counselors and volunteers at EG are the first responsible adults the kids have met in their life.

It was a good weekend for relationships. For that, I am grateful.