[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: [email protected]
Category: Category 1
Date: 09 Apr 2000
Time: 20:47:36
Remote Name: spider-tq043.proxy.aol.com
Hi, I have not been here long enough that I concider myself an oldtimer but the other people in my area sure do. I got clean in 1984 and just celebrated my 16 recovery birthday. I do know how it feels to be treated as if my ideas are oldfashioned, however. It seems that what I was taught and how I was taught it is oldfashioned today and maybe it is but it worked for me so far and for a lot of other people as well. I was so resentful at one time I thought about not coming anymore but that would do me no good whatsoever. Instead, I have learned again how to let people be themselves and I comtinue to be myself. It is not easy all the time and even is painful at times, like when someone discounts my ideas because there "old". But I have been through too much in this program to think about not coming just because a few people think they know more than others. I am here because my life was hell out there and in here I have been given a chance at some peace. I thank my God on a daily basis for helping me to continue here even after so many years. I have watched as some of my friends have decided that they didn't need to be here anymore or that they no longer had a purpose in this fellowship. I have also gone to to many of their funerals to let that happen to me. I am surely graitful that they were in my life as long as they were and I miss them but I do not want what they found outside of NA. I know that some of us do find help in other places and I am happy for them, but I do not want to take the chance that I will die just to prove that there might be another way. Thanks for still being here all of you. I Still Need each one of you and hope you continue to keep coming for years to come. LOVE and HUGS, Janet R.