No More Secrets-The Story

1979.

I was around 10 years old and was living my “normal” childhood.

By “normal”, I mean, I had no other to compare it to….so to me it was normal.

School, soccer, and playing with my friends were all I did.

Too young to get a job, too old for a babysitter.

It was a good time to be a kid.

Every once in a while, I would hang out with a kid I knew.

His parents and my parents were in the bar business.

Lets call him born2bebad.

He was my rebel buddy. His parents were always gone. So he did what he wanted and only had to answer to his 2 older sisters. They were 17 and 16.

I would stay at his house every once in a while.

One Friday night I stayed over. He fell asleep about 11 p.m. I always stayed up late to watch the scary shows, so I was wide awake watching ‘The Twilight Zone”.

Around midnight the oldest sister came home.

She came in and saw her brother asleep on the floor. She looked at me and said,

“You are up late.”

I replied,

“Yeah, I’m not tired so I am just watching TV.”

She smiled and said,

“You wanna play a game with me?”

I looked up from the show and said,

“Sure, should I wake born2bebad up?”

“No,” she replied, “he is a heavy sleeper. This is just a you and me game. Follow me.”

I followed her…..

Right into her parents bedroom.

She shut the door behind us and preceded to take the covers back on the bed.

She completely undressed and got under the covers.

I was 10. The only naked females I had seen were when I sneaked a peek at a nudie mag in the convenience store while with her brother, born2bebad.

I froze. She looked at me and said,

“Don’t be afraid. Just take off your clothes and get in bed with me. Then I will tell you what to do.”

I did not know what was going On. All I knew, is that his sister was always nice to me and never tried to harm me.

I did as she asked.

Then she positioned me on top of her and began to gyrate.

I was still frozen.

Naked but frozen.

She would tell me what she wanted me to do in between her moans and I would do them.

After it was over she helped me put my clothes back on and asked me to keep this a secret. Maybe we could do it again if I did that.

Then she laid a kiss on my mouth.

And not the kind of kiss my Mom would give me.

Keep it quiet? Who would believe me if I told them?

I did keep the secret. Every time I stayed over there, after that, I fought to stay awake until she got home.

Sometimes we played. Sometimes she already had a playmate who was her age.
________________

Fast forward>>

2007.

I am in AA and working with my sponsor at the time.

He says, “Have you ever done a moral inventory?”

I look at him with my best sour face and reply,

“I don’t have any morals…what do you think got me here? Aren’t you supposed to help me find them?”

“No…you are going to find them.”

“Uggghhhh.”

The dreaded 4th step.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Followed, by the even more dreaded 5th Step.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Every one I know who is working or has worked the steps has a secret that they believe is going to the grave with them.

The story I started this post with was my secret.

As I grew from a child to a man. That event altered from just a secret into

Guilt
Shame
And
Embarrassment

As the years went on, the black hole it created in my soul just….I don’t know, it just.

I wasn’t telling fucking nobody this.

But….

If I truly believed that the steps could and would change me….then I had to be honest with everything.

And I did believe.

So I admitted it to God and my sponsor during the 5th Step process.

And because of that. I found out some truths about myself.

I can tell that story because it holds no power over me and maybe….just maybe someone who reads this might need to hear it.

Secrets made me who I was.

The longer I keep past secrets, the less chance I have to recover from alcoholism.

Alcohol is but a symptom.

The disease centers in the mind.

Revealing them to God and someone I believe is there to help, me made me who I am today.

Don’t fear the steps.

Trust the process.
___________

It’s good to be sober.

I’m still good2begone.

Link to daily prompt click here.