The Years She Spent Dulling Her Feelings – Peggy M.

I don't know which one's which oh okay good morning everybody my name is Peggy Martin and I'm an alcoholic and through the grace of God and fellowship of people like you and sponsorship. I have been sober since February the 4th, 1964. And, you know, welcome to the 38th Cornhusker Roundup. I'll tell you, it is amazing to me to think that Dick and I started this thing with another couple 38 years ago. I didn't even think I was that old. Really, it just flies by. And it's just, I am so very grateful that I had this to do this weekend. and I'll tell you more about that in a while but I always get requests for this and I always think it's a great thing to do will everybody that I sponsor stand up and stay standing stay standing now will everybody that they sponsor stand up Now, everybody that they sponsor, stand up. Bethany, get up. Where's Allison? Everybody that they sponsor, stand up Everybody that they sponsor stand up Okay, are we down to that? Okay, everybody that Dick sponsors, stand up. They're at the breakfast honey. Oh, that's right. I told you I'm getting old. Anyway, if you can see from this how important that sponsorship is and how incredibly important it is to long-term sobriety. Thank you. Everybody sit down. and I really have been especially grateful for sponsorship in times good times and times that are tough and this is a tough time for me right now and I did not want to do this and I did not wanna do this either but it I can't you you know, that's who I am. But many of you know that Dick is dying and I cannot in my mind accept that yet. I accept it but I don't want to because he's been my partner all these years and I didn't realize really, I guess, what an impact this would have on me. I didn t think about it but for those of you who know he s had Parkinson's for a while but he didn t have any symptoms and now he can t really think and his legs don t work You know, there's just, he can't talk. It's just a sad thing to see for someone who is that dynamic. But he's still sober. And, you know, we'll all get through it. I know we will. Anyway, I was thinking about this the other day. Just recently, when I was just newly sober, maybe, I don't know, four or five months sober, maybe six months, my father was still living at home. And my father gave me a book that was called The Career Woman at 30. And I said, so what's with this book? to my dad. He said, well I think you're too mean to get married so I figured you So I think you should read up on it so you can know Now that you have a career and I worked for the space administration and I also translated for another government agency that shall remain nameless I did those two things while I was, and he thought that I should really sort of get a line on all of that because I was going to need to because I was never going to be married. I met Dick and got married three months after that so I think it was partly him. You know I often think about I have especially thought about this over the last several months. If you're drinking, everybody can see your alcoholism. Everybody can see it. Like the speaker last night and Thursday night. If you are drunk over and over and over again and people see you, you could say that guy's an alcoholic. If he's got a big red nose and he stumbles all over the place and you can't understand what he's saying on a regular basis if you're an alcoholic. But you can see the silent ones. You can't see the alcoholism that goes on in me, in you when you aren't drinking. But it's there. And that's what the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the traditions and meetings are all about. It's all about recovery, and many of you know, and I know, people who are simply not in recovery, and they're crabby, and they'RE unreasonable, and THEY hardly ever go to meetings, and they don't put themselves out for other people and they slowly harden like a piece of granite and it's hard to get them unless they drink and we all know people like that and I have always that's one of the reasons that I really go to a lot of meetings and try to stay sober and help other people and reach out my hand because I don't want to be like that. It's an ugly thing to be an unrecovered alcoholic, and so that's one of the reasons that I love to go to meetings because I go to readings, and occasionally I'll see something that will tell me that that person hasn't been to meetings, and I know that that's what I would be like if I didn't go to meanings and didn't have a sponsor. I think sponsorship is crucial to all of us who are struggling with this life. And it can be fun. I mean, there are tons of things that we do that are fun like this. This is fun. This is a fun thing. And this is the kind of thing that we do instead of getting drunk on a Saturday night and ended up in the gutter with a cop sitting on us or something. I never had that particular thing happen to me, but it could have. And so I have been acutely aware lately of the fact that we need to be in recovery, and recovery really is about service, it's about the steps, It's about sponsorship, and it's about attendance at meetings and doing what we can to hold out my hand to other people. And so that's something that I have really kind of dedicated myself to because otherwise I'm selfish and self-centered and mean, like my father said. You know, I just don't know. It just comes naturally to me or something to be mean. However, you know, when I – as a little kid, there's a – we have a picture of me. I had won the – I think it was first prize in the Blue Ribbon Baby Contest in Sedalia, Missouri. And my father was a doctor and he was serving there before he went into the – before he went overseas. And so he was there and took, you know, was a regular practitioner. And so they took a picture of me in my bathing suit because all the children were dressed in bathing suits who were in this contest. And I did not want to have my picture taken. And so I stood in this picture in this little bathing suit with little characters all over and I go like this, like that, and with my hand on my hip. I mean, you could do it today. It's just the same thing. I'd be the same way today. And that's the way. And then, you know, that's uncomfortable. When you're like that and it's uncomfortable, then the first thing that if, you know, this is an extraordinary thing. Normal drinkers don't get the relief we get from taking a drink. They don't get it. I just feel so sorry for them. Because, you know, they take a sip and they, you know, okay. And they may leave it, the whole thing, except for a sip or two. They leave it. It's almost abuse. It's like abuse of alcohol because you have neglected it. You know, here it is sitting there in a glass and they've neglected them so i but you remember how it felt when you were really uptight or really sad or really anxious or all the things that we have we have overblown emotions which is why i was mean you know most people would be just a little bit cranky but i was mean And I could spot, you know, there's an animal in Africa called the honey badger. And this honey badter is a badger, and the reason that they call it a honey badder is because it always goes for the gonads. and for those of you who don't know that's for the private parts of the animals that they're chasing so they grab on to the parts of the people of the animal that they are holding on to sorry I didn't mean that hold on to it like this and these other animals run and run and shake and try to get rid of this honey badger but it's got them locked in And they bleed to death. Now that's the kind of thing that I would imagine myself to be. Just hold on to them until they just fall down. And then they eat them. You know, that's what they do. To me, that was like a dream come true. You know? to me. So I was a human honey badger. And so when I drank, it removed that. It, you know, it made, it calmed me down. You know, I didn't have to chase them for miles or grab on to the gonads or whatever. I just, she knows what I'm talking about. I don't know about Bethany, whether she does that or not, but Bethany is doing service work. I will tell you this, because Bethany like all alcoholics is self-centered and so her her sponsor assigned her to help me as a way of getting rid of some of that self-centeredness. And she has, what do you have, a month or two months? A month. She's sober a month. A month? And so she's been helping me. She'll get me up here, she'll get my down. It's just great. But she's no different than the rest of us. You know, she's not different than I am. So when I was in elementary school, there was a guy that I did not like, and he was big and had a very small head, little bitty head on huge shoulders, and he was very, very large. And he was not the brightest bulb in the string, so we called him Flash. And he did something that I didn't like and I said, I will meet you after school outside. This was on a base out at San Antonio. I'll meet you at the base after school by the hedge and I'll beat you up. now I weighed 56 pounds in the 11th no when I was 11 so I was little but I was mean and so he came by and he thought he was escaping because he hadn't seen me but I hid in the bushes and as he walked by me I jumped out of the bushes and leapt on his back I just hung on And I just had him around the neck like this, and I just rode him all the way to the ground because I kept pounding him in the chin and all. And I got in a lot of trouble for it because it was on school grounds, for one thing. And secondly, I made him cry. There's another honey badger over there. And, but I loved that. I mean, the fact that I made him cry was the icing on the cake. You know, it's just, but i got in trouble. But I didn't care. I didn' t care. But you know, when you get a little bit older than that, we moved a lot. My father was in the service and we moved around a lot and I ended up in England in a girl school. Well, when you are in a girls school or any school in England, you have to do one of two things. You either have to learn how to play hockey or lacrosse. And I didn't want to do hockey, so I took lacrosSE because lacrosS, they have a stick with a basket on the end of it, and you cradle this ball. You catch the ball, flap over like that, and you catch theball and run for the goal, and you haveto keep the ball in the basket to get to the goal and then throw it into the goal. And the part I liked about it was that if they tried to get the ball from you out of the basket, you had the right to defend yourself so you could whack them, you know, just whack them like this. And there was a certain motion where you would come over the top like this with the basket coming down like this, and some of them were tall and some were short, and I always sort of got the tall ones because the angle was right. I remember plotting all of this back then, and I'd come whap like this with it down on their head so that their head was encased in this basket. And, of course, they would fall down. So they told me, they called a conference at school. Now, this is an all-girls school. they called a conference and our head mistress was a little old lady we nicknamed her Popsy because Popsy would pop in and if you were not ready, you could get in big trouble with Popsy. When she came in, everybody stood up and so she was kind of a frightening little figure. Well, Popsy called the conference with my parents and told my parents that they were going to have to do something about me or I was gonna have to leave the school because I was aggressive and so years later when I would feel that way like take want to take a look lacrosse basket cage somebody I I would drink and it would mellow me out. And when I felt sad, it made me, on alternate times, sadder or happier, depending on which way I was going. And it doesn't do that for other people. I feel so sorry for them because they don't have the option of up and down and up and now. Because that makes our lives very interesting. There's no doubt about it, but that's alcoholism. It has the ability to change our very makeup and, but only, you know, when we are actively drinking. Now, we might not drink all the time or every day, no doubt, but nonetheless it is a chemical that causes a chemical reaction in us that activates the endorphins. And our brains, my brain, your brain, I don't know about Al-Anon's, but I think the thing goes on with them too. I think we are their alcohol. You know, they like to be next to us because things happen, always. When we're around, things happen. And it's very exciting for Al-Anon's to do that. Plus they like to rescue us. They like to come to our rescue. Anyway, in our brains when we drink it goes in, it goes to your stomach and it lights up the world. Remember that? Just take a little drink. It slides down here, just heats it up all the way down. And it hits your stomach and boom! And then it goes out through all of your blood vessels and into your nerve endings. And the nerve, the blood doesn't mind it. It's kind of, it's a transport. But the nerves that are in there get kind of zingy, you know, because we actually are allergic to it. But here it comes, and it hits those nerves, and they go. Now there's these things called synapses where the nerves tickle one another like this, And that makes us be able to think and move and talk and park the car and make love and all that stuff. And this synapse does not, they don't like alcohol. And it goes zick, zick. And then when the alcohol hits, it goes tsss, like that. So it fries the ends of these synapses. So the nerves are all fried. And so when somebody says to you, you're fried, just nod proudly and say, yes, I am. And that's what happens with our nerves. Now imagine what it will do to your hair. If it does that to your brains, imagine what It does to your air. And my hair, when I got sober, looked like I had had 10,000 Tony home permanents. Do you remember those things? Oh, my God, they stunk so bad. And my mother would give us every once in a while a Tony home perm. And it just smelled horrible. And it Just fried your hair. And that in itself can just show you. So that's what it does to your hair. It fries your hair, and it fries your brain, and it fryes your synapses. It does bad things to us that drink it that much. And as a result, we start really physically, physiologically, to change. And we get to the place where we have to drink. I don't know, and I'm not smart enough to know, whether or not that could be prevented. I suppose that's a great debate, is if we stopped drinking when we were young, would we never pick up another drink? Would we not be alcoholics? Personally, I have nothing to support this, but I think we would be. I think it would be a great thing and I think if we would go on at some point, something would happen, things would be bad or whatever and we would drink again and then it's off to the races and what I really started to drink was when I was in Europe and I was at school there and on my own I mean, I feel so sorry I felt so sorry for my parents because half the time they didn't know where I was I was just on the loose in Europe and Iwas in France and in Germany and in Switzerland and various places where I was going to school. I was educated way beyond my intelligence, let me tell you. But half of it disappeared into the cauldron of drink, so to speak. But I remember one time it was the anniversary, I think it was 250th or 300th year of the University of Geneva and I was going to school there and although we were in Switzerland which is not known for its riots or anything it's usually a pretty nice dull place but this time we were rioting and the next thing I remember is I was drinking, I always hung out with people that drank I did not like to hang out with people who did not and at this particular time I had a friend who was a she was a social worker and she said to me you know there are some people who can drink and some people who can't and you can't now she realized that from seeing my actions and so she knew I didn't say anything she didn't says anything any further but I know that that was the case then and in this particular thing I ended up, I had started out with a Scotsman he was wearing his kilt and he had his little hat the tam on his head and his kill which I was very curious to find out whether he had any underwear on under the kilt because I had heard that they don't wear underwear under their kilt because it prevents the pleats from swinging like they're supposed to. You're supposed to swing and I was curious as to whether this and other parts were swinging under there. So I was behind him and I had a stick and I was flipping up the back of his kilt. And that's the last thing I remember until I came to that night in a cemetery. Now, I don't know why we choose cemeteries except that everybody's dead and they can't bother us, I suppose, but I was in a cemetery with an Italian. I had been with the Scotsman. I was a regular, you know, I didn't care what nationality you were, I just liked you, or no, I didn't like you. So I woke up with Giorgio, this Italian, and he was telling me that I needed to go to Mass. Of course, I couldn't remember what I had done, so why should I go to mass? I was very curious as so why should you go to Mass? Because I'm not Catholic, and I don't go to mass. I don' t even know what they do. So I went to mass, and I was sick. I was hungover, and everybody kept getting up and down and up and down and up and down, and they had incense, which was just oh yeah, it was making me so nauseous. and he said you should go to confession they had these little boxes along the side afterwards he said you should go to Confession at some point so I went into this box and I sat there and said I don't remember much in the last 24 hours so I guess I was pretty good, goodbye that's about all I did what a terrible confession that was I don't remember that until just recently. Anyway, so the other day we were going through, Maya was helping me clean out a drawer because we were looking for something. And she came across a picture. It's a big picture of Giorgio, about this big. And he was standing in front of a mountain. Well, you know, it was in Switzerland or Italy. I don't know which, but he was there. And she pulls it out and her eyes got huge. She said, who's this? And I said, oh, that was my boyfriend, Giorgio. You've kept him all these years? I mean, it was, what, 40 years, I guess, I kept a picture of Giorgio. And she said, do you want me to throw it out? I said no, no, because he was so handsome. He was a really handsome guy. So those are the kinds of things that were happening to me. But even so, that was kind of fun. You know, it was kindof fun. I mean, I had a good time, large part. The part that was really bad is the part we don't like to admit or like to face. And that is the point where we become pathetic. and I mean my whole family are Germans and we don't like to be pathetic we apparently like to start wars and things like that we're aggressive sort of people very stolid and somewhat boring and we don' t you know we don''t get pathetic because being pathetic gives everybody a chance to get in your business and tell you how you ought to be living. And people were starting to do that with me because I was starting to show up drunk. I wasn't drunk when I got there, but I showed up on through the evening. And I didn't like crying all the time, which is why I don't like trying today, but it's okay. But I would cry, and I would give them a sad story, most of them totally untrue, but I just would tell make up something entertaining them so to speak. But I'd be crying and sobbing and we had moved to Washington D.C. and my sister was married, my brother was in grad school and I was with mom and dad and I got a job at the American Speech and Hearing Institute, which is one of the reasons that I really have started trying to get interpreters for our meetings because I worked at this speech and hearing place. It was my way of making amends for the really poor job that I did because I was drunk most of the time. And I quit just before they fired me from coming in smelling like a brewery. but at any rate I like to think that that was an amend that I've been making for 51 years you know it's a long time be making amends but oh well anyway I and then you know I was confronted I waked up in the bathtub one time I had this this room on the third floor it was in the attic and I had a drinking companion and his name was Mr. Rupert and he lived across the alley and he was a Navy man he was an old man but he drank and I drank and we would toast each other from our windows across the valley and sometimes I'd see him sneak out to throw away his cans in the alley because he didn't want his sister knowing and I would hide my cans in a cardboard wardrobe in the attic, I would just dump them in there And when my mother moved that wardrobe and she heard all that clanking, she took all the cans out. And I don't remember how they were. There were hundreds of cans in that wardrobe. But Mr. Rupert threw his in the garbage. And when I got sober, about a month or two after I was very duly sober, the doorbell rang, and I went to the door, and it was Mr. Rupert. and he I knew he needed a drink and he said to me do you have any alcohol I need a drink. And I said no Mr. Rupert I don't have any anymore I've stopped drinking I've been going to AA. And it was the most he had the most horrified look on his face because he didn't he couldn't get any alcohol and about a month later he died and he never got what we have here sitting this morning and that's where the gratitude really comes in because I have known many many people through the years who have died because they couldn't hear it or didn't want to hear it the message that that AA has to offer What an amazing, amazing coincidence it is that those two—it couldn't happen. It could not happen that one guy from New York and another guy in Akron, Ohio, somehow on one day, Mother's Day as a matter of fact, got together and actually talked for hours and came up with the idea of if we help each other, we can overcome this. One can't do it. He knew that. Bill knew that right away. One person cannot do it, but two people helping each other can. And that's the way it started. But what an amazing coincidence, and how lucky we are that that occurred. And, you know, so during that particular time in early 1964, I gave up. I said to my mother, I was crying, and I don't like to cry. And she, I'm German, you now, I'd rather hit you than cry. But I said to my mother, I'm just sobbing. I said, I've been an alcoholic and I need some help. Oh, she got so excited. She ran around because they had been going to meetings and they had bit in touch with this dried out place and they whisked me off to the dried out space in Alney, Maryland and I got sober and I have been sober ever since. That is a measure of my desperation. You know, sometimes I wonder when I look at people who over and over and over again relapse and I wish that there was some way that we could just offer them this just like that and they'd be better but it doesn't happen. You have to be open to the answer, open to the solution And so, you know, I got sober. I started going to meetings. I went to a meeting every night for, oh, probably three years or so. And then I must have missed one because I was sick or something. But then I just picked it up again. I love meeting makers. I love to go to meetings because I want to see what happens to people who don't go to meeting. When they show up again, it's just wonderful because they look so bad, you notice? just so, so downcast and, you know, looking terrible, you know, but I love it. You know, I like to sit next to people who have been drinking and just sniff them, you know, because it reminds me of what it was, what it was like. And so I always liked, I liked to sit in the front of the room so I could hear and see the expressions on the people that are speaking. And I've always had a sponsor, except for a brief time when I didn't, but I've ALWAYS had a Sponsor. And by today, I looked around and asked around and explored for a long time to get a Spon-ser, a woman Sponster that had been sober at least as long as I had and was active in AA, and I couldn't do it. You know, here's the trouble. They're nice people. I mean, those people, most of them are nice. I means, they're ladies and they don't laugh when people fall down. They go help them up, you know? And I laugh. It's just like, I can't help it. It's like slapstick comedy, you know? I like to see people fall down. Ha, ha, ha! You know, oh, are you hurt? So, sorry. And I could not find one who, I don't know whether they sipped, would they drink or what. I don' t know. But I was a guzzler, you now? I mean, it's the difference between a sipper and a guzzler. And I was a guZZler, and I like to get drunk now, not tomorrow or two hours from now, now. And they're very nice, and they have good feelings. But I have to relate to somebody who is going to tell me what to do because I'm not going to take instruction from somebody who sips. It's just not my style. So I had to look around and look around, And finally, I called up Clancy and I said, well, would you sponsor me? Because I can't find a lady who isn't a lady. You know what I mean. And he said, sure, call me Thursday, every Thursday, and so forth. And it's worked very well. It's long distance, and it's not the best. I've always said that to people that I sponsor. It's not the best. I'd like to see you eyeball to eyeball because I love it when you lie. You know how you can tell, don't you? You know How You Can Tell? Their eyes go just slightly to the right. No, it's really true. It's true. A psychologist told me that. But why am I believing a psychologist, for heaven's sakes? But anyway, they do. A slight shift of the eyes is enough to tell you if they're lying or not. So it's kind of cool. Anyway, I have had a good relationship. It really has. And it's been especially helpful to me over the last little while because this with Dick happened very suddenly. And I guess that I was just not entirely prepared for it. and about a month and a half or two months ago he started shuffling his feet. He had never had symptoms before. He started shuffled his feet and he started, hello? Started shuffeling his feet and then he got so he couldn't get up and down out of the chair and within a month-and-a-half he had to be put in the hospital, and then into a long-term care place. And he has literally died as we speak. And I'm glad I have this little bit of time to adjust to it because I did not see my life without him. And that's fine. You know, I'm not saying this to get your sympathy. Because many of you have been through much worse than I ever have had to go through. But I will miss my partner, because when we would get home from meetings, we'd take the inventory of everybody at the meeting. Sometimes you came up lacking, and sometimes you were good. You know, you were really good. Didn't they do a good job tonight or whatever? But I will, and it's been especially hard for our son also, which just breaks my heart. but you know that's life and death and all I know is that I have been helped immensely by Alcoholics Anonymous and all the people the strange little people who have come up because we're not your ordinary types the strange little people who have helped me through the years And so when he goes, I will be reaching out more even than I have because I will need that help very badly. And I want to thank all of you for having supported us through the years. When we first moved here, oh my God, we made such a stir. We live in Bellevue, and my sponsor, Gene Mulry, used to say, Dodge Street is the Mason-Dixon line. The Civil War was north of Dodge and south of Dodge, and we're south of dodge and then north of dodge. And she helped me so much in accepting stuff. And I talked to somebody just the other day who's having, yesterday, who's having trouble in her area for the same reason and but you know we have just slowly slowly we have developed a way of living that is essentially a very active enthusiastic bunch of AAs and we really I love it I don't care whether it's north of Dodge or south of Dodge, it saved my life. And I really want to thank all of you who show up at this time, which is a joke by John O'Hanlon. He's been dead many years now, but this was a joke. He said, let's get her to speak at early morning on Saturday. And, I've been doing it ever since. But, it was a jock, really. Because, I don't like mornings. I just never have liked mornings. I don't like to get up early. I can't think until I've been sober. I can' t think until I' ve been awake for about two hours so you know it's kind of a tough thing to come up with something on a Saturday morning but I thank you for coming and sitting in with me on this Saturday morning. A time of sort of heartbreak for me but I will survive and you know I will and you'll help me it's very very I have certain stories that I love to tell but this is a personal one I was walking the dogs Nick was out of town I was down by the pool when we lived on Farrell Drive and it was cold and we had started dumping food out at the base of this big old tree where the foxes had a den. They had a din underneath this big tree with, I can't remember the name of the tree, but anyway it's a big din underneath its roots and we would dump food out at the bottom of the base of this tree every day that we'd walk the dogs down there and we would I would say the same thing get here's your breakfast Foxes and these foxes would come up sometimes it was the parents different foxes different times of family and so forth sometimes it was the little ones and the parents and we just loved it we bought they bought me a pair of binoculars to watch them we'd get back on the parking lot and we could see him eating. And, you know, one time Dick was out of town and we started to turn around. We had two different dogs at that time and I was walking back with them and I hadn't taken a step but that I didn't feel something. Now, I don't know about you but I'm assuming you're like me. I spent years dulling my feelings because it hurt and I didn't like to hurt and I'd drink and I wouldn't hurt I spent years being stiff and unapproachable because of my alcoholism and I felt something I had the urge to turn around and I turned and looked behind me and there was a fox sitting not six feet from me. And he, as I watched, I was scared because I didn't want the dogs to see the fox and I didn' t want the fox to be upset and so I was really kind of antsy but he looked right at me and wild animals don't look anybody in the eye but he looked right at me and then he laid down and I honestly believe that he was saying thank you I really think he was say thank you for all the food you put down here thank you from my babies thank you for my life and that's how I feel when I go to an AA meeting is that I really feel or whatever it is that I'm doing in AA you are always there and you always will be maybe not the same people maybe not the same place but you'll always be here for me and I'll be here for you I promise you that unless I croak tomorrow which I don't think I will because it's been a bad couple of years for me I've flung myself around and broken stuff and but I'm on my way back thank you you'll be I'll be here for you and with that um I love you I thank you and I will always help when I am available and that's most of the time and it'll be more time now so with that good morning have a good time at the Cornhusker and I thank You for my life Thank you.