The Grandiose Exterior That Covered Low Self-Esteem – Lorna K.

That sounds so grand, Lorna K. from New York City. I mean, maybe we should put a little lyrics to that. Good evening, everyone. My name is Lorna, and I'm an alcoholic. And as you can hear, this is not a typical New York accent. It's a West Texas accent. Actually, you know, I'm always still so surprised when I, I don't do this very often but it really comes to me when I do this and speak to large groups in Alcoholics Anonymous when I state my name and I state that I'm an alcoholic and you so readily come back with Hi Lorna I always expect you to say No Can't be Nice girl like you I mean But yes, it's true It's very true and it's a great privilege for me to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and it is a great privelege for me to be here and I want to thank those that are responsible for selecting my name out of so many people that are great speakers, you'll hear that I'm not one of the great speakers. I do a lot of umming and ahhing and forgetting where I'm at. I have a lot I had one drink too many, I think, but here I am. I'm your evening speaker, like it or not. So that's for me. And you know, when I first used to speak, I used to think to myself, well, God, I hope I can say something that's going to be helpful to them. You know, I help them. I hope that I can impart something to help them, and of course I now know that I'm not here to help anyone, that you give me the opportunity of hearing myself and I get to learn and I'm taught through your participation and hearing me. So thank you very much. And, you know, as we go on in AA, we keep hearing things that we've heard over and over and again and they have a freshness to us. And for some reason tonight when Shirley was reading the preamble, It had a freshness to it. And I, for myself, think that the preamble is the most important piece of literature in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think it's so succinct and it's så wonderful and it talks about what we are and what we're not and what we don't have to worry about. And it's a very safe, comforting piece of literature. And it keeps us all on the right course. so I guess the best thing to do is to launch right in and I have so much to talk about of my adventures in Alcoholics Anonymous that I find my drinking story very tedious really basically all our drinking stories are pretty much the same I feel that we could all unzip ourselves and throw the disease out on the floor and we wouldn't know which one to pick up, you know, I wouldn't know the difference between mine and yours they'd all look exactly the same they'd be this writhing mass of lying cheating you know low self-esteem grandiose uh disease so but it's my it's it's recovery it's alcoholics anonymous with lorna kelly that is so unique uh there's never been another one like this on the face of the earth and this is what is so interesting and so inspiring but I do think it's important to qualify and I'm going to tell one story that I didn't have a crash and burn bottom my bottom was like an aircraft coming into land without its landing gear you know, it had no wheels so my belly just sort of scraped along the runway for a long time and the wings came off and the passengers came flying out and And eventually we came to some mucky halt in a bramble patch, maybe. And there was clothes and luggage and passengers and everything strewn all over the place. And that was my bottom. It wasn't, I didn't have any bell clanging reality about my bottom, My bottom was very shabby and mucky and shabmy. it's a real good way to describe it when I came in the program you kept on patting me on the shoulder you know how you do and you said, now you keep coming back you're in the right place and I didn't know what you could see about me I didn' t know how you could tell that I was a newcomer and but you know by the time I hit bottom it had taken me so long to get there gradually gradually my morals and my life had dripped away seeped away that by the time I was at bottom it felt normal to me and by the Time I was in the sort of situations I was in it felt all right you know and once one takes one step down on the ladder the next step doesn't look so far and then the next step and the next tip and there's all this compromising that happens with a shrug and that sort of phrase of well that's the way I am and you know it's all right for me because I'm different well one of my scraping along the runway events was I was going out with a man at the end of my drinking I had been married like most of us try that and I my husband had finally walked out the door and I thought it was the most interesting thing he'd ever done and it really caught my attention but anyway I was going out with this other chap and I wanted to marry this fellow the fact that he hadn't asked me the fact that he had even hinted at it seemed to be no problem to me I mean I wanted him and the reason I wanted to marry him was that he the one thing in the world that I wanted and that wasn't noble feelings for me or a great love for me or a noble character or an interest in humanity nothing like that he had a maid and I wanted the maid and I wanted someone to lay my clothes out for me I wanted someone to run the bath I wanted someone to fix my meals I wanted someone to brush my hair taking care of me was just becoming this behemoth problem I just couldn't keep it together and I wanted someone to do that and you know, I was willing to go with this fellow and allow him to touch the sacred temple in order to get to the maid you know And in some circles, they call that prostitution. But however, one Saturday night I had spent with him, and I think this is very much a woman's story. I had stayed with him and in those days you know my body and the intimate act of love making was nothing to me it was sort of coffee bagels and intercourse you know I mean it was all sort of on the same level it had no, nothing had a priority so I had staid with him Saturday night and we had obviously been very intimate with each other and then Sunday morning I woke up And you can, I just want to paint for you this whole shabby, sleazy scene. I am in his den wearing his dressing gown reading the New York Times and he is on the telephone with another woman making a date for that afternoon. And, you know, I can say he was not a very nice sort of fellow and I could say he was a creep and all that and maybe that is the truth but the thing is that's where i was and that's the level i was at and that'S what i was attracting into me and i always feel i think i always felt that i someone would come along and raise me to the new level they'd sort of discover me in the typing pool and bring me up to the boardroom you know um and uh it doesn't work like that I found in sobriety that one has to become that level in order to attract that level and so that was very much uh there was that was one incident that very much tells you you know where I was and and and it tells you where I wasn't because it was not to be the last time I saw him and um it was very close to my bottom but it wasn't exactly the bottom And anyway, I came into the program very shortly after that and I really couldn't see that alcohol had ever passed my lips. And for anyone in the room that's new, I always find it very awkward saying, you know, I came in to Alcoholics Anonymous. Like I woke up one morning and make a decision And I thought, you know, my life isn't in divine right order. I think I'll nip along to AA. I mean, it wasn't like that at all. I absolutely was brought in here having no idea that I even wanted it, that I ever needed it, that it was somewhere I wanted to be. I just didn't know. It was total grace that I came in and that I am still here. and I came in I had been trying to get this husband of mine back I guess I wanted to torture him a little more and someone said to me that they had been to an Al-Anon meeting for reasons of their own and they explained to me what it was about and they said tome, you know Lorna, all the women sound just like you so I went along to this Al-Anon meeting and I went to two meetings of Al- Anon and I thought, hmm, well that's very interesting but I want to find the real meat and potatoes I want to know how to get this chap back. So I started going to open meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and My last drink You know, I was going in and out of it. I wasn't going in an out of a I was Going to a I didn't you know, it wasn't even in I was just going to hear it and I had this job and After work, I would go across to the bar and of course I didn't call it a bar because it was in a very smart hotel on Madison Avenue and I called it a cocktail lounge but um at 730 I would say to my friends mmm it's 730 there's a meeting up the road of Alcoholics Anonymous at 8 o'clock I'm going to AA I'll be back and I would come back an anonymity to the wind I mean I was just fascinated with these stories I was just riveted. And I would go back to the bar and I would say, well, you'd never guess who is an alcoholic. And far be it from me to say anything but. And, you know, I'd tell them all sorts of details about what I'd heard and all that. I mean, I had no concept of what was going on. And then one day, you know, I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, this is actually what happened to me. This is my last drink. I had a last drink and then I had a last sip. And when I was 15 years sober, I'd always ended my story at my last drink. And when I was 15 years sober, I really hit my waterloo in alcoholics and in sobriety. I went into the worst, terrible, god awful pain I've ever known in my life. And I was given a great gift at that time. I remembered my last sip of alcohol. So I had a girlfriend staying with me one night and she was from out of town and she Was going to get up and take the bus home the following day i couldn't wait to get rid of her she finally left and i went downstairs and i bought myself a container of tropicana i came back upstairs and i mixed myself one of these things full of tropicana and vodka and i poured myself a tumbler full and as and i drank it i just drank it and as it went down and hit my stomach and that wonderful feeling came up through the tributaries of my body and hit my soul you know my soul went oh you know we can get through another day we can keep them at bay another day and this wonderful feeling of comfort came upon me now the chinese have a saying they say that the beginning of wisdom is to call something by its correct name now I had had a morning drink many many many times but I had not called it a morning drink I had called it brunch I had called it toasting the bride I had called it gallery openings I had called it all sorts of things I'd called it summertime when I lived in Spain for a short period and I had cognac in my coffee every morning I called it continental and um but i never called it a morning drink this i knew was a morning drink and i've been going to aa for a few months now not on a regular basis but i've been going and so i you know a little window opened of truth this is a morning drink and then on the heels of that truth the disease comes running and the disease says oh Lorna the sort of woman you are the sort of mind you have the kind of job you have to hold down do you know it's a lot of pressure on you why do you make things so hard for yourself why do you struggle why do always have to go against the grain why don't you make it easy for yourself why don'T you do this every morning and I thought to myself yes absolutely why don't I do this every morning? And with that thought, I could not release the glass from my hand. I could no put the glass down and I was going to have a brunch with someone and I remember getting in the shower and I could, I was soaping myself holding the glass away from the shower and I had a wonderful thing called identification. I knew something, some glimmer happened that I was powerless over this glass and I identified it with cigarettes. I had been smoking since I was maybe 13 years old and I'd always known, always from the get-go, I knew that I had a problem with cigarettes, I could not put cigarettes down and I was always fascinated with these people that could take a puff of a cigarette and put it in the ashtray and leave it and talk and then take it and pick it up and take another puff and put it in the ashtray I couldn't once it was lit it was in my hand the whole time until it was and then and then I got to I bought a Dunhill cigarette holder so I could hold it in my mouth the whole thing the whole game so I talked you know like we have ways of making you talk sort of thing you know I so that I could have it right here all the time and I knew I could not release cigarettes and I have done every disgusting thing imaginable with cigarettes, you know, I've sworn them off I've crushed them up, I'd thrown them in the garbage I've retrieved them from the garbage the next day, I'm going to throw them I've dried them out in the oven because they're sobbing with coffee grounds and things like that I've taken puffs of other people's cigarettes when they've got hacking coughs I mean, you name it I've done it with cigarettes And so I knew I'd gone very far down with smoking. And something hit me that this glass in my hand was the same. Anyway, that afternoon I found myself, because this is too long a story to go into all this, in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was in AA for nine days. I knew that somehow I belonged here. And nine days later, I went down to Washington on business. And I always ended my story at that point. But then I got to remember this part of my story. I was down on business in Washington, and after the business, I was having dinner at this client's house, and it was a very casual dinner, and we were friends. There were about five of us at dinner, and he poured a goblet of wine for us all, and I didn't know enough to say no thank you. I thought that the whole purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous was to teach me how to live comfortably around alcohol I thought that I was going to be in here to learn how to resist alcohol I thought I had to build up some kind of armor that when I was around this stuff I could say no, no, it doesn't bother me it's fine, go ahead and so I didn't have the tools I didn' t know to say no thank you I didn''t know that even if it was poured to ask them if they would remove it I didn ''t have these tools I thought I was to sit there and fight it so I got through the salad I got though the main course I got thru dessert and then the after dinner fruit came and this goblet started talking to me and it said to me, you know Lorna you're always so bloody dramatic do you know? You always go overboard what are you doing in Alcoholics Anonymous for your simple problem I'm not your problem you're your problem. Why don't you lose 10 pounds you know, why don'tyou exercise a little more and you know you've never read the classics and um you just you hardly ever read the newspaper and uh what you know you're always blaming me i'm on your side don't i make you feel terrific don't you feel prettier when we're together i'm with you you know i'm not out to do you in you should eat before we get together you know why why what you're all always looking to blame something else look at yourself and i said you know you're right and I picked up that glass and I took a sip of that wine now whereas nine days before that tumbler full of vodka and orange juice had made me feel so wonderful and so at one and so comforted this sip of wine sent my soul into a screaming terror absolute terror and it felt to me my god what a modern meeting this is someone's getting a phone call in the middle of a meeting um if it's for me i'm in the middle of speaking um the uh i felt as though there were these enormous doors that were maybe 80 tons and hundreds of feet high and they had been by this sip of wine they'd been released from their moorings And they were coming, shuntering across the film of my life. Very slowly but inevitably like dead man walking. They were just coming across my life and they were going to clang shut with this inevitable, irretrievable thud. And I was going to be on one side of these doors and you were goingto be on the other. And I didn't understand about sobriety. I didn' t know about sobriety. I didn't want sobriety. I didn' t even know that I had a problem with drinking, but I did not want to be separated from you. That's all I knew. I wanted to be with you, and I felt so cut off. I felt like, you know when you see those movies of astronauts, and they're cut from the mothership, and they just float out in space, gone forever, and that's what I felt. I felt like I was gone. And, um, I came back on Amtrak the next day and all the way back to New York, I cried and I begged God, I said, please let me back in, please. And I said,"You know, I don't understand this thing of a day at a time. I can't do this a day, at a time." I didn't know the mystical wonderment of one day at a time."I said,"I can't do this a day at a time because obviously i can't because in the day i drank i said i need a covenant forever you keep me sober i'll go to any lengths for you i'll be a fool for you I don't care so I think God wanted to test me immediately and um I came back to New York and I went to a meeting called Lenox Hill which in New York has a certain sort of reputation and in those days it really deserved its reputation it was full of very very establishment lawyers bankers and uh you know park avenue matrons i mean they all have out their stories but still it was the elite money kind of aa and um i flung myself in there and i went and sat in the front row and um someone came up to me and he said to me he he said you can't sit there he said georgina and george whatever their names were he said have been coming to lenox hill for the last 20 years and they always sit in those seats he said you can't sit there and i don't know what grace enabled me to stay and not to slink out like oh my god i've done it wrong again do you know i sat there and I something came through me and I must just say he was the sort that had like a corduroy trousers on and they had little spewing whales embroidered in the trousers you know and um the little alligator on the thing up here and he said and i said to him i don't care who sits here i'm here now and i'm not leaving and uh that was uh august 11 1976 and i haven't left since. I have, however, sat in different seats. And I would say to you, one of my things that I'm always bashing on about because I think it's so important for myself to hear it over and over again, change, change. Just change. Whatever you do, do it differently. If you do not sit in the same seats in your meetings, move. Sit in a different seat for God's sakes. See the speaker from a different point of view. See life from a difference angle, even if it's only in the AA room. Do you know? At least give yourself that breath of change. And, you know, if you always leap out of bed and get on your knees in the morning, maybe leap out to bed and open the back door and look at the sky. Look, pray in a different way. Do everything differently from the moment you wake up to the moment to go to bed. It's so important for alcoholics. I know for myself to do everything to change because whatever I don't change is a bottle in the closet. it it somehow it festers when I get the sameness all the time anyway so here I am I'm in I'm in AA finally and I had a very very bumpy kind of start I had very strange ideas about how this thing worked I heard that you were members of Alcoholics Anonymous and I really felt I mean I know what being a member is I thought you were going to call me and you You know, I'd been coming around for a couple of weeks. I thought I was going to be sort of like, you know, those guys that hang out in the kitchen of rooms that I thought they were the winners. And I since found out they were losers because they were always in the back in the kitchen and never out with the meeting. But I thought we were going to call me in and say, you know, we'd like you to become a member of AA. And they were going to have little AAs embroidered in their ties and little praying hand cufflinks maybe. And they were going to question me. They were going to say, you know, how do you make a martini? And what's the alcoholic content of a Rob Roy or something like that? I thought I was going to get questioned about being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Anyway, the greatest tool I think I had, there are many, many tools as we know. The greatest tool for me was a sponsor. I got a sponsor and she did not want me at all. She was not very happy. She was praying to God for a boyfriend and God gave her me. And people would kept on coming up to her and saying, would you tell Lorna to do such and such? And would you Tell her to stop? And because I was really not retiring when I came in or shy. And I had this very grand exterior covering low self-esteem and i came in the program in august and winter was certainly very soon to be and most people wore a coat uh in the wintertime but i didn't wear a coat i wore a cloak and um i would fly into the meeting you know while they while the preamble was being read like Dracula risen from the, and I would fly down center aisle with the coat swirling, the cape swirling and all the ashtrays would bounce up on the seats. And finally, you know, I mean if someone had come up to me and said to me, hey sister, who do you think you are? I would have probably said, oh I don't know, who do you think I am. But my sponsor was very brutal to me, and she knew actually, it's a little woman here, excuse me, she knew that she couldn't talk to me about drinking because I just couldn't understand it. I couldn't grasp it. And for anyone in the room that's new, I will tell you it took me two years to grasp the fact that i drank because i was alcoholic and not and i i did not drink because my life was a mess my life Was A Mess Because I Drank And It Took Me A Long Time To Get That Around But She I Knew One Thing I Knew My Life Was Shabby And I Kew I Was Go I Said That I Was Going Through A Bad Patch The Fact That I've Been Going Through That Patch Since I was four seemed to elude me, you know? And so she would say to me things like, she'd always talk to me about the high road. She'd always say, this is the high Road. If you want the high road, this how you do it. And she said this to me, I just think it's so wonderful. She said, Lorna, if you stay with us and if you come with us and just listen with us, you will be able to develop a life that will be like having a quiver of golden arrows on your back. And when you come into a situation in life that you're not too sure of, you'll be ableto reach back, select the perfect arrow, put it in your bow, and like a spiritual warrior, you'll hit bullseye every time. and the idea of hitting bullseye every time was so intoxicating to me was so appetizing to me i never hit bullseyes i mean i went into maxi skirts the years minis came out and all that i mean i got it wrong i just you know alcoholics will always say i always felt wrong i felt like I didn't fit in. And you know why? Because we are wrong, and we don't fit in. We just don't. And no one ever said to me, you know, you drink too much. Why don't you watch it? No one ever, ever said anything to me about my drinking. Never. People said to be things like Lorna, shh. Or do you mind or uh you know you're very spiteful and that wasn't very kind what you said to carol the other day and you don't have you call it honesty but it's not it's cruel and things like that were said to me and gradually gradually you know with the help of this sponsor and the wanting the high road, I desperately I worked in the art field I'm a fine arts auctioneer and I wanted my life to be a work of art desperately wanted my life to be an art to be a work of art and that was the thing that captured me in AA it wasn't the fact that I would be sober that I wouldn't have to drink again that I just you know I don't think you can scare an alcoholic with you know if you don't stop drinking you're going to die yeah yeah yeah then what do you know um it's like no big deal and i couldn't be sober was so wimpy to me i mean i want something more than sober i mean i didn't drop acid because i want an ordinary day you know i'm i have this this thing in me this great thirst and this great passion. And I didn't, when people want to squelch that in me, I feel terrible. It's a terrible thing. But you know, in all my life, people said to me things like, I remember as a child, people would say, you know what that girl needs is a firm hand you know and always trying to make me smaller and I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and what you said was why don't you try being more of what you really are and why don t you let go of what you're not and I believe for myself that Alcoholics anonymous has not given me a thing it's a spiritual program, it cannot possibly give us anything. If Alcoholics Anonymous could give me something, then it would mean that I was created incomplete to start with. And it's not so. Alcoholics Anonymous has not given me anything. Alcoholic Anonymous, you have shown me what I no longer need. You have allowed me to let go of all the tinsel that I've put on myself. First of all, I came into the program and you said to me, you know, you do not have to drink. You can let go of that. And I said, but yes, I do. You know, what am I going to do at Christmas? What am I gonna do at Thanksgiving? What am i gonna do when they're celebrating? And you said, yes, well, we understand. And this is what we did on those particular situations. And then you said to me things like, you don't have to deal in anger with the bank teller and the grocery clerk and people like that. And I said, oh well yes I do because they're very irritating and you said, yes we know they're very irritating but this is what we do and this is how we get through and without all that stuff and gradually gradually you allowed me to let go of all this stuff that I thought I needed, all this stuff and when I walked into the program my physical look was very much in line with how I was inside I came in, I wondered how you knew I was a newcomer right, first of all I'd been wearing the same dress for the last three months and it wasn't the fact that I didn't have any other clothes that's what I wanted them made for I couldn't be bothered to put another outfit together, it was just too much to think what went with what I just couldn't do it and I had very long hair and most women have long hair so that they can put combs in it and fiddle around with it and wear it in different styles this hair drove me insane and I wore it in tight braids across the top of my head and I worn it like that because I could keep it up for three and four days at a time you know I wanted a hairstyle forever and um you know i wondered how you knew i was new and i had gobs of makeup on just gobs of makeup and um i never took it off i was because it was just too much to wash every night i just was like elizabeth the first i wake up and i put more on every day and i was absolutely festooned in jewelry i mean i had jewelry dripping all over the place i had four holes in my ear in the late 60s I mean, long before piercings, multiple piercnings came out. And I'd seen some African tribal wife coming into London Airport with, you know... I'm lucky I don't have a plate in my lip, I tell you. I really am. So... And I'm so glad I came into the program before tattoos became popular and piercINGS. I just want to say, you Know, in the summer, I was in Midtown Manhattan and I was on an elevator and I saw this gorgeous young girl getting into the elevator in her short shorts and she had on her thigh she had tattooed the whole crown the bleeding head of Christ with the crown of thorns and everything and she got on the elevator and I went oh my god and I really would have had the last supper put on my chest do you know and so i'm very lucky that i um i'm in before all that so uh where am i up to but so i looked i looked very very odd uh when i came in and i i want to tell this story on myself you know for many years i'd shopped in i'd gone into thrift shops and i bought the odd little thing in thrift shop like a little 1930s bag or a nice little jacket to accentuate an outfit or something like that but at the end of my drinking I was dressing out of thrift shops I was addressing because I couldn't face the department store I couldn t go in and go through they were too frightening to me it was too overwhelming you know I remember my first time I went shopping in I mean a newcomer should never go to Bloomingdale's for their first shopping spree, but I went to Bloomingdale's and I remember standing in Bloomingdales and seeing all these women pass me with these nifty little outfits on. And I felt like Rip Van Winkle come back. I didn't know how to do it. I did not know whether to go and buy a ski outfit, whether to buy a cocktail dress, whether to by, I did know what to do. I just lost it. and anyway I was shopping out of thrift shops and one day at work and I had this very highfalutin job and as I said you know I was a fine arts auctioneer and I was dealing in multi-million dollar sales with paintings and big end of the line stuff top of the lines stuff and I think it was just this accent that got me through a lot of it you know um but uh i um one day one of my co-workers came to me and very gently very sweetly she took me aside and she talked to me like one would to a patient you know not to want to disturb me and she said to me lorna why are you wearing a maid's uniform and i i realized you know when she said it oh my god that it was a maid's uniform I had the little matching collar and the cuffs and and the belt to go with it and I bought it at the thrift shop because I thought it made me look neat and tidy and um and I was desperately trying to keep it together and of course it made мне look neat entire that's what it was designed to do it was amazing uniform but um that's the sort of state I was in it's a wonder when I went to talk to people about their collections or they came into the galleries you know that they didn't give me their coat to hang up I think they must have been so shocked to find out that I was the actually the expert anyway um here I am in sobriety and um I I want to say that uh it has been some phenomenal journey for me the sobriery um I never really like to talk about my sobrietry although I slip into it a lot because I don't like to talk about my program or my sobriety because I think it's sobrietry and the program. Because if I start talking about my sobpriety and my program, eventually I'll start having this designer program. You know, I'll make it like my program. Maybe a little chicken cooked in wine or something like that. And I want to say that my journey in sobriete I think for myself that I've probably had one of the most interesting lives That anyone could have And it's interesting because my entire sobriety I've had a diet of two meetings a day Except when I wasn't able to get to two meetings But that's my standard It's two meetings and maybe more on the weekends And I don't always love sobriete I'm a human being and life deals blows and I don't always love sobriety and I certainly don't always love members of Alcoholics Anonymous but I'm in love with Alcoholics Anonymous and if you had asked me a few years ago what is the most important thing in your life I would have shot back instantly the most important thing in my life is my sobriete but that is not the case anymore it is no longer the most important thing in my life the most important thing in my life is alcoholics anonymous and somehow something switched from my me mine to our common welfare and i know if i can keep my focus on alcoholics autonomous you know seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and everything else will be added on that that will be taken care of and um there are lots of tools in the beginning hungry angry lonely and tired i just told this story the other day actually i hadn't told it for a long time and i don't know how it's going to go down here, but I'll say it again. When I was seven years sober, for anyone that's having trouble with their anger, when I was Seven Years Sober, I met a girlfriend of mine in Midtown Manhattan for a business lunch. And at this lunch, as a promotion, they gave us umbrellas, long umbrellAS. And we were standing on 43rd Street and Madison Avenue after lunch saying goodbye. and along the road came this little old lady with a cane and she had a fluffy pink coat and she was walking with a crane and as she came past me she wrapped me on the ankles and said move out the way I turned around and I lifted up this umbrella and I brought it down smack on that little pink coat and I said to her you miserable little bitch and she turned around so startled and I screamed this out in the road and the whole street was like freeze frame because they turned around everyone turned around and here they're looking at me and I'm a woman in a business suit but they'd heard this thing and they could see something and but it was like freeze frame and while everyone was frozen in that state and no one was talking to me it felt so delicious i gave her another one and um so my friend my friend said to me luna stop it stop it you know but it took seven years for my anger to really come out and uh i uh and then there was no holes barred i um when i was 15 years sober i just made mention of it before when i Was 15 Years Sober I uh plummeted into the worst pain i i've ever known in my life and it was over the breakup of a relationship as is so often the case But, you know, I had had hard things happen. I was 15 years sober. Life had happened to me. And I buried both my parents. I'd lost jobs. I had relationships end. Life had happen. But for some reason or the other, the end of this relationship was devastating to me and it usually in long terms, I don't know if 15 years is long term, but anyway, it comes around always by a loss. often if a man loses his job it can be devastating but usually some kind of a loss and it doesn't have to be you know i used to be very judgmental about people and i'd i'd hear them in the rooms talking about what i lost my cat today and i go your cat really but now i know you know it i can't judge what that loss is i can'T judge what it is and um this relationship ended for me and i and I was the one that ended it. And, um, it sent me spiraling into depths. And my friend said to me, you know, Lorna, if you end this relationship, you're going to be in a lot of pain. And I said, yeah, yeah, no pain, no gain. You know, I know what to do. I'll get a newcomer and I can read the big book and I'll do a little 12 step work. And then I tell you, the big hook went out the window. My sponsees turned into my sponsors. I was absolutely devastated. I could not move. I could not pray, I could not meditate, I couldn't do anything and I remember a priest friend of mine saying to me now maybe you and I'd always prided myself on my spiritual program that I had a lot of spiritual power and he said to me now maybe you understand God's will and not your will he said even your spiritual life cannot be your will and I really understood Jesus' beatitude when he said blessed are the poor in spirit because I was so poverty-stricken in spirit, I didn't know what to do. I could not pray or anything. I didn'T know if I even believed in God anymore. And one of the hallmarks for this kind of pain is its enduring quality, is its relentless longevity. And it was the sort of pain that long outlasted the patience of my friends. And I would be sitting in meetings. It lasted three years. And as a little comfort to you all And I would be sitting in meetings You know, practically rolling on the floor In agony And people would say Oh my God Is that what 17 years looks like? I don't want that But you know God left me with one thing Just one thing And that was smart feet And my feet took me to meetings And I screamed and I cried And I carried on And I know that there's someone In this room That has experienced that I know there is. And I spoke in El Paso last week and I forgot to say how I got out of this pain and I didn't get out of it. God brought me out. I was absolutely in the desert. And believe me, I tried. I tried everything and I could not get out. of this pain. And I had to go through whatever it was until it was done. And finally God came and brought me out. And it was very funny because at the end of this scenario, I happened to be in the Sinai. I went into the Sinait desert and I went up Mount Sinai and I thought that God was going to give me a message up there. He talked to Moses up there and he was going to talk to me. But all I got was, you know, I should have dressed a little warmer It was freezing up there And I had a very interesting experience actually When I was in the Sinai I needed to get somewhere And the only way to get there was on a camel And I got this Bedouin to take me on his camel And we're out in the middle of nowhere As the Sinais is in the middle of nowhere and it's a desert and it is not like an American desert where there might be eagles or little things coming out of holes around or shrubbery it's sand, I mean it's a desert, there's nothing flying overhead, there is no vegetation, there is nothing. So we are plodding along on this camel and most camels have wonderful names like Rashid or Mohammed or Salim or something like that and mine was called Bob Marley i should have i should have known right then and there um but anyway we're out about i don't know 20 minutes from base i suppose and finally this bedouin jumps off the camel we've been riding on the camel together and he hands me the rain and in broken arabic and english he says to me the camel knows the way and he walks off. And I'm, you know, you're very high up when you're on a camel. It's not like a horse where you can leap up and leap on it again. I'm in terror. And this guy is walking away and I'm trying to mutedly scream to him. I mean, I didn't want to scream too loudly in case it meant in camel language, giddy up full speed ahead. But he disappears over a sand dune. I mean, I don't know, there might have been a six lane highway on the other side of the sand dume with his Ferrari over there. I don'T know. But anyway, he left me and he was gone. And there's just Bob Marley and me in the middle of the Sinai. And I tell you, you haven't, you don't Know what the third step is until you've been on a camel in the Sinait. I Mean, I just, I thought I didn't know what to do. I was in terror. i was in absolute terror and um i've been totally abandoned i was on this strange beast and i didn't know where to go and then the terror just seized me and then it relaxed and i thought well what can i do what can I do he said the camel knows the way and then i got this great spiritual grandiosity i thought well of course you're in the sinai you silly wretch of course you're here. Isn't this where God brings all his favorites to talk to them? Didn't he talk to Moses here and Jesus, he talked to in the next desert one over and he's going to talk to you. So, um, and he is going to give you a message to take back to them. And I tell you, I'm sitting on this camel waiting for my message. And two and a half hours later, Bob Marley and I arrive at our destination. And all I learned was, you know, I got a little sunburned and I should have worn a hat. And that I learned the joy of the journey and the relaxing into the journey. And whether I'm on a camel in the Sinai or the IRT in New York, it's the process. And I go through the same thing all the time, you know, the terror, the surrender, the grandiosity, the ordinariness of the journey and the arriving. How long do I have? I have a few more minutes, I have. So this pain I was in and it was a burning cleansing sort of pain And gradually, gradually, I did come out of it. And gradually things, I see it very differently for myself now. I see life very differently. It's not as though black has become white. It's as though Black has become triangles and as though triangles have become lizards. I mean, it's like it's so different. It's so juxtaposed. i think it's actually what i took acid for do you know uh it's so different and uh i can never one of the biggest burdens i have in my life and one ofthe biggest burdens that you helped me to let go of is this thing called my personality you know every time i say this is the way i am i've made my life about this big and every time i say well that's the way i do things it's a real loser phrase because i've never been in this day sober before i have no idea and talking about this pain i also want to say that i was so for anyone in the room that's new that thinks i am not one of these people in the program that has this phrase take what you like and leave the rest don't do that don't take what you like and leave the best because if you're an alcoholic of my sort you will just take dessert you know and we need full course meals and I need vegetables and grains I need it all I can't exist on just the sweet and the easy I must take it all and it when I was going through this pain that's when i really was so grateful that i had a great foundation and that i take a notice of the all the tools that i was told to do i was so thankful that i didn't have alcohol in the house because if i they say they say that any alcoholic that has alcohol in their house no matter for what reason they say it's there it's got their name on it and i know that i would have drunk and i don't want to drink again either i have no wish to drink but i have alcoholism and alcoholism will drink again and the alcoholic will often say well just because i've stopped drinking doesn't mean to say i have to impose that on my friends i want to be able to offer my friends a drink and my wife still drinks or my husband still drinks and i really you know i i wantto have that there people that don't smoke cigarettes do not keep cartons of cigarettes in their house for people to drop by. You know? Orthodox Jews do not keep ham and Swiss cheese for their Gentile friends to drop buy. And Muslims do not have sides of pork in the freezer for their gentile friends to drop bye. And I've never been, yet I might come but I have never been to anyone's house and they have hypodermic needles on the coffee table and they say well we don't shoot up but maybe you'd like to, do you know? So I had to get rid of all that stuff and I had the clever lamps made out of champagne bottles and the ashtrays with ships in them and the glasses because I found myself drinking tab out of wine glasses and just this fiddling with the disease. it's like tickling the neck of a tiger you know for a long time it will purr and then one day it'll just go and um i am powerless over it and i had to get rid of all the photographs of myself in swell evening dress because i had no photographs of myself being spiteful i had no photographs OF MYSELF falling off bar stools i have no photographs Of MYSelf losing clients and acting out so I had to get rid of all the stuff that enticed me into thinking that that was a good way of life because I can easily feel it wasn't so bad anyway just the last thing of this pain that I went through I'm very friendly with Mother Teresa and I have been to Calcutta many times and worked in Calcutt And when this happened to me, I wanted to be with Mother very much. And I went to Calcutta and I couldn't work. I just couldn't walk. I mean, I was starting to envy the lepers. I just, you know, they seemed a lot better off than me. And Mother knew I was in a terrible state and she was very sweet to me. She put me up at the orphanage, which was just wonderful. and she just knew that I was in real big crises oh, and I just want to say this also that many, many people came up to me in this time and I'm not saying anything against it this is just my story there are 8 million stories in the Naked City this is only one of them and this just happens to be mine many people come up to us and said you are very depressed Oh, no, you're joking. Really? How observant. Why don't you take Prozac? You know, when Jesus was in the agony in the garden, I always think of this. He was a right mess. And maybe one of the disciples went up to him and said to him, you know something? You've really been acting out. A couple of weeks ago we were in Jerusalem and you go into this fit And you're throwing the money lenders out of the temple You know, and you're just really acting out in a berserk way We had to do a lot of fast talking to get you out of that one And last week we come into the big city And you, you have to make a total fool of yourself And ride in on a donkey Do you know how ridiculous you look doing that? And we've just been at supper we've just had this wonderful meal and you you you're so morbid you tell us that this bread we're eating and this wine we're drinking is your body and blood you know we that's pretty disgusting and now you're here and you're in such a state you're sweating blood and all you're doing is talking about doom and gloom and all that you know jesus i think you're clinically depressed why don't you go on Prozac but they don't say that to Jesus now we build cathedrals we paint paintings we think that his journey was some phenomenal spiritual journey and so it was but when it happens to us when we go through the same torches of the damned when we do that when we are very quick to say that Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program. But when we say it's a spiritual program, when we can get parking spots and when we go for interviews and the interviewer's got the serenity prayer on the table or something, you know, when some wonderful thing happens, when some coincidence happens to us, we say, oh, it's a spiritual problem. It's a cultural program. But when the heavies come to us we say something's wrong. Something's wrong here. and um when my heavies came i'm just very glad that i you know i strapped myself in and i went for the ride because i don't understand these people in the program that say that they're i don't know how that phrase goes how's it go my worst day drinking oh my my worst stay sober is better than my best day drinking or something like that i they're not doing the same thing i'm doing. I've never been so suicidal in my life as I have been in sobriety. I'd never been so angry in my live as I had in sobrietiy. I had never been full of lust and greed as I have in sobrierty. I mean, I have thought sometimes, oh my God, where did that come from? So when I was going through this, I just strapped myself in and went for the ride. And I remember after I'd been in Calcutta, that following summer, my mother was in New New York. And she, we met and she said, she asked me, how is it for you? How is it going for you and I said to her, mother, it's hell. It's absolute hell and she said, hmm. She said, how God must love you. She said, and he wants to be very intimate with you but he is a jealous lover and he is burning out of your soul everything unlike himself and i said well gee that's swell mother but you know i i wish he'd stop being quite so passionate here um one uh thing i want to say and i want us to say it because last week was my sister's birthday and my sister died many years ago before I was born. She died of spinal meningitis at the age of three. And like most, like a lot of women, alcoholics and AA, I had a very difficult relationship with my mother. And I'm saying this as part of, you know, going through the ninth step and we will know a new freedom and a new happiness. And when I was nine years sober, I felt this urge to have my own mother. I want, I'd made a lot about the mother figures in my life and I wanted my own mother I felt a need for that and um I went home to England and that's where I'm from by the way in case you hadn't guessed um and I determined that I was going to spend time with my mother and that I Was going to focus on the good things that I had happened to me I had I was so used to looking at what she hadn't gotten right or what she'd done wrong and I thought I'm going to tell my mother all the wonderful things I remember about my childhood and believe me I was so used to being negative, I really had to dig and I went home and I talked to my mother and I told her about some wonderful things I remembered about the childhood and she and then I got out the family album and I asked her questions about her childhood and about her mother and about Her Friends and about her grandmothers and uh and i took an interest in my mother and um i sat with her for three weeks and we cried and i and i got angry and we argued i had a relationship but i stayed there and during that time i told my mother i wanted to go and visit my sister's grave and she said to me that she didn't want to go she hadn't been since the burial and this was 40 years now i was 40 years old and nine years sober and uh she uh didn't want to go and i said well i'm going to go and she said you will never find that grave i went i went way over to the other side of london and i walked into this very derelict cemetery and it had been laid waste for many years and there were parts of it that they were re-redigging to get new graves and i talked to her and she walked in and on the left hand side was an office and then there were a couple of grave diggers and they were having lunch and i told them my story and i tell you they must have been michael and gabriel i mean they were like angels and these great brawny grave diggers got these huge ledgers down from the shelf great big dickensian things i turned the pages back like this these huge ledgers and they found there my sister's name in 1936 and it said you know pamela murphy born such and such February the 17th died and December the 29th and they found out the plot and the grave number and they took me to this part of the cemetery and they walked down this very over trodden this very Overgrown path and you couldn't see the tops of the gravestones sometimes you could see like the tips of angels wings or an urn or something like that anyway we get to this big place and he with a machete he rips back all the brambles and he tears a path for me so that i can get to this gravestone and then he leaves me with this great granite slab and i had no idea that it was like this and i pulled all the ivy off it and it was all it was a family tomb i had no idea and there were all sorts of family members names carved on this stone and at the very bottom, the last name was my sister's name and her birth dates and her death dates. And it said there, it said, God took our darling daughter to dwell with him above. And I just stood at that grave and I just burst into tears. And i stood at the place where my mother and father stood 40 years before in their late 20s totally confused and bereft and at sea having to bury their little girl, their darling daughter. And for the first time it took me 40 years of life, ladies and gentlemen, to get this. For the first Time I realized that my parents' role in life had not been solely to be my parents that they had their own life with their own joys and their own sorrows long before i came along long before and i stood there in that very same spot where they must have stood and the thing was given to me that's given to each one of us that's a member of alcoholics anonymous i identified i identified with my parents pain i identified avec them and i went home. And my mother said to me, did you find the grave? And I said, yes, mother, I did. And she said, did did you cry? And i said, Yes, mother I did and my mother's 40 years of grief just welled up. And he cried and I held was able to hold that woman. And, you know, for the first time as an adult, I held her and I allowed that skin to touch my skin and that flesh to touch my flesh. And I looked into those eyes, clearly looked into those eyes. And this great healing took place between my mother and myself. And when I left, I thought maybe it was a fluke. It was just an emotional thing. But you know, I saw my mother quite a few times after that before she died. And the relationship was always good. And it was always fine when we met each other again. And i knew that that was just the power of Alcoholics Anonymous, because my mother died of chronic alcoholism. And she hadn't changed at all, but I had changed. And I was able to incorporate her. And they say that if you put a teaspoonful of salt in a tumbler full of water, it will make that water very salty. but if you put that same teaspoon full of salt in a lake it will hardly affect it and in life and in sobriety we're going to have lots of salty patches and the whole thing for me is to become a bigger vessel you know, pain is pain it's not to avoid the pain or not to avoided the joys but to become bigger vessel for it and I see my time is almost over and I just want to say this in this story that I just love so much that I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous has enabled me to not choose the sure thing I believe that choosing the sure things is treason for the soul to always go with what I know is right what I now is correct is deadening somehow I must risk. And if I live in the third step, I'm allowed to leap before I look. I can trust. I know that I'm going to be all right. And, you know, 2,500 years ago, there was a man walking on the earth and he was an Indian prince. And he wanted to find the truth in life and find why people suffered. and to cut a very long story short he sat under the Bodhi tree and was determined to sit there until he got an enlightenment and he became the Buddha and because of he was a very he'd come from a very princely family he was the prince of India and he could have chosen the sure thing he could've gone back to his father's palace and lived a very wonderful life full of material abundance but he didn't and because he did that because he didn't choose the sure thing and he found out that truth he sort of blasted open a gate for all mankind and 500 years after the Buddha sat under that tree there was another man on the earth and his name was Jesus I love talking about Jesus in an AA meeting I always think you can clear the room you can talk about everything else but mention that name and he was on his cross and he could have chosen the sure thing too but he didn't choose the sure thing, he could've gone back to Nazareth and he would've had a life, he would have gotten married and you know had children but he did not choose the sure thing,he went through that he kept his eyes on his goal and he went through that and because he did that he blasted open the gates of hell for millions of us millions, for the whole of mankind and i can have that if i choose it and two thousand years after that man died on a cross and rose again there was another man on the earth and his name was bill wilson and he in 1935 was in akron ohio and he was in a hotel and he'd had a dreadful dreadful day dreadful and he Was six months sober he hadn't had a drink for six months and he was really bottomed out by this awful day that he had. And he was in the hotel lobby and he could hear The Sure Thing. And The Sure Things was the cocktail lounge down one end of the hall. And he knew, as I know, that that's The Sure thing. I can go down there and be relieved from this god-awful pain. And I'm not thinking it through. I'm just thinking I want relief now. but Bill Wilson did not choose the sure thing Bill Wilson turned in that lobby and because he turned he walked to the other end of the lobby and he went to the directory and he started making phone calls and because he didn't choose the sure things I'm here today and I'm here and able to speak and you know we never know the ricochet effects that choosing something different in our lives is going to have for all mankind we have no idea that just doing something a little differently and going that extra step and doing that extra thing we never know I'm sure Bill Wilson didn't think well you know I am going to make this telephone call so that Lorna Kelly can be in Corpus Christi in 1996 addressing you know it wasn't that way at all and I want to I am here this evening and i want to thank you all for not choosing the sure thing and uh i want to thank you very much for um for living life with a risk because we live life very bravely in alcoholics anonymous and i wanna thank you for calling your sponsors for getting the alcohol out of your house for working the steps for working with newcomers for reading the big book for just going ahead of me so that I know I have a lit path and know where to go because if you weren't here those doors would have shut totally and irretrievably on my life so I want to thank you for the not choosing the sure thing and I want thank you.