In a Different Place

Image credit: Photo by DucDigital on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

Four years ago, I was sitting in a 12 Step meeting when the secretary announced available service positions. "Would anyone like to be secretary? Please," she said, sounding a little desperate, "It's really not much work. You just come in and read the script." The room went silent and I felt the way I did in school when the teacher would ask a question that I sort of knew the answer to, something I didn't feel entirely comfortable answering but would if I had to. Every silent moment was torture: my need to take care of the rest of the class battling it out with my desire to stay invisible and unnoticed. I should pipe up and break the silence! But if I did, I'd say something stupid and wrong and horribly embarrass myself. I was in a place filled with fear and tension. Eventually someone else volunteered, spurred to action (I always assumed) by even greater discomfort than mine.

This week at my 12 Step meeting, the secretary announced service positions, and I was there eagerly raising my hand, our meeting's version of Welcome Back Kotter 's Arnold Horshack. One of the reasons I started going back to meetings after a 4 year hiatus was to be of service. After completing Step 12 ("having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all areas of our lives") with my online group, I felt moved to carry and receive a message of recovery through more than my online presence; I wanted to connect with a real life group again.

So, at this week's meeting, when the positions were announced, I volunteered to take any of several positions. "Would you be the secretary?" asked the current secretary. "Sure," I replied. And so for the next few months, I'll be secretary of our meeting.

It wasn't until after the meeting, when my husband and I were out getting dessert together, that I realized I had done something that was not just completely outside of my comfort zone a few years ago, but completely outside my imagination. It feels good to be in a different place: a place where those old fears may still lurk at times, but where they don't rule me anymore.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.