10/04/2025
*An anonymous story about resolving anger and rage.
A month before my 18th birthday, my dad had a fatal heart attack. I remember going to a party right after that and drinking for the first time. I drank to get drunk. It was my first spiritual experience with booze. I suddenly felt charming, smart, handsome and funny.
I eventually moved away to Pittsburgh for college, and slowly over time spoke with my mom less and less. She was exhausting. She made everything about her. If I called her it was going to be a two-hour conversation, so I just stopped calling. If we did talk, I usually got annoyed with her about something. I hung up on her more than once. When I’d come home to visit, I made sure to try and be in an opposite room. If I did end up talking to her, I just made fun of her and used her complaining as humor for everyone else.
My mom knew nothing about my drinking and how much a part of my life it had become. Looking back I can see how entitled and angry I was. I couldn’t see it then. I thought I was “easy breezy” and “go with the flow.”
I moved down to Tennessee after I started having auditory and visual hallucinations. I was convinced living in Pittsburgh caused all of that, not all the drinking and smoking pot I was doing every day. I told one person—a friend who lived in Tennessee—what was going on with me. She invited me to come live with her and said I wouldn’t have to pay any bills. I planned on staying for one year, but I met a girl there and stayed five. My girlfriend got into grad school in New York City, so we both moved there.
I eventually got a job waiting tables at a fine dining restaurant. Here’s how my life went: I would wake up at noon, shower and head into Manhattan from Brooklyn. Upon arrival, I’d down five to seven shots of room temperature vodka. I needed to know how to sell the wine at work, so I drank a bottle or two throughout my shift. I would do multiple shots in the kitchen, borrow someone else’s co***ne and end my shift with scotch or a beer. I would then go home and grab a six- or 12-pack at the corner deli. I would drink that until I passed out while my girlfriend was asleep. I was convinced she was cheating on me, so while she was asleep I would look through her phone, emails and trash. I felt disgusting the whole time, but couldn’t stop myself. She eventually left me. That got my attention.
I called a guy I knew and asked if he could meet me. He said he was going to a meeting, and we could get coffee after. All I heard him say was coffee, that’s it. Instead, he took me to this sunlit room, and to my surprise it was a First Step AA meeting. I sat in the back of the room and bawled my eyes out. That was March 12, 2009. My journey in AA had begun.
In my early years of AA, I was consumed with a blinding rage. After I was sober a few years, someone who heard me qualify shared from the floor that when I was counting days I would vibrate when I sat next to her. She told me that she related to that anger but was terrified of me. As I proceeded through the Steps that rage slowly dwindled away, very slowly, educationally slow.
At 15 years sober I finally dropped thinking that I wished my mom would die. For years I had been consumed with how irreparable my relationship with her was. I sometimes would pray for her to pass away. When it came time to make my amends, I certainly didn’t think I owed her any. But I wrote out my script for an amends to her and my sponsor gave the “A” for approval. I set the time for around Christmas, as I would be going down to Delaware to see her then. Everything was golden.
My mom was 83 and was just getting out of the hospital. I picked her up and brought her home. When we got to her house, I eventually asked her for a time that would be convenient to sit and talk. She picked the next day around 1 p.m. I called my sponsor to let him know it was on. He suggested I meditate and pray beforehand. He reminded me to say my piece and then give her the opportunity to talk and for me to silently listen.
The next day she slept past our scheduled time. When she woke up, she panicked and wondered why I hadn’t woken her up. I told her she seemed exhausted and probably needed to rest. We rescheduled for later that afternoon. The amends had already begun.
We had a late breakfast that she cooked for the two of us. Now the time had come. I went into my room, prayed and grabbed my script. Mom and I sat at the kitchen table that was filled with her mail and bills. I opened my script and began. She sat across from me with wide eyes and patiently listened to me struggle through the words. I choked up instantly and burbled out the script as I soldiered on. I thought she would be the one having tears flowing down her face. But she just sat there dry-eyed and listened.
After I finished saying the words that I had crafted with my sponsor, she looked up and said, “I appreciate the courage it took for you to read that to me. It seemed really difficult for you to say.” Then she added, “I’ve been waiting a really long time for that. You’ve told me about helping other people and I’ve always wondered why you and I could never get along. I always knew that there was a good man inside there. I would sometimes cry myself to sleep wondering what it was that I did to you.”
I learned about unconditional love that day. My mom had continued loving me the entire time I was drinking, absent and mean to her. I discovered that, like it says in Step Three, I had been writing a script for my mom on how I expected her to love me. She never followed that script, nor was even aware that she had “lines.” I would always tell my AA folks about how once again my mother wouldn’t love me back properly, when in fact she had been loving me the whole time—in her own way. I just couldn’t see it.
My mom moves around with a walker, and it takes a lot of effort for her to go from point A to point B. She had a workout machine that was left over from the previous tenants, and it had been sitting on her front patio since she had moved in. The stairs to get to the patio are too steep for her to climb down. She had no access to it, so she could never use it.
Later that day, while she was taking a nap, I went out onto the patio to take the machine apart to throw it away. I called my sponsor to tell him how the amends had gone as I unscrewed greased up bolts and battled the cobwebs. My sponsor was very loving and supportive. I was still tearful as I recounted what had taken place. When we hung up, my hands were covered in grease, and I had a full-on sweat as I took the machine apart. Suddenly, I heard the screen door to the patio slowly creak open. I looked over as my mom slowly pushed her head out in the doorway. She started singing to me with a big, proud smile on her face. She was serenading me, singing the Joe Cocker song “You Are So Beautiful.” To me.
