Last Day at Work
Haay, last day ko na dito,, mamimiss ko dito, lalu na di na ko makakapag-update ng blog hahaha.,.,.makakapag-aral na kaya ako?
hopefully, yes, kc naman, gsto ko na mag-aral kahit panu..para sure ball na talaga… kkatuwa nga dito kc may lunch out hehehe. kain to the max!
i’ll miss my frendster blog…
eto, sumthing i got from Chicken Soup,,,mganda cia, pwamis!!!
And the Wisdom to Know the Difference
By Carol Davis Gustke
Alice ," the young woman smiled. Several other women welcomed me. I noticed one woman who looked my age, and also an older gentleman. Minnesota . It was there he faced his demons. Tough? Yes. For both of us. But we survived. Today, he is a grown man with a successful business and a loving family. Me? I’m still attending Al-Anon. A friend asked me why I was still a member seeing that Mark was sober now. "Because," I replied, "it’s not about Mark. It’s about me. Sometimes I get the two mixed up and I need the wisdom to know the difference."
"Don’t worry about Mark. You go to Al-Anon."
I stared at my doctor in disbelief. "Me? I’m not the one with the drinking problem."
"I know that, Carol. But someone you love drinks and it’s affecting your health in ways you don’t even realize."
I hurried to the car, climbed in and slammed the door. Imagine him telling me I need help.
I turned the key over and gunned the accelerator. Crunch. My head jerked. Behind me sat another car, its red fender bunched up like a wadded piece of paper.
"Hey, lady, are you blind?" A tall, lanky teenager with orange-streaked hair jumped from his car and faced me. "You didn’t even look before you pulled out."
I scanned his outfit. Baggy jeans that scraped the cement, a T-shirt that read, "I was born to party," and an image of a cobra ready to strike, tattooed on his left arm.
"Do you actually have a mother or were you hatched?" I barked.
After a lengthy confrontation that would have made a juicy piece for the Jerry Springer show, I drove home. Mark’s car was in the driveway.
I plopped a sack of groceries on the kitchen counter. "What time did you get in last night?"
"I don’t know," he mumbled, pawing through the refrigerator.
"Well, I do. It was after one o’clock. Your curfew is ten on a school night."
"So?"
"So you’re grounded."
Mark rolled his eyes. "I’m already grounded."
"Then you’re double grounded."
"Get a life, Mom," he scoffed, and shuffled toward his bedroom. I heard the door slam.
I reached for the bottle of Tums and downed a handful. What am I going to do?
The following week went reasonably smoothly. My hopes begin to rise. It’s just a phase, I told myself. He’ll snap out of it. A late-night call brought an abrupt end to my expectations.
"Mrs. Davis?" A deep voice resounded on the end of the line.
"Yes."
"Is your son Mark Davis?"
"Yes." I gripped the phone, fearful of what was coming next. A car accident? A death?
"Mark was found passed out at the mall parking lot. He’s been drinking."
"Oh, no. What shall I do?"
"I’ll drive him home. But he will have to appear in juvenile court for sentencing. If he has no prior record the judge usually mandates a period of time in a treatment center or AA."
I paced the floor until I heard the police car pull into the driveway. I’d thought of a million things to say to Mark, but when he walked in I burst into tears. He looked terrible. There was vomit on his shirt, and one shoe was missing. I led him to the bathroom and told him to clean up. He was in no condition to talk or listen to me. Later, when he had collapsed into bed, I knelt beside him and stroked his hair. "Please, God, help us," was all I could manage to pray.
The following morning I was up early. It had been a fitful night of sleep and my eyes were red and puffy from crying. My mind raced for a solution. Grounding him didn’t work. He was too big to spank. Talking, scolding, preaching. . . . I’d tried it all. Perhaps if he spent time in jail. The thought terrorized me. A rehabilitation center? I had just begun a new job and the insurance wouldn’t kick in for another three months. Mark’s father had abandoned us years earlier. I knew very little about Alcoholics Anonymous except it was for drunken bums. At least that’s what I thought. How could they possibly help my son?
Mark stood before the judge and heard his sentence: "Alcoholics Anonymous three times a week for one year." A counselor was assigned to his case.
The first meeting I waited in the parking lot. There must be a lot of alcoholics in our town, I thought. The parking lot was jammed. A group of women, talking and laughing walked toward the building. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.
An hour later, Mark slid in next to me.
"How was it?"
"Okay."
We drove home in silence.
The routine continued. Three times a week I drove Mark to AA meetings. I’d grounded him from using his car for six months. Now as I sat in my car watching the snow blanket the ground, I began to have second thoughts. I saw subtle changes taking place in Mark. He kept his curfew. He stayed home more. But he was still sullen and unresponsive to my questions.
One cold icy night, a turn of events changed my life forever. As usual, I was sitting in the car with the motor running, trying to keep warm. A young woman knocked on my window.
"Why don’t you come in and share a cup of coffee with us?"
"No, thanks. I’m not an alcoholic."
She laughed. "Neither am I. But I do attend Al-Anon. Wanna give it a shot?"
Anything was better than this freezing car, I thought. I climbed out and we hurried inside.
The Al-Anon room was at the end of the hall. The front room was for AA. I seated myself at a long table and gratefully accepted a cup of coffee.
"My name is
The meeting opened with the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
I immediately felt more peaceful. What’s going on? I wondered.
The topic was "detachment." I didn’t have a clue what that meant, but as I listened to the group share their stories, and apply one of the Twelve Steps to their situation, an overwhelming sense of belonging washed over me. I was not alone. I was not crazy. My doctor’s words flashed before me. "Don’t worry about Mark, you go to Al-Anon."
From then on, I was hooked. I couldn’t get information fast enough. I learned that I was an enabler, someone who saves the alcoholic from the consequences of his own behavior. How many times had I laid down a rule and then backed off when Mark begged for another chance? I’d even finished his school work when he was too tired. When he said he’d lost his paper route money I bailed him out. How could I be so blind? The group assured me they had all been where I was and to just keep coming back.
The next thing I did was to get a sponsor, another woman who had been in the program for at least a year and who seriously applied the Twelve Steps to her life. I asked Ellen to be my sponsor. She was close to my age and her son was an alcoholic. She agreed and we met each week over coffee. It was wonderful to have a friend who knew exactly how I felt. Ellen was not afraid to correct me if she saw me slipping back into my old ways of thinking. And often times she asked for my advice.
A strange reversal began to take shape. It dawned on me one morning that I wasn’t obsessing about Mark’s drinking. Not so long ago that’s all I thought of. Now, it was me I was focusing on, and it felt wonderful. My biggest pat on the back came from Mark. One night after coming home from a football game he paused on the way to his bedroom.
"Thanks for not grilling me about what I did tonight."
I look up and smiled. "Ultimately, I have no control over your choices, Mark. But regardless of what you do, I will always love you."
Where did that come from? Al-Anon. It was kicking in.
Mark had a couple of slips. Through it all I clung to my support group and my sponsor. The day came when Mark was admitted to a long-term halfway house in
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