na kerry tuesday night I walked down tasker in a bleach-stained hoodie, both jittery and hovering above my body–i’d agreed to give it a shot. people were milling around on the sidewalk by the front entrance of saint john’s baptist church. there was a cluster of women who looked about my age, dyed black hair, plaid pants, long cardigans, and i crept towards them. is this the meeting? how brave you are, they had to drag me here kicking and screaming, are you a hugger, sit with us, sit with us– they recited from the basic text like it was a bible, repeated themselves like robots. we are not interested in what you’ve used, your connections, what you’ve done… just keep coming back, and i found it tedious, but remembered–i’d agreed to give it a shot. one year, six months, ninety days, thirty days, a week, twenty-four hours? a man in a flower-printed shirt and doc martens raised his tattooed arm: ten years. and there was clapping and tears glistening and you’re a fucking badass, man, and so many hugs. in church basements and rec rooms, motel meeting halls, chairs are arranged in a semicircle, fanned around a card table. thirty-cup coffee percolators, little styrofoam cups, vending machines humming, and the smell of feet and stale cigarettes. we met for bubble tea, yet more hugs, and she gave me a copy of the basic text, blank royal blue cover, hefty, looked into my eyes like she was giving me something sacred. that night i sat in bed and flipped through the text and marinated and thought about all the impressions, the weight in my stomach, the squirming and doubt, and i tried to push any words out of my mind and just sit with my body and be, and listen, and it felt wrong and i realized i gave it a shot and i have to keep looking. 220502 ... tender_square when i first moved to the states, i attended a few al-anon meetings in the community room of a nearby church. i was heartbroken about the state of my family. i had issued a final ultimatum to “terri” after she missed my 27th birthday faking sick, when i had seen her the night prior dancing in a drunken haze to shawn’s djing downtown during a period where she claimed to be sober. i penned a scorched earth email saying i never wanted to see her again, and i copied my sisters, my parents. i told terri i wouldn’t answer my door even if she was pounding on it (not that she ever would, she avoided us in her spirals). candi and brea sided with me, they were just as sick of terri’s shenanigans after nearly ten years of drama. but my parents were upset, and as a result, we stopped talking for several months. i spent a tearful christmas without them wondering why i was the one being punished for saying i’d had enough, for erecting a boundary that no one else had the courage to enact. meanwhile, my parents had terri move in with them while she continued to have “slip-ups”; she was a thirty-eight-year-old woman wanting to be a child again in the care of mom and dad. mom sent me a copy of “your erroneous zones” by wayne dyer that i didn’t ask for, filled the first page with an inscription that said i was the one who needed to change, and i called her up to scream about her audacity. i turned to al-anon because of my anger, because i felt like it was out of control. my harmonizing tendencies wanted to right the ship but i knew i couldn’t go back on my word (even though i eventually acquiesced months later in an act of sweeping forgiveness for all parties). the group sat in a circle and people of varying ages recounted their troubles of living with alcoholics—their spouses, their siblings—some cried so hard they could barely get the words out. the veterans spoke plainly about the latest interactions they couldn’t contain, how they were letting go and letting god. and i felt awkward, like what was going on in my family wasn’t serious enough to warrant having a place at the table, like i was overreacting. the tears fell anyway when i unburdened myself to those strangers, and they nodded sympathetically and passed a box of tissues. i bought the books, “how al-anon works” and “courage to change,” flipped through them back at home. but their candid callouts to god made me uneasy when i was sure i was an atheist at that time in my life. i attended a second meeting a week later but the same people weren’t there that i had hoped to run into again. i never went back. it was one thing to purge myself of my own fears and confusion when i needed an outlet, but it was another to absorb the anxieties and uncertainties of those around me. i was exhausted by their emotional outpourings, it was too much to take in. i had hoped for a surrogate family but was just as alone as i had been, stranded on an island of grief. not so long thereafter, i sought a therapist who specialized in family dynamics and started going to weekly sessions with her. dr. alice has been with me for eleven years, longer than both my marriages combined. 220502 what's it to you? who go blather from