I'm not going to be a missionary.

Actually, that's a decision I made a long time ago. May, 1968, to be precise. So, why's it here? As a metaphor. When I was nine, I heard a blond-haired man - Swedish, I think - who was a missionary to Africa, in Texas raising money for the cause. At that point I decided that's what I would be, and I announced it in that church, then continued after we moved and told the people there I intended to -- not just once, but throughout my growing-up years. The other decision, Dead Week the spring semester of my junior year in college, was tougher, not because I didn't know that's not what I wanted to do with my life and that I wasn't "called" to do it, but because of the statements I thought everybody in my hometown counted on. But that wasn't sufficient justification, and I made the decision. When the folks back home found out a year later I had a teaching job, many of the people I thought would be disappointed told me they'd always known I would be a teacher. (That was the only year I taught.)

I hate disappointing people. I'm a people-pleaser by nature and will continue doing what I'm doing long past any benefit to me, even in a situation detrimental to me, if I think you benefit by the act. Well, I'm not going to be a missionary any longer. I wrote Slender Steps to Sanity and I was honest in it that I was new to recovery. But I got it. I loved it. And I wanted to share it. Then, when recovery got tougher, when I struggled with abstinence, with holding on to the gains I'd made, I couldn't say so. What would that do to those who found the book helpful? The answer? Nothing. The book is the book, and I'm me. It still has value. And me? I've got four days of abstinence in the last abstinence of my life, the one that's going to last until I'm a hundred and ten. Better make that 120, just to make sure.