Recovery Reading: Let That $#%t Go!

How I finally confessed 20-year-old secret s— to the "wrong" person.

AI art created by author on Night Cafe

I took my Fifth Step with a therapist. She’s not even in the program. And it counted anyway.

Step Five is where you admit to God, yourself, and another human being the exact nature of your wrongs, which you determined in Step Four.

I’ve already Fifth-Stepped most of my thoughts, feelings, words, and actions throughout my life. You know, the things I’ve done and said that brought harm to myself or others. And I’ve worked my way through the rest of the Steps.

But I hadn’t yet admitted to my Higher Power, myself, and another human being the exact nature of certain parts of my life. These parts of my life occurred during a roughly 20-year period of my youth. The events are extremely personal, so I’m not going to put the details here. They were so private that I didn’t feel safe telling them to anyone I actually knew.

In my idealistic mind, I told myself it was best to share these things with someone from the program. The one person I felt safe enough to tell my secrets declined for personal reasons.

I tend to be a perfectionist. It comes from being the eldest child in an alcoholic family and my quest for control. I ended up taking this particular Fourth Step with my therapist. She knows what Al-Anon is, but she’s not a member.

After we talked, I tried to convince myself that my confessions weren’t “valid” because I hadn’t told a program person. Mind you, the program doesn’t actually say that. I cooked it up on my own.

I admitted this to my therapist and we had a good laugh. The next day I bought myself a 5" x 5" magnet that says “Let that shit go.” It’s up on my metal nursing home air-conditioning unit right now :-)

There haven’t been any soul-quaking changes since I took the mini Fourth Step, probably because I’ve confronted so many of my demons already. But I do feel a bit lighter and more normalized around those secrets.

I still have to work Steps Six through Twelve on these “confessions” and I AM expecting to have my mind expanded along the way!