Dance Step Diagram

ANOTHER TWO-STEP DANCE

Step meetings are usually weekly meetings where a chapter about a Step is read from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and then folks talk about what was read.  Next week, next Step (two weeks for Twelve, usually), then back to the start.  If you wander into an unfamiliar Step meeting, you rarely have a clue what Step it’s gonna be about.  If you’re new, there’s the possibility you’ll find yourself with just a few months of un-intoxication sitting in a meeting about some Step so far down the line you’ll wonder if you should stay there.  What the hell are these people talking about?

That’s how I came to hear about “two-stepping.”  Don’t know if I woulda heard it, otherwise.  It didn’t much show up as gossip or a discussion topic.  It was in the book.  Seemed like most folks in my group came upon it the same way: in the book.  Just like them, though, it seemed to show up in real life after the book.  I got to see other members in action, really helping to get new folks started in our thing, but those same members couldn’t tell Step Six from Ten—probably hadn’t made a single amends in however many years they’d been around—got a resentment as big as a house if you just looked at them sideways—but, boy, they were magic to the newest-comers.

“Ah!  That’s that two-stepping,” I said to myself.

Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t.

I know this: I learned a two-step dance of my own.  There have been plenty of days where I don’t get any further than Step Two.  One-Two.  Two-One.  One-Two.  Two-One.  Whatever’s goin on with me that day can’t be described as sanity.  I might be just sittin there, might have gotten well enough to not start breakin shit, put fist in the wall, or scream at the sky, but don’t let that fool ya.  That is not a sane person sittin there.  Interact with that person at your own risk.  I am not “a vision for you.”  Not an attraction.

Nevertheless, I need to make an appearance.  I have come to believe, fully and unwaveringly, in a Power that can restore me to sanity.  Necessarily, that Power is greater than me, cause I sure as hell can’t do it!  That Power is in my tribe, and I must meet with them; that’s the surest way sanity and I will once again be friends.  I go to the meeting.

This is not saying I’m willing to turn Anything over to Anybody.  I only know, if I can get to the meeting “without gettin killed or caught,” I can—and will—be restored to sanity.

Maybe there are folks who get a one-shot deal.  They get restored to sanity, and it never leaves em.  Mosta the members I know?  Like me: day at a time.  And those times when my sanity has taken—hopefully temporary—leave, I am not tryin to carry no message to nobody about the result of all those goddam Steps I can’t even think about.  Before I even think about trying to carry that message, I gotta have sanity.  Soundness of mind.  Not deranged.  Once I have sanity, I can carry the message of THAT, at least: a Power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.  I still can’t tell you much about the result of ALL these Steps, cause some a them might still be a long ways off.  But I don’t hafta convince you about God or the Great Spirit or nothin like that.  I can tell you what, where, when, and how to find that Greater Power I’m tellin you can restore me to sanity.  It’s on the meeting list.