Cancellation King

Just as our partners and families become skilled at ‘waiting’ (waiting for us to come home; waiting for us to get honest and tell the truth for once; waiting for us to die of our illness; waiting for us to get better etc), so we become experts at unreliability.

Actually, I heard a woman in Alanon say once of the degree level waiting talents that she had developed: “These are not worry wrinkles on my face; these are venetian blind marks.”

But back to unreliability. Paul Theroux said “Gain a reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.”

At the end of my using and drinking, I wasn’t asked to do much.

I was excruciatingly unreliable. I kept making appointments and arrangements and cancelling them at the last moment. In terms of excuses, you would have been forgiven for thinking me the most unlucky person on the planet.

I caught ‘flu so often it was miraculous how a man could pull through. Mondays were bad ‘flu days for the strains I caught. The hospital ought to have had a bed on standby for me, so ill did I become.

My car was equally cursed. Flat tires, engine failures, running out of fuel, traffic jams. “Sorry couldn’t make the meeting; my car was just caught up in a temporal anomoly and is now just south of Alpha Centauri.”

Finally the old, “I never got the message, sorry” was a last ditch standby. In many ways I should have been listening to that one, for it was a wise part of me. I just wasn’t getting the message.

As my life disintegrated into chaos, my excuses got more and more outrageous and the sad thing was I half believed them. I had to. I wasn’t getting the message that addiction was calling the shots and if I’d needed evidence of that I just had to look at my reputation as cancellation king.

These days being reliable, true to my word, and maintaining a sense of integrity and order are important to me. A friend recently cancelled a work related meeting at short notice. It’s happened several times now. I worry for him, for I recognise a pattern that I once owned myself.

Thanks to recovery, I don’t need to live like that any more. Oddly, I don’t get the ‘flu much these days. My car is remarkably roadworthy and rarely finds itself in other star systems. In fact I’ve gladly given up my title as cancellation king.