Lucky Dog

by

A.J. Daulerio

What is self-forgiveness?

“I believe that if I can change the ratio and put more good back into the world, I will be able to live a life free from the paranoia that a spiritual repo man is hunting me down.”

*****

My Al-Anon sponsor, Cameron, is keen on the willingness part of the 8th Step. Right off the bat, he needs me to understand that I acquire no reward or pardon by just barging ahead and making Zoom calls to every person I've hurt or infuriated.

"The only thing you have to be today is willing to amend."

It's taken three years of working together to get to this Step in Al-Anon. I completed it in AA, but Al-Anon's step work has a different vibe–it's more nurturing and intense. The book we use is called “Paths to Recovery,” which comes with a dozen or more questions to answer after reading through the Step. The last time I completed a step Cameron and I went to the beach to turn it over. It was Santa Monica beach for Step 7, but for Step 8, we headed to Topanga, a beach littered with rocks and an ocean full of sideswiping waves. He told me I needed to bring my Step 8 answers, the list of those I was willing to make amends to, my swimsuit, and, most importantly, a letter written to myself–both my younger self and who I believe the worst version of myself is. Because the first person I should be willing to make amends to is me. 

He’d drive us out and I'd pay for lunch. 

I could never wrap my brain around this concept. I don't know about you, but I still have many days when I wake up and remember another mortifying memory from my past and that knocks me back to some feeble, terrified place. And some of these memories are not that distant– I’ve blown up one or two friendships every year for the past six years I’ve been sober. My friend list gets shorter while the list of people I've harmed grows longer.

And I get it. Even on happy occasions, I still have discomforting energy. Some days I believe I can see it, like a halo of ugly yellow dust. 

This is frustrating because I'm still a much better dude than I was a decade ago. But that doesn't mean I'm no longer a bad memory for many people. 

For that, I can't forgive myself. 

But am I willing to? 

*****

The Thursday before I was supposed to finish Step 8, a van hit a dog on the street outside our house. 

We were seated at the dining room table, laptops opened, in the early afternoon when we heard slammed-on brakes followed by a yowling. We got up from the table and saw a white transport van stopped in the street. I walked outside, and a kid, probably about 14, kneeled near the curb, holding what appeared to be a young black and white Border Collie. Blood came from the dog's mouth; its hind legs were crumpled. It was gasping between yowls. A woman who I assumed was the boy's mother, was speaking to someone on her phone in Spanish. After a short time she hung up and put her forearm on her head, laid down on the grass, and began to cry.

The male driver pled his case and said the dog darted out in front of him. The kid yelled that he was going too fast. I stood by and asked one of them to call the Animal ER. The driver and the boy both turned to me. "What's the number?" 

At this moment, I stood there and wondered how involved I should be. What's the proper human thing to do? 

I went from calm to not calm once I realized that the three other people there were incapable of figuring this out. The boy was pleading. "Can you please call someone? Please, please. She's dying!" 

The worried driver opened his flip phone and attempted to hand it to me. The vet I take my dog to was right around the corner. I used my own phone to call over there. I was harried and annoyed. "Hi, a dog just got hit by a car. Can we bring him in?"

The driver reluctantly agreed to take the boy and his broken dog to the vet. 

"It's right around the corner. It's a blue building on your left. I'll meet you over there."

I was now invested.

I rounded the corner just to watch the van blow right by the vet.

"No!"

It was like watching a fire truck fly right by a house on fire.

The van pulled into a pet supply store called The Barking Lot instead. It was only a couple blocks away, but I assumed this was a fatal error. The poor kid was about to carry his dog inside but then I intervened. I was full of adrenaline and panic and now rage at the driver, so I unloaded on him. "You drove right fucking past it! I said the blue building!" 

All the meditation and stoicism I practice, and that's how I reacted: sweating and yelling once again, frustrated that things did not go exactly as I thought they should. 

I've written about how I fear that my acts of service–my effort to be useful–are inherently selfish, that they are just desperate acts of penance as opposed to acts of goodness. But I believe that if I can change the ratio and put more good back into the world, I will be able to live a life free from the paranoia that a spiritual repo man is hunting me down. 

"The vet is this way! Let's go!" 

******

I started these workouts a couple of months ago with a trainer named Michael Weetman, an ex-Scots Guards with a purple belt in some kind of crazy hand-to-hand discipline. He follows this newsletter, but I am unsure what he qualifies as. 

I reached out to him about a month after my friend Jim died. I wanted a new way to train because I’d found a new purpose: I want to be as mentally and physically strong as he was. In the year before he died, he ran a half-marathon, and the Broad Street Run. 

I also told him I wanted to be strong enough to carry my three kids away from whatever cataclysmic event would destroy Los Angeles next year. 

I'm sure I sounded dramatic when I told him all this, but he took me on. 

But there was also something else that I didn’t share with him–I've been so consumed by death of late that I'm too afraid to live. 

For the past few weeks, he's sent me numerous high-intensity workouts–OTM this and AMRAP that. Many workouts involve carrying 50-lb. sandbags over my head. So I lug these sandbags around our backyard, sometimes cradling them, sometimes bear-hugging them, but always with the intent that I will be strong enough to save the people I love when whatever’s coming comes. 

One of the biggest lessons from my training so far is the difference between quitting and failure. I'd always considered them the same. But the day the workout required me to carry around the sandbag "until I quit," I bailed right before it got too ugly–before my shoulders shook or my veins appeared in my neck. And then, the day I was told to do it "to failure," this new part of my brain opened up. Who cares if I shake? Shaking is good. It may appear to look like self-harm, but it is also salvation. 

*****

"Please help her, please help Mimi." The boy's arms were sagging as the weight of the almost lifeless dog began to shrink him, and he could not carry her anymore. 

I asked him if he needed help, but I knew he did. 

"She's a little heavy, sir." 

Mimi looked about 30 pounds, and I needed to carry her approximately 500 feet.

And there it is, I thought. This is what I’ve been training for the past two months. Why else would the universe throw me this opportunity so close to the day I was set to forgive myself? 

"Give her to me!"

And off I went, down the street, clumsily jogging with Mimi, doing what my Higher Power has summoned me to do in order to save myself and everyone I love.

We got to the vet. I handed Mimi to the boy and someone came out to get her. The dog disappeared behind the door. The boy had dried blood on his white shirt and Dickie's overalls. I noticed he had braces, which made him look even younger. I reached out and touched his arm. 

"Do you need me to stay?"

He said no and thanked me. I jogged home. The sunlight hit a strange angle off the window of a building and passed through me like a laser beam. This was what goodness felt like.

I stopped by about an hour later to see if there was an update. I didn't see the boy anymore, but the mom was still there, visibly distraught and talking on her cellphone. 

"How's Mimi?" 

The vet needed a $700 deposit, she said. They didn't have it. She didn't know what else to do. 

I didn't hesitate to tell her I would cover it. "I have a doggy, too." 

A stern-looking technician came out, and I handed over my card. 

Maybe I'd gone too far again. Was this the moment this good deed became a selfish act?  

On the walk home, I didn't feel clean.

******

"It sounds pretty clean to me," Cameron said as we snaked through the narrow back roads of Topanga Canyon. His car rattled every time he changed gears. 

“You saw an opportunity to help someone and you did it. And they will never forget what you did. ”

I stared out the window at the Santa Monica mountains and wondered what it would be like to grow up here. I wondered if I'd be different and problem-free if I grew up in this magical place instead of the suburban blankness of Bucks County. 

"I don't know. I don't trust myself in those scenarios anymore."

I spotted my third Ford Bronco of the day. 

"You're too hard on yourself, my friend." 

Cameron loaded a CD into the dusty slot of his car stereo. 

"Do you like Marvin Gaye? You better like Marvin Gaye." 

I nodded. We had the windows down the rest of the way. 

When we finally got to the beach, we found a set of furniture-sized rocks. Cameron slipped off his flip-flops and dug into his watermelon salad, and listened to me read off my answers to the 8th Step questions. After I finished them, he brushed sandy juice off his hands. 

"Did you bring that letter with you?" I pulled it out of my notebook and showed it to him. 

"Great. Come on, take off your shoes. This will be pretty cool." We walked down to the water and went in up to our ankles. 

"Now, read the letter out loud." I sheepishly looked over at him, but he stayed focused on whatever was beyond the ocean, waiting for me to begin.

I got through the first paragraph and started to shake a bit, mostly out of embarrassment because I was sure people could hear me. They probably thought we were celebrating a dead person's life and I was about to throw some ashes into the waves. Or that this was some sort of cult initiation ceremony. 

"Who cares what they think? Let's finish this." 

I got through the last few lines.

"…I love you. It's time." 

Cameron slapped me on the back.

"Beautiful. You're doing great. Your 8th Step is complete." 

I waited for some big release or for some fear to fall away, but that was not the case. I wondered why but then the answer was so easy–I'm choosing to feel this way. I’m choosing to be waterlogged with shame and self-hatred. This letter means nothing unless I believe it. 

Cameron splashed into a deep part of the ocean, flipped himself around, and floated on his back. This part of the Pacific always freaks me out–these six-foot waves sneak up and clobber you without warning. But I inched a little further out, and then the undertow pulled me out more than I wanted. My feet weren't touching the bottom anymore. A wave crashed over my head. I popped back up right as a low-flying helicopter whizzed by.

Everything was fine.