By Karen B.
I got sober in the pink room at the Dry Dock on Greenwich St. in San Francisco. If you’ve been, then you know. Just a small pink room that is always there, holding all the secrets of my peers, ready and willing to catch the tears of all those bent, broken and beautiful people. I found it by accident during an appointment with my psychiatrist. I went one day, and kept coming back. Now I’m here with a relapse and nine years of continuous sobriety under my belt. It’s funny how things happen that way, like happy little accidents. “God shots,” as I have come to call them. Moments of puzzle pieces of the universe coming together in the most perfect way at the perfect time. Like the time in that very same pink room when I met my birthday twin.
If memory serves me correctly, it was a random rainy evening, I was early in sobriety and desperate for relief. My beacon of light, with a meeting at the top of almost every hour, the Dry Dock, summoned to me for yet another speaker discussion. The speaker had a head of fiery red hair and a quirky style that made my heart smile. As she spoke she wove a tale of debauchery and mischief far from my truth, yet each emotion rang true for me. As it often happens, her experience, strength and hope reached into my desperation and helped it dissipate. That urge to self medicate and relieve me of the bondage of self was quelled in our shared experiences. She spoke of her trials during sobriety and she shared about the gifts and the beauty she found in her every day activities. I felt renewed in my zeal and injected with enthusiasm for one more minute, one more hour, one more day—one day at a time. I was encouraged and rejuvenated. The “can do” attitude was infused into me that night.
This beautiful woman got sober on July 13, 1984, the very day that I was born into this world. At the time I was too shy to ask for her phone number, but I was eager to let her know that she had been sober for as long as I had been alive.
Years later, on the very same forum that I found out about The Point, someone asked for everyone’s sobriety date and to my surprise she shared hers in the comments. I reached out to her and reminded her of the day that we met. I thought that she wouldn’t remember me, just a passing moment in a collection of years for her. To my surprise, not only did she remember me, but she even wrote about meeting me in a submission that was published in the Grapevine.
We’ve become friends on social media and greet each other happy birthday every year. Our paths crossed for a reason and I am so grateful to have her as an example that one day at time has been working for someone for as long as I have been alive. As long as I keep working my program one day at a time, then maybe one day I will be able to meet someone who was born on July 10, 2013—my sobriety date.
