Just sit here for a minute

Connecticut Nick doesn't look right. He sits down in the brown velvet overstuffed chair, stands up, moves to a hard cafe chair, stands up, moves back to the living room chair.

"What the fuck you doing?" Big Ed asks.

"Nothing. Nothing." Nick says shaking his head and waving Ed's questions away.

Gino continues with his story about Boston Mike and him going from strip club to Starbucks back to strip club and all the women they saw.

"...I swear to you, there were 4oo girls working in this joint and I'm sitting there and gotta be 2 girls for every man and I turn my head and there's this navel looking at me...right in the eye. I look up and I see the biggest fuckin woman I ever saw. She's gotta be 7 feet tall, wearing heals like that!" he raises his hand with fore finger and thumb fully extended. "I swear to you I saw God!"

"A big woman! Oh man. Nothing like it!" affirms Terry.

"That Boston Mike, man, he knows where to go." Terry picks up the story. "One time, me and Boston Mike were in NY and I swear to you they got shit going on all the fuckin time. One meeting ends and then there's a meditation and another one begins."

"I was talking about fuckin women and strip clubs you asshole, not fuckin meetings!" Gino says and the men agree. Poor Terry.

Ed's attention isn't focused on the group but on Connecticut Nick.

The men laugh and get ready to leave for the morning meeting. Big Ed stays seated and says to Nick, "Where you going?" Ed's sponsored a lot of guys and knows when one of them is in trouble.

"I was gonna swing by the house and...I dunno where then..." Nick words drift off.

"Just sit here a minute." Ed says.

The men leave shouting goodbyes to the women working and the room settles down. Ed speaks softly to Nick, "Just sit here, ain't nothing gonna happen, we're just gonna sit."

Nick sits back down in the soft chair across from Big Ed and they are quiet for a few moments.

"Why the fuck did that guy call me a woman? I ain't even got no hair for fuck's sake! Why call me a woman?" Nick says his face pained by what happened. Being called a woman hit some old pain deep inside and it rattled him all the way down to his fragile soul.

"I tell ya it's fuckin easy. You just gotta stop talking about your fuckin cat! And you gotta stop answering the phone every time yer Mom calls." Ed advises.

"Yeah, yeah..." Nick listens to the advice, eyes squeezed shut. "I need a fuckin' woman is what I need."

"You coming to the meeting today Linda?" Ed looks up and yells over to me.

"Not today Ed." I say.

"I tried to find you a woman Nick, but she ain't coming to the meeting. Now get up. Time for us to go." Ed says and they rise and leave waving goodbye to me as they hit the door.

Ed knows the struggle, the pain of the moments when your worst fears, insecurities take control of your actions. Another person's words can only hurt when they are confirming your worst fears. The courage it takes to sit in the pain and feel each second of it, allowing it to be, is what recovery is all about.

Connecticut Nick is in good hands. He'll make it through the next hour without a drink. Ed will call him several times throughout the day to check on him and I know Nick will make it through another day, one moment at a time.

That is the message for me today: Just sit here for a minute in all my pain and allow it to simply be.