Prepositions

When I first tried to get sober I thought that Step Two read like this: "Came to believe in a power greater than myself."  As you can see, I wasn't a great reader when I came into The Program.  I could read the words just fine - it was the understanding of the words that gave me problems.  That and the reading the entire sentence part.  I read until I got bored which was very quickly or when the thing I was reading seemed to indicate that I had to do some work, at which point I quit extremely quickly.

I heard this Step many times before I picked up on the presence of "that" rather than "in."  "In" was an easier sell for me.  I believed in a god already - more or less, in a vague, tortured, misshapen, punishing way  - even though I didn't act like it very often.  "In" is a much more passive word to my way of thinking; regrettably, it totally ignored the fact that a successful completion of Step One had already asked me to acknowledge the existence of a Higher Power.  I thought that happened in Step Two.  Clearly, I hadn't done Step One very well or I would have done the "in" part already and wouldn't have to be looking for it in Step Two.  I blew through this distinction like I blew through red lights and bags of weed and 12 packs.  "That," on the other hand, indicated the god needed to do something.

I choked on this understanding when it seeped into my consciousness.  This was a hard concept for me to swallow.  So it isn't surprising to hear that I was sober for another couple of years before I picked up on the insanity part.  That part came at the very end and was frankly, a little insulting.  It's not a complimentary state, insanity.  It isn't something that most people aspire to.

I read better today.