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Source: Leslie S – Sunlight of the Spirit (2021) – Part 2 Segment – Date Unknown.mp3 File: leslie-s-sunlight-of-the-spirit-2021-part-2-segment-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:10:03
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And I was on the phone. And when they put her on that morphine drip, my sister called me. I said, turn on the phone. Put the phone on her chest. And I prayed the longest, hardest prayer that I ever had. It wasn't asking her to live. It wasn't asking her to get better. It wasn't asking God to heal her. It wasn't asking God to selfishly give me what I want some more, Betty T. I said, God, just empower each and every woman leaving from this hospital room to do what she taught us to do through you, God.
And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed until it was over. And then somebody said, okay. And I could hear them starting to cry. And the cries got louder and louder and louder. And I knew in my spirit she was gone. And somebody picked up the phone off her chest and said, Mama's gone. And I said, thank you. And I continued to ride down that freeway. And I remember screaming. It was a wail that I blacked out.
I couldn't even hear me. But I know it was a long, hard wail. But the good news of all of that is I've been grounded by some bad women. Baby, it's sexy. Sobriety is sexy. And nothing is more rewarding to see the health of another woman, the light come back on in her eye, the hope come where there's hopelessness, the deformity, the physical illness, all those things. Because when you straighten up spiritually, the mental and physical follow.
Now you can discern words and now you can go back to school or you can start a business or you can start an LLC or you can train women on how to use a computer or you can help people learn how to do Zoom and you can tell a girl, no, that color is not good for your hair, girl. This color is better for your hair, girl. You can do all kinds of stuff, girl. Let's do a makeover, girl. Let's play house. And we can sit on the floor and play jacks, those of us that can get that low.
And we can sit on the floor and play red light, green light. We can do all kinds of things in here. But more importantly, we help each other around here. We don't fight in the lifeboat. I'll say this and be done. You know, there's this thing called the Titanic. And some of us have just gotten off the Titanic and we're on that little lifeboat. And what do you do? You get in the middle of the lifeboat.
You don't let your legs hang out so the piranha and the sharks get in. You get in the middle of it because when you swam from that Titanic to that lifeboat, you're like, oof, it's cold. And we put you in the middle of it and we wrap you up in blankets and we hug on you and we try to dry you off because you've been on a journey, baby, and I know your ass is tired. Get in the middle of the lifeboat. Or you can choose to do this.
You can do like I did at that 17-year joint that I was at. You can start working steps backwards. Twelve step. I ain't helping nobody right now because the sponsees are getting on my nerves. There's too many of them calling and I just can't give them nothing else. I've got to get this job done. I've got to go to school. I've got to get this house fixed. I've got too much stuff. AA has given me a life and now I'm going to live it.
I'll get back with them sponsees later. Eleventh step. I ain't praying in meditation. If I do, do that meditation and that prayer. It's a fast two-second when it's a microwave prayer. God, please help me and I'm driving down the freeway on my way. So I ain't got time for God right now. God knows who I am and he knows what I'm going to do. And then tenth step. I'm not reviewing my day and I'm not making amends to when I screw up during the day and I'm not going to look at it at night and I'm just not going to feel like doing that right now.
And I don't want to put it on paper because I'm tired of writing. Right now I'm too sleepy. I just did a double shift. I'll do it tomorrow. And then ninth step. I have some amends left from 1942, but I ain't going to seek them. They've got to find me. They're just going to have to find me. I'll make amends on the way in and see what happens on that right there. You know what I'm saying? I'm not going to make amends right now because I've got some.
Oh, and forgive. She started it. Ninth step. Amends and forgives. She started it. Me and amends. And then eighth step. I've got that list, but I don't know where I put it. The dog ate my homework. Six and seven. Yeah, I've got defects, but you've just got to see. I just keep it real. You've got to accept me as I am. I ain't ready to let that go yet because I'm just like that. You can't say nothing about me cussing from the podium all the time.
You need to check yourself. In fact, you need to call your sponsor. My defect? I just work a lot. It's not that I have greed and gluttony. I just work a lot. I'm fear. I've got some fear, but I'm working through that right now. You know, I call my sponsor about my defects showing up in other areas. And, yeah, I have a bad sex conduct, but it's okay. It's healthy. It's a God-given in the big book on page 69, so I'm not loathing it right now.
Step five. Between me and God, I call my sponsor every now and then, and I let her know. But, you know, I know I ain't did 10 and 11, so I need to do another fourth, but I ain't did another fourth in a minute. But it's going to be okay because I've been going to meetings. I've been of service. I've been calling people back with every blue moon, and I've been showing up on my service commitment. I do have a home group, and I do raise my hand and share, and I speak from time to time, and sometimes people fly me out.
[00:04:59]
So I don't need to do a fourth or fifth right now.
[00:05:02]
I'll just let that go because I'm not as mad as when I first got that resentment. So I'm pretty cool. I think it's kind of disappeared. Then I made a decision to turn my life and my will over to the care of God, my thinking and my actions. See, my thinking is the core of my disease, so I'm thinking it like this. Yeah, okay, here comes Nikki. She's going to tell me some good ideas on how to handle people that baffle me.
Even though my disease centers in my thinking, I know that book. I done read that book 50, 11 times. In fact, I'm taking people through the book right now. What? So my thinking is smooth. I'm cool with it. And my life is cool. You know, I might be getting some PPP money and some loans I don't even have a business for, and I might get that little extra unemployment check I shouldn't have got, but it's all good.
I'll make amends later. So I'm taking my will and my life, and I'm just going to handle it. God got me. Then all of a sudden I start slowly going crazy. I'm sitting in my home group. I can't stand that Sharon. She thinks she know everything. Why Dolly got to talk so much all the time? Damn, she tell us about Bill one more time. What about that Brenda J.? She always laughing and picking at people and saying people threw their shoe, and they didn't even do nothing.
Oh, here goes Charlie again. He's talking about the dog that died in 1952 because he's an old timer, and everybody's going to listen. So now I'm going insane. I'm starting to take everybody's inventory, and then I end up one thing at a time, I end up powerful. I'm not going to that meeting no more. I'm just going to stay home because they get on my nerve. And Zoom, it's just too much. Ew. It's not like a face-to-face.
It's a fake meeting, isn't it? They got it easy. Oh, whatever. When I came in in Zoom in 1904, I knew Bill, and I used to, you know. There was modem to modem doesn't mean, you know, anyway. And next thing you know, you'll be like me, backing out, doing the moonwalk out of the rooms. And then you start thinking that you're not an alcoholic or you're not that bad. And if you get back, you get to stand up and take a chip.
Start all over. I'm going to tell you something that's really scary about my thinking. Something in the book says that we can be psychopaths. I asked my sponsor, I said, wait a minute, because I think of Anthony Perkins. She said, baby, that's a spectrum. I'm going to tell you a quick story. So there was this guy that met a friend. And the friend met him and talked to him all the time. And he was so appropriate, and he was so correct.
It was everything she had written about in her sane and sound idea of a relationship. So they finally get ready to go on an official date. And she invites me over and asks me to help her get dressed. And I said, okay, girl, we're going to pick out this dress, and we're going to do like my friends did when I was 16. And we get her all pretty and all made up, and her hair is in ringlets, and it's beautiful.
And the guy comes in, he has a nice kind of car, he has on a nice cut Armani suit. He smells good. He looks good. He's handsome. He looks like an actor. And she's been telling me about this guy, and we all did a research on him and looked him up and everything. And he comes and gets her, and he walks her around to the car. He brought her flowers, walks her around to the side of the car, puts her in the car.
He waves at me, and I'm standing in her doorway. I said, okay, have fun, you guys. And he takes off. And about five hours later, I look up on CNN. There's a picture of this man being escorted by the police. He's got handcuffs behind his back, and he's got that suit jacket over his head. And the reporters are hollering at him different questions. And one question they asked him, he says, why did you kill her?
And he slowly looked up, and he said, she shouldn't have went out with me. So how psychopathic are you? Not wanting to take blame for your part. Now, I made that story up. Y'all up here about to die. I'll be watching Snap, y'all. I'll be coming up with stuff. Y'all sitting up there like, whoo, whoo. Some of y'all on Google, who is the guy that killed the girl? I'm so dramatic. I'm sorry. I'm theatrical.
I can't help it. I shouldn't be. But it put me in the mind of how psychopathic am I whenever I don't want to admit looking at me. That's a form of insanity. I might be on this end of the spectrum, and I might be here, but that's still not good. So I need to admit and look at me and be willing to get the feedback that I get from my sponsors. So for whatever you're looking for, you don't have anywhere to go.
There's nowhere to go, because guess what? Nowhere is N-O-W-H-E-R-E. There's nowhere to go, because you are now here. My name is Leslie S., and I'm a recovering alcoholic. Thank you. Thank you.