Alcoholics Anonymous/Twelve-step Suite Part 8: Regret Hello Mirror, so glad to see you my friend. It's been a while... Staring at the empty page before me, all the years of wreckage running through my head. Patterns of my life I thought adorned me revealing hurtful shame and deep lament. Overwhelming sorrow now absorbs me as the pen begins to trace my darkest past, signs throughout my life that should have warned me of all the wrongs I've done for which I must repent. I once thought it better to regret things that I have done than haven't. Sometimes you've got to be wrong and learn the hard way, and sometimes you've got to be strong when you think it's too late. Staring at the finished page before me, all the damage now so clear and evident. Thinking about the dreaded task in store for me, a bitter fear at the thought of my amends. Hoping that the step will help restore me to face my past and ask for forgiveness. Cleaning up my dirty side of this unswept street, could this be the beginning of the end? I once thought it better to regret things that I have done than haven't. Sometimes you've got to be wrong and learn the hard way, and just when you're through hanging on, you're saved. Part 9: Restitution "Until that moment I'd never felt like I'd failed at anything. I felt like I failed her and I failed myself and I failed my children. It's still really hard to deal with." "I want to thank you for helping me to see my own selfishness and to tell you how regretful I am it has hurt you." "I'm sorry I didn't visit you in the hospital, Grandpa, when you were on your deathbed. I'm sorry I didn't come to your funeral. I don't know if I was selfish or I just was too scared to face it. it's one of the biggest regrets of my life." "I'm here to confess with you that what I did was wrong, and I'm asking for your forgiveness..." "The only unforgivable thing hauls itself out of bed, looks over my shoulder at the bloody English weather." "I really regret not being able to see my friend Andy." "One of my best friends, who's the godfather of my daughter, he asked me to sing or play something at his wedding, and I turned it down because I was busy and I guess too much of a chickenshit to do it. And I feel sorry for that, because it was a very, very close friend of mine." "So, I wanted to apologize to anyone that I've upset or offended by my words. It's just an opinion but unfortunately I tend to express it as a fact and that's kind of arrogant. Isn't it?" "I think it's the betrayal, tt still haunts me." "I'm sorry for what I did back then,I was a different person. I really was and I'm so sorry, I wish it wouldn't have happened but it did, and I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?" "I guess I'm simply sorry for being me and not you, I so often wish you could be here with me to show me the way." “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness, we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace, no matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others, that feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away, our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us, we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises, we think not. They have been fulfilled amongst others, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. We will always be true to our principles.” "You're only as sick as your secrets but the truth shall set you free." "The truth is the truth and so all you can do is live with it."