Step 9 : Amends

9th step... Amends

Do them. Get all of them done.

When I'm in amends, my spiritual advisors and fellow AA members ask me one thing when they see me; "Done with your amends yet?" Bstards.

But... it feels good to get em' done.

I agree with other experiences in here. Sometimes there's a lot of grace. But don't count on it. But if it's there, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Once the amend is done, shut up and walk away. Let them chill. Clean off your side of the street. Be brief, be brilliant, be gone.

Don't ever bring up their part. If they bring up their part and ask for my forgiveness, I've always let by-gones be by-gones. If they forgive me, I figure it's icing on the cake.

I state why I'm there and say something about doing this to stay sober, I state the harm I've done and am direct and specific about it (get clear on the harm beforehand!), then I ask "Do you need to tell me how this has harmed you?" or "Would you add anything here?", then I say that I want to set right the wrong... maybe give them something I would do to set right the wrong, depends on the circumstance.

In one with an ex-girlfriend, she accused me of owing her $1200.00. I didn't think it was fair, but agreed to pay it back, arranging the best deal. Years later, she came to me and made amends. At the end, she reiterated that she thought we were square monitarily. I didn't bring it up. I just told her to go well and stay in AA and stay sober. (In God's world this is possible) The Universe probably recompensated me in some way.

But to mess up an amend is no fun. Don't share a trivial feeling with the person. I did this with my mom once and caused more harm. Lesson learned.

This time through the work, I made a huge mistake. I have someone I work with and hate or at least dread being around. He's rude, petty, doesn't clean the toilet after himself, smokes cigars, burps over the phone when talking to customers, and he's a dork. Well, I thought since I hate him so much, I just won't write about him and not get resentful. Two years later, we took each other's inventory. He started it. He emailed certain people in the company all of my faults. I emailed back and did 3 times as much inventory about him, and sent it to "Staff". That's everybody in our company.

We didn't talk for about a week, but my boss came out to Colorado to settle the air. We eventually had a company meeting over Christmas break and the 1st agenda was he and I communicating.

I started the amend of with this line, "Well so-n-so, you probably hate me, but..." Then we had it out and made amends to each other. But his wife works there too, so my amend to her was even bigger. She said that once he and I fought, I stopped saying "Hello" and "Good bye" to her and she missed that.

If there's a way to screw these up, I'll find it.