Step 8

STEP EIGHT
“We made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.”
[Spiritual principle(s) associated with this step: Forgivenss, humility, honesty, willingness, self-awareness, love]

One of the hardest things to do is to admit when I am wrong. I don’t think I’m unique in this. I tend to justify my actions just as much as the next person. Even when I know I’m in the wrong, when I’ve done something to hurt someone else, when I’ve made a mistake, even then I don’t want to admit it to anyone. It is hard enough to admit it to myself. But, alas, if I carry that around with me – the knowledge and awareness that I am in the wrong, that I’ve knowingly hurt someone – and don’t do anything to correct or amend it, then it is going to eat away at me.

The first “eighth step list” I ever made was the longest eighth step list I’ve ever made. Since then, they are much shorter. Lately I’ve tried to keep it very unlist-like… the only way I know to do this is to become willing to make the necessary amends as soon as I’m aware that I’ve hurt someone in some way. But that first list I made, it was a doozy. I had to reach all the way back into my past and list everyone I’d ever hurt in my entire life. Think about that for a moment.

In the third grade I called Coach Kraft, “Coach Crap.” I got in trouble for it at home and at school, so shouldn’t that give it a pass and keep it off my list? Well, no… the step doesn’t say to make a list of all people we had harmed, excluding the times we got caught and punished. So yeah, Coach Kraft was first on my list.

In the fifth grade, we [me and other neighborhood kids] used to tell this little kid, Dennis, who was 5 or 6 at the time and had just been adopted by his foster parents, that he was adopted (which he obviously knew) and didn’t have “real parents” because he came from another planet, another galaxy, from a place called Zotz. There were these little candies called Zotz, you may recall, and we bought them all the time and told them that these were imported from his planet. He would go home and tell his parents what we were telling him, his parents would talk to me about it when they saw me and ask me not to tell him these things, and I’d get caught up in the crowd mentality and do it again and again. Not only did this hurt Dennis, but also his parents. I have no idea where Dennis is or where his parents are. Since I don’t know where they are, do they have to go on my list? Yes, this step is not about the actual amends making process, only about making the list.

In the eighth grade, I punched that black girl, Wendy, in the stomach. She called me some derogatory name based on the differences in our races, then she pushed me down the stairs. I was already on crutches after leg ligament surgery, so I couldn’t really defend myself, but as she came down the stairs after me, I took my crutch and jammed it into her stomach as hard as I could. She puked all over the stairwell. I know it hurt her pretty bad. But, see, she pushed me first. She hurt me first. Doesn’t that keep her off my list? Nope, it doesn’t. No matter what she did or didn’t do, I did not have to jam my crutch into her abdomen. That was a choice I made, a choice to hurt another person. So Wendy went on that first list.

In high school and college... well, let's just say the amends I owe to some of those people during that time in my life are extensive. I'll leave it at that for now.

After I got married and my finances were combined with my husbands, I became a master manipulator of money and a fine finagler of finances. I could hide large withdrawals and juggle accounts so well that unless you knew what you were looking for, it would look like all the bills were being paid and there was money to spare. Forget that I was spending way too much on drugs (in secret, of course)… somehow I always made the evidence of these expenditures disappear on paper. In effect, I was stealing from my husband and my family. Because it was partly my money, didn’t that make it okay? Wouldn’t that keep him off the list? No, it was still stealing. He didn’t know what I was doing. He thought we were financially okay. He really didn’t discover how not okay we were until the separation and divorce.

As I said, the list was very long. Many people that needed to be on my list were obvious. Some I'd committed crimes against, stolen from them, lied to them, manipulated them. I’d felt guilty about the harm I’d caused them for years. Others didn’t have a clue I’d harmed them in any way. They still had to go onto my list. And still others, like those few examples listed above, belonged on my list even though I tried to justify keeping them off the list.

Once the list was made, it took some time for the second part of this step to come to fruition. I had to become willing to make amends. This step doesn’t tell me to go ahead and make the amends. It tells me to become willing to do so. It sounds easier than it is. Willingness is not my strong suit. It took a while, but one day, as I looked over the list, I realized I truly was willing and ready to make amends to these people on my list. The list had been complete for a couple of months, I’d been reading over it regularly, and with that came first the feelings of denial, then guilt, and finally a recognition that making amends to these people would lift something from me that was weighing me down. I wanted that weight gone. I became willing to make the amends.

And with that willingness, even before the action of the ninth step when the actual amends begin, I felt a relief.

I’m Maze. I’m an addict.