Recovery - Amends Questions - Seeking feedback
Hello Everyone,
My apologies if this is the wrong forum…
I am writing to get some feedback on amends and how others have done it. I would love feedback from both the 12-step community and others who have gotten sober and healed their past in whatever way they have chosen that makes sense to them.
I am now over 2 years & 8 months Clean and Sober. My life overall is pretty good. I have been working slowly to clean up a lot of the external wreckage of my alcoholism and it's been going fairly well.
I now would like to take some time to make amends to those that I have hurt, without re-gurgitating and re-hurting others or myself ...
I am seeking input specifically on two people :
#1 - a married man I had an affair with 5 years ago, whom I was very mean to when I got drunk and he was terrified of me. He tried to care for me when I was really sick, even visiting me in the hospital, and yet I was totally obsessed with him. In the end, he asked me to get out of his life and he would run away whenever he saw me, which was when I would show up at his store or other place of work, repeatedly drunk. He even tried to call the cops once. He didn’t respond to any of my subsequent emails in 2012 when I tried to connect and apologize to him. I wasn’t Sober then.
Now, in March 2016, over 2 years & 8 months Clean/Sober, I feel really stable and want to move forward and I genuinely feel sorrow and regret for the way I treated and terrified him and I want to apologize. I know I am not that person anymore. My question is, do I send him an amends letter, ask to meet or do I just let it go ? I have a 12-step mentor who I would like to reach out, though is not available, but wanted to get the input of others on this site, both from non-12 step folks and 12-step people. I would prefer to make the amends than to just let it go.
My honest desire is for him to be at Peace and I would love for him to Forgive me.
#2 – The clerk at a sex club who barred me 4 years ago, because of what I said to him after he asked me to leave the establishment, because I was drunk. I have seen him several times on the street in the past few months and didn’t say anything. I feel tremendous shame whenever I see him and I am sh*t scared to approach him at the establishment and tell him that I am sorry. Each time I see him, he seems so angry, not at me per se, but in general, even from a distance when he doesn’t see me. My question is, do I make the amend to him in person ? And if so, can I give him a card /coffee card ? How have people approached something like this, if at all.
Also, overall, is it ok, if I just leave the past in the past, write a letter in my journal and say goodbye peacefully. I have made some amends – to my Dad, brother, a couple of close friends and my financial/legal situations. In my active alcoholism, I was sometimes a very vitriolic person and in extreme pain. I want to move forward and never go back there again.
Also, my behavior today is diametrically opposite to that of my active alcoholism. I am generally quite peaceful, quiet, funny in personal conversations, supportive and those people who are unaware of my past, genuinely want to work with me, hang out with me and seek input from me, without any manipulation on my part. This is a huge contrast to the way I was and I am superbly grateful for this shift.
Thank you so much for your input !