Life Choice

Day 9 of abs

There is another park I sometimes stop off to walk at after I drop the cap’n off and before I go to mass. I usually have time to make one round of it before it’s time to head for the church. Yesterday I noticed that everybody was lapping me. Even the older people. Even the dog walkers who had to stop several times to let their pooches do their thing. That’s okay. I’m not really there to exercise I’m there just to be. I’m there to notice the army of tiny frogs hopping across the sidewalk, the buzz of the dragonfly as it whizzes by, the fresh morning smell of the day. I’m choosing to be fully a part of life because sometimes I choose not to be.

Every time I sober up I get a new lease on life. Like the cancer survivor, the air is clearer, the grass is greener and the sun shines brighter. Cancer is an abnormal growth of cells. Something strange that happens in our bodies, sometimes through no choice of ours, and our body doesn’t like it. Alcohol is a toxin I choose to put in my body that destroys my cells and mutates them. It makes unwilling little monsters out of them. My body doesn’t like this either. And just like cancer, alcohol metastasizes. But it doesn’t stay in my body, it metastasizes to my soul and then it spreads to my husband, to my sons, to my grandsons, to my friends….and on and on and on. Sometimes I go into remission and I’m so thankful and so joyful and relieved and I swear I will never choose to make my body and soul sick again. But I do. Unlike the cancer patient, I choose to get sick again and again and eventually, if I don’t choose to stop this vicious cycle, it will choose to kill me.

Today I choose not to drink. Today I choose life.

So I’m out there doing my best to choose only the “choice” cuts of life.

P.S. Sorry! I’m sure the alcohol/cancer metaphor has been done to death but that’s what my Co-Writer chose today.