BFF

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.

- Elizabeth Foley

Day 20

Sobriety has given me back so many things. One of them is dreams the ones that happen at night, beyond my control, not the ones that I have for my life although it’s put those dreams within my reach once again also. The night dreams I have during the immediate withdrawl stage are exceedingly vibrant and Clockwork Orange weird. Here’s one I had last night. It’s pretty mild since this is Day 20 but it was memorable.

I am in the middle of a parking lot and I have a chance meeting with two blonde women that I recognize from high school (I knew their names in the dream but I can’t recall them now) and Max Vangiesen, a guy that was a few years ahead of me in school that I never knew well but he drove a really hot purple corvette. Anyway we have some meaningless conversation about how great it is to see each other again and how serendipitous it is that we all met up in this parking lot. We finally reach an awkward pause and decide that it’s time to go and I reach over to give Max a hug good-bye. He backs away and shakes his head and says, “I don’t think so, I remember the Superbowl 2008.” Okay. So I reach out to hug the two women and they back off too and say, “Yeah, we were there, too”

So I wake up thinking, “Where the hell was I for the Superbowl in 2008 and what did I do?”

That one’s kind of funny but one that I had about two days into my withdrawal was a real doozie and it lasted all night long.

I’m in my house in Mexico and some of my friends have thrown me a surprise birthday party. I am a little concerned about this because I’m not drinking but I decide to go along with it and act like I’m happy about it. The music is loud and they’ve blindfolded me. I’m wearing a bikini top and someone keeps trying to pull the cups of the bikini top apart. To the capn’s credit, he doesn’t allow them to do this but my friends are laughing uproariously. They lead me to a room that is filled with people, some of them I know but most of them I’ve never seen before. And most of them are naked and dancing. Luckily all of my friends remained clothed during this dream, I’m not sure I could face them with a straight face if they didn’t. I’m no longer amused and I just want to get all of these people out of my house and get to my own bedroom for some peace and quiet but I can’t find it. The whole house has been changed and my friends are so proud of the couple of designers that they hired to decorate for the party. The cap’n is trying to help me find our room but he can’t find it either. We keep looking out the window to try to figure out where we are in the house. Meanwhile, people are still dancing around naked and as I go from room to room I keep pulling people out of beds where they are doing more than dancing and I’m stripping sheets as I go. There is one gorgeous heterosexual couple that I actually grab by the wrists and haul them out to the gate and threaten to call the cops but then the woman breaks down in tears because apparently they’re married, just not to each other. I feel sorry for them and let them go but then find them later in another room messing up another set of sheets. I’ve finally had it and start yelling that I want everyone out and I want my house back the way it is supposed to be. NOW!

First let me assure you that I’ve had some wild parties but they never turned into orgies and for the most part people kept their clothes on. For me this dream was pretty easy to interpret. My sobriety is like my house and I control what goes on it. I can’t let other people come in and rearrange it or desecrate it. And maybe if my friends don’t want what is best for me, they’re not my friends.

I have posted so many times on here the importance of keeping my friends and the fact that I still had to go to parties and bars because that is where my “friends” are. That may be true, but do I really even know who my true friends are? How can I if I’m still trying to figure out how to be who I am. The “Language of Letting Go” asks, “What would happen if we let go of our camouflage of adaptation?”

Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wouldn’t that be such a relief to not have to figure out what another person expects of you, who they want you to be? What unimagined freedom it would be to just be myself and know my friends will still love me if I disagree with them, that they’d listen to me and respect me if I used my own true voice instead of the one I thought they wanted to hear? Isn’t that what friends are supposed to do? The book goes on to say that some people may leave us but some will stay and love and respect us more for taking the risk of being who we are. “We discover that who we are has always been good enough. It is who we were intended to be.”

So as I look at the pic of my amigas that attended my brunch I ask myself, “Who will stay and who will go?” I think I can say that three of them will definitely stay. The friendships will remain strong, even though they will change. A couple of the ladies that are really just acquaintances may become real friends if I remain sober. A couple of the others will fade away and we’ll remain friendly, but not friends. And then there’s me in the pic. What will my relationship with myself be? I think it will be a true and lasting friendship.

So today I’m just out there trying to be the best friend to myself I can be and planning my own birthday party.