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Day 165

I am carving out a niche of time to write this blog today, everything else be damned. Yes, I've conjured up another "event" come makeshift fundraiser that is taking place in my casa today. It involves a wandering Thai food chef, a whole lot of sharp knives, piles of vegetables, and 96 take-out orders. All for a measly 10% of the profits donation to the toy drive. I figure we might clear $200 US, if we're lucky, and hopefully we'll all still have ten digits attached at the ends of our limbs.

I did take some time to myself this week. I did read a book and start another (ironically James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which I'm finding quite interesting, and true enough for me. I'm glad I didn't buy it when I picked it up a few years ago because it probably would have convinced me that I wasn't bad enough yet. Instead I skimmed a few pages and hurriedly put it back down because it scared the shit out of me.).

In the midst of my "me" time this week, I had a conversation with a close friend, we've both discussed our concern about our individual drinking patterns throughout our friendship, and I told her I was writing this blog. She wanted to read it. I had my trepidations but I finally sent her the link. I saw her a few days later and she said she had been reading the blog and it gave her a whole different perception. I should of have asked her more about that but I was kind of scared to. Did she mean a different perception of me? Of events? Of others? Of everything? Is it a good perception? Or just different?

The more I've thought of it I've realized that the one thing I would tell people, that are considering on going on their own journey into soberland about, warn them about, is that their perception of everything and everybody, especially themselves, is about to change.

For me, the first brilliant clarity of sobriety was such a welcome sight. Everything was so clear and poignantly beautiful. It was just as I remembered it, before I started dulling its sharp edges and blurring its straight lines with booze.

I experienced such a breathtaking alacrity.

I could see everything so clearly.

I couldn't dream that it could ever become bothersome. That the brightness would become glaring and along with all the beauty, all of the ugliness, the harshness, the drabness would stand out in stark relief, with nothing to soften the sharp edges of reality.

I never imagined that I would want to put my beer goggles back on.

And I don't.

That's life I'm looking at out there in all its stark naked, sometimes harsh, glory.

I can't drink away the parts I don't like. I tried. All I managed to drink away was myself.

So today I'm just out there doing my best to keep things clear and keep my fingers clear of the chop-chop-chopping knives.