The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

Jean Houston

Day 183

I passed the six month mark three days ago, and several very profound, I’m sure, blogs that I meant to sit down and write have escaped my brain never to return.  

My world is a kaleidoscope these days, every slight spin more and more fascinating and enthralling. This morning is made up of bright fragments of birdsong, orange and fuchsia hibiscus blossoms, the sway of palm fronds, the morning surf and warm sand.  There are fragments of expectancy, and worry, and laughter and tears in there also and as the day whirls around me they will click into their various spaces and all of it will come together to form a perfectly beautiful, ever shifting mosaic.

From Wikipedia: the word "kaleidoscope" is derived from the Ancient Greek καλός (kalos), "beautiful, beauty",[2] εἶδος (eidos), "that which is seen: form, shape"[3] and σκοπέω (skopeō), "to look to, to examine",[4] hence "observer of beautiful forms." [5]

I am an observer of beautiful forms, my life is beautiful, beauty.  This is an apt description of who I am these days.  A couple of people have commented to me in pm’s and in person that I have made sobriety seem easy, effortless, maybe too much so, but they forget I didn’t blog about or share my first 3-4 years of this struggle, or maybe they haven’t read my first year of this blog when I was still trying to moderate. But the plain truth is, my life did become so much easier, so much more effortless, when I simply quit drinking. Believe me, there are still days that the sun doesn’t shine through the end of my kaleidoscope and all of the sharp fragments look dark and gray and no amount of spinning changes the view.  But those days are the minority now, they had their time in the majority when I was drinking and I couldn’t find the sun through my constant cloud of booze.  Now I know the dark days will pass and the light will shine through again and all my brilliant little pieces will click and find their vibrant beautiful niches.

I must ever remind myself that what I hold in my hands is a fragile contraption of reflections and tiny fragile bits of me and if I am careless and drop it all those brilliant little pieces will spill onto the warm sand to be washed away by the morning surf.

So today I’m just out there doing my best to hold on tight and not let my ever spinning world make me dizzy.

P.S.  Years ago one of my favorite students gave me a kaleidoscope, he said it symbolized himself, simplicity and plainness on the outside but ever-shifting beauty on the inside.  It got lost in one of my moves and I’ve been looking for it for years. I probably gave it away when I was drunk.  I need to go buy me another kaleidoscope.