Pick Up Your Crazy Heart

"And this ain't no place for the weary kind
This ain't no place to lose your mind
This ain't no place to fall behind
Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try"

I watched the movie, "Crazy Heart" last night. Can I just say, "Wow."

There is one scene in the movie where Jeff Bridges' character, Bad Blake, rushes off the stage-he's a washed up country western singer playing in a bowling alley-to run to the alley to heave his guts into a trash can. My chest ached and my throat burned  as he heaved from what seemed to be the sour rotten depths of his bowels.

Oh how I remember that.

Poor guy.

But then he fishes his sunglasses out of the vomit and returns to the stage, and heaves himself back up there and he finishes the set and I thought, "Gawd, drinking makes living so damn hard."

Oh how I remember that too. How for the last ten years of my drinking I felt like I was continually pulling myself out of a dark alleyway to pull myself back up on stage and go through the motions of my life. And not loving one single minute of it.

Not to give away the ending, in case you haven't watched it, but the movie showcases just what Sober Mummy said so beautifully in her post, One Year Sober yesterday (A must read for anyone who is on this winding path, but, then, all of her posts are a must read.).  It also illustrates  the intended endpoint of my last blog, Plugging Along, even though I never got around to making it.

That is, you cannot know what finally quitting for good will bring you, but be assured that all the things you are meant to have will be so much easier to achieve.  You cannot see what is important, until booze is no longer the most important thing in your life.

Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try. Your life is waiting for you.