This is my story of my voyage with my Co-Writer, My Higher Power to sobriety via the internet. It was here that I reclaimed my life.
You have your own voyage to plot, your own stars to follow whether you choose my path or choose another with AA, or with one of the many fine addiction treatment centers
The important thing is that you do what you can. Now.
Sometimes I forget, but my first step toward sobriety wasn't MM, my first step was actually this blog. This was my first public cry for help.
I received a comment on one of my earlier posts yesterday-a post written back when I was still going through that old back-and-forth tug-o-war with drinking. The reader asked, "At 50 years old, how do you make up for 30 years of drinking? How did you not blow it?"
My answer was, "You can't make up for it, all you can do is make your remaining years ones you don't have to make up for. 7 years later and I still don't have all the answers, but I know my life is better without alcohol, and I have worked to build a life I don't want to put at risk by drinking again, that's what keeps me from going back."
As usual, I kept thinking about that question and thought of a lot better answers, one of them being, You realize that the past is always going to be there and you can't go back and repaint that picture. You can keep trying to drink enough to make that ugly painting look better but, no matter how much you drink, you realize it is still as ugly as you painted it, you're only blurring it's stark reality. Or, you can finally grow a pair and start painting a new painting, a painting you know is going to hang right beside that old painting for the rest of your life. You'll have to look at that painting of your past every day, but now you have something else to look at also. It's a work in progress, but luckily you have that other painting hanging right there where you can always see it, so you don't repeat your mistakes.
Although they don't come around as often, I still get those pangs for my old life. Yesterday, the whole day was basically a pang. Actually it started on Friday night when I was at a friend's house for dinner and we were all listening to music. Jimmy Buffet. Kenny Chesney. Beaches, Bars, and Booze.
My friend said, "Some nights we just drink and put on the music and dance the night away, just the two of us."
Pang! The cap'n and I used to do that.
Yesterday I drove down to Chelem to spend Easter with my friends there. I have a house in Chelem, I used to call it home, but this year I've been a gypsy traveling back and forth across the Yucatan while strangers pay money to live in my houses so I can pay for them.
Anyway, I arrived here in the late afternoon and another friend was here and they were all sitting around the pool having drinks. Little pang. Then they got to talking about a recent overnight trip a whole group of them took to Merida. Bars. Booze. Laughter. Stumbling into the hotel courtyard at 5:30 am singing so loud they woke up all the other guests.
Big Pang!
I used to be in that group.
"I'm just the boring old sober person," I told my friend later. "I can't think of the last time I did something wild and crazy and...fun."
"Sober is not boring," she said.
She wasn't very convincing.
Mexico is party central during the Easter Holidays, the locals use Holy Week as an excuse to go to the beach, rent a one room house for themselves and their 36 closest relatives, sling hammocks, and stay up all night laughing and playing loteria and drinking vast quantities of tequila. Pang! As I made my many sojourns along the outside verandah to the bathroom through the night last night, I could look down at my friend's neighbors yard next door. Tarps were tied up and lights were strung, and kids were chasing each other through the sand while their adult counterparts milled about eating and drinking until 5 am.
This morning, I was up before anyone else. I sat out on the verandah with my rosary and put on Pachelbel and watched the sun come up over the water. Listened to the birds stir and sound their first notes. I often listen to the Canon in D and wish I could give the world something as beautiful. A legacy. A piece of me to leave behind in remembrance
As I sat listening this morning, I realized, I don't want that old life to be my legacy. I never did. When I was living it, I kept trying to convince myself it was beautiful. I tried to wedge the beautiful parts in where they would get more notice. Tried to make the ugly bits prettier than they were. The dark swaths more vibrant. The unsteady lines look as though they were intentional.
Maybe it looked beautiful to others. But it didn't to me.
And, hey, I'm the one that gets to choose.
So I took it down and stuck it in a closet somewhere and decided to start over.
My life now is a Still Life.
Simple, burnished days. An open window. Sweet, sun-warmed fruit. A dappled window seal.
I never get tired of looking at it. From every direction, it fascinates, yet soothes, me.
So I'm sitting here in a Denver Hotel when I'm supposed to be landing in KC in about 30 minutes to help with the grandkids. Oh well, the best laid plans of man. The cap'n just took off driving for OK to work, he's been up fidgeting and pacing since 6:00 am, as if that changes anything. He has to be at work down in OK late Thursday afternoon and he could have well waited another day to take off but he couldn't stand it. And he was driving me crazy.
I'm supposed to be able to catch a flight at 4:00 pm, but it's doubtful. That's ok. I don't want no pilot flying when he shouldn't be, I'm more apt to say, "Are you sure you want to fly today? I can wait."
I can wait. That's something new I've learned in conjunction with sobriety, or because of it.
Things will happen as they're supposed to happen as long as I don't muddle in and fuck'em up.
I'm warm, I have enough cash to raid the vending machine, and enough credit on my credit card for another night in a hotel, if need be.
And I'm not worried if the liquor stores are open, or how I'm going to get to one.
Every little things gonna be alright.
P.S. I'm at the airport now and I just finished an $8.00 Triple Dip Ben and Jerrys Mint Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream cone in a Chocolate Dipped with Sprinkles Waffle Cone and as I'm walking through the airport licking this thing, I'm wondering if a 51 year old chick can still manage to look obscene eating an ice cream cone. I did notice one guy eyeing me, he was even drooling. Of course, he was being pushed by airport personnel in a wheelchair. I think he was salivating over my cone. lol
