Oct
12
The numbers keep climbing on my sobriety tracker app (yes, there is in fact an app for that), and so do I. As time goes on I feel like I’ve largely moved past the roiling murk of fear and uncertainty and bone-deep self-hatred that ran through me night and day back at the start of the summer. I’m stronger and healthier and I can feel the sun on my face. I’m hugely reluctant to repeatedly poke my head back down into the clouds to revisit all that led me here.
After several sessions with my counselor went by with me saying — truthfully — that I haven’t been struggling with temptation, she gently brought up the importance of not taking things for granted. I think the metaphor she used was something about keeping your shadow in front of you.
What’s that AA saying? Alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful. Here’s another one that rings true for me: The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.
This is something I’ve been mulling over and over lately: can I be successful without attending a never-ending series of meetings (because I have not been)? Can I be successful without constantly revisiting painful old ground? Can I move forward with my shadow at my side, maybe, instead of directly in my field of view at all times?
I’m reading Doctor Sleep, Stephen King’s follow-up to The Shining, and where I’m currently at in the book the main character is a recovering alcoholic, ten years sober. He still checks in with his sponsor several times a week, and at one point they have the following conversation:
“You sober today, Danno?”
“Yes.”
“You ask for help to stay away from a drink in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“On your knees?”
“Yes, on my knees.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to remember the drink put me there.”
Oh, how those words leaped off the page at me. I don’t do this — ask for help, on or off my knees — but yes, that feeling of humble gratitude. The acknowledgement of the good things in my life and how terrifyingly easily I could throw it all away.
Maybe I’m in denial about what it takes to remain sober for life. Maybe you have to keep turning and turning over the dirt in your brain and listening to others do the same, or your past loses its power to keep driving you in the right direction.
That’s hard for me to believe, though. I don’t know about you, but for me the most amazing, heart-shattering memories all eventually fade like Polaroids in reverse, no matter how I fight to hold on to them. The terrible ones, the ones filled with humiliation and regret, are the ones hardwired to my body, so that I can recall things that happened decades ago and still feel a face-reddening gut-punch of shame run through me.
Which is to say, I cannot imagine ever forgetting what alcohol has done to me. What I have done to myself with alcohol.
Recovery is filled with slippery gray areas. Confidence, not complacency. Exercise, but don’t let it become a substitute for former addictive behaviors. Be present, don’t settle.
Gratitude, though … that seems like a pretty basic concept. You can’t be grateful without recognizing the big picture. You can’t be grateful and take things for granted at the same time. It seems to me that focusing on gratitude — carving out daily time for it, even — is a way to live in the light while still accepting the truth of those clouds.
I am so grateful, every morning, every night. A thousand times a day, and it is such a good feeling.
Oct
3
JB turned forty back in August, and I wrote him a letter:
From early emails between the reception desk and purchasing to a backpack full of Coors Light on New Year’s Eve. Lasers aimed at an adjoining Portland apartment, a punching bag drilled into the balcony. A moving van filled with our combined belongings, burning wrapping paper in our Las Vegas fireplace. A lemon tree, dual Lasik, the Sunset Station, one hundred adventures to Red Rock and Zion. The Kaibab squirrels in the Grand Canyon, an overturned snowmobile in Utah. On Y2K, an engagement ring. Another moving truck and an epic drive, oysters to celebrate a job offer from Microsoft. The strip of fake grass on our apartment deck for the cat, watching ferries slide back and forth in the Sound. Our snaggletoothed officiant ringing the church bell after we said I do. Your hand-picked dinner in Phuket as fellow Americans with burger plates looked on jealously. Diener driving us to our not-then-yellow house, thinking he had the wrong address. The first morning after Dog: the Great Brown Sea. In the high Cascades, a hummingbird in our camp. Two tiny outfits bought in Hawaii, pink and blue, because we didn’t yet know. A tiny Riley and a nurse who laughed and told us to never wake a sleeping baby. Our house torn wide open on one end, plastic to keep the raccoons out. A remote beach in Tofino among jutting black rocks and wave-smoothed pebbles. A tiny Dylan, arriving via nervous head-pats that felt like Lenny and the puppies. The loss of Dog. A patchwork Cat. A thousand dreaming conversations before finally saying goodbye to the yellow house. The deep melting glow of a ranch sunset, our family held in a great gentle hand made of sage and sky.
I could write night and day for every year I’ve known you and never come close to capturing what you mean to me. Happy fortieth birthday to you, and here’s to forty more amazing years of us.
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