Today is the anniversary of the day I was given the gift of recovery. At least I think it was the 11th. Or close to it. Can’t really remember the exact day I picked up total abstinence and didn’t pick up anything else, but it was right before November 11, 1987.
Oh my, that day is a miserable memory. I said goodbye to my four year old son at daycare and my mother drove me to a treatment place. I call it a place because it wasn’t a ‘center’ or a hospital or cold and whitewashed. It happened to be in the woods, up in the hills of western Sonoma county. Looked like an old lodge in the redwoods, not fancy, just human and funky. Which wasn’t what I was feeling in the least.
The way I ended up there is a story in itself. Let’s just say a recovering alcoholic of the old-timer variety was sitting across from me while I told my sad sack story. He was the Employee Assistance program person for the postal service at the time. This is when actual recovering addicts and alcoholics were running programs like this. Soon after, a masters degree was required. Don’t get me going on this subject or I’ll regress. As I tend to do. Anyway he cut me off while I was whining crying, and said he had a plan for me. Blessings to this man. But not what I was feeling about him at the time.
This was two days after being kicked out of my home by a husband who was angry, betrayed, and at his wits end. With good reason. We talk about having the disease of addiction, but it doesn’t let us off the hook for the actions we take while in it. His denial enabled me to keep up my own, but once his was broken through, all hell broke loose, and I knew in my heart the bottom had come up to bite me in the ass. I felt my whole world had ended. And in many respects it had, and although many insights have come in the last 24 years, that day I knew only one thing. I was fucked.
As I write now, I see the slight dark humor in all our stories, our perceptions, the person we were compared to where we have come. It doesn’t erase the fact that addiction is a killer. Of our physical selves, our bodies, some of us fatally. Never to see the smile of a child, the touch of a friend, the intimacy of love, the nature of our magnificent earth.
The disease increases the insanity of our minds that tell us we are separate, as we continue to live in that bubble of isolation and fear. But, worst of all, it kills our spirits. The part of us which dreams, aspires, takes risks, guides us to courageous acts internally and externally. The spiritual nature of the disease and respect for what that feels like, to be spiritually bankrupt, is what keeps me coming back for human connection, for earthly connection, the reminder that there is whole big magnificent world out there, keeping me in the loop of humanity. And that opens the door for so many other miracles. Too many to mention here, but miracles of mind exploration, body exploration, earthly traveling exploration….all of it.
Ok, so I got a little carried away there. Life is serious and joyful depending my thinking in the moment. Today I feel gratitude and so much love. Wish I could bottle it and give it away. Giving is receiving and I have received so much love. Today I will try to remember to smile every moment. And give that away.
Thank you…..xo
