Wordless and Uncharacteristically Blessed.
.
How does one explain the pains of alcoholism to those who are incapable of comprehending the alcoholic torture I have endured. Worse how do I explain it in the room full of alcoholics who have seen me time and time again pick up another sobriety chip. Frankly, I do not know because I don't have the words to express how it is I feel. The words I do possess which are boundless and fruitful do not posses the impact of what I have experience these futile years of attempted sobriety.
What I can tell you is that the gratitude I feel well up within in it's purest form of love for surviving the obsession, compulsion and craving I thought was destine to end my life. I sit here full of emotion that expresses itself with tension, a rapid heart beat. deeper and deeper breathing, the welling up of tears and I am full of joy to have survived my deadliest disease. I'm alive and I am dumbfounded by it. I sit here with the largest smile chuckling at the insanity of it all and as well as the forutine that has fallen upon me, a future.
If I sit quietly and let myself just feel the gratitude I could just cry the kind of cry that becomes uncontrollable and unappealing. It's the kind of gratitude I've seen in the movies when someone is saved when hope had been lost. The kind of gratitude to know that I am one of the select few made it when so many have not. I have seen people die in the rooms of AA and various ways. They flip their cars over, they fall off balconies, the get shot, they get their throats sliced, they shoot others and end up in prison for life, they tie a noose around their necks. I've seen this with my own two eyes and thought me too and sooner than I think and still I drank.
I drank when I found out I was HIV+, when cancer knocked on my door all four times, when I was broken up with and when I broke up with someone. I drank when I had radiation burns down my esophagus and on my torso, I drank when I got promoted, when my sister had her kids, when I was bored, excited, angry, happy and so on and on and on. I even drank when I did not feel like drinking. Worse I drank when I was bored and had nothing else better to do.
Each time I did I put my life at risk and each time the risk got steeper and steeper until I ended up on life support. Life Support saved my life and to know without it and the doctors and nurses who worked so diligently saved my life. Without all of it I would be dead and my tombstone would read: Born 6/13/69 - Died 7/18/10. When I go to meetings and I mention my most recent experience I struggle to come up with the right words that expresses how it felt inside to drink when every part of your being was afraid to, did not want to, was angry because you had to and you did it anyway. I think the get that I have no control, but for me to have gotten enough sobriety chips to equal my heaviest wight is just plane crazy.
The looks I get sometimes make me feel worse than the actual relapse itself because even the people who know what it's like look at me with disbelief and utter pity for my plight. That really hurts the most. Today that is not the case because now when I get a chip they applaud and congratulate me. I think they get how much of a miracle I am in a way I don't.Today, things are very different I do not have the obsession, compulsion or craving to drink and have not since I came to. Today I struggle just as much to explain the absence of what I call the "white noise" of the alcoholic debate:
"Drink."
"No, I can't."
"Yes you can, only one."
"I don't even get that, one."
"Come on. No one will know."
"I will know and I'm not going to."
"Look we've gone through this before."
"No we haven't because this time I'm no longer listening." So on and so on it goes until I drink. It may be minute, hours, days even months later, but I drink.
That conversation which has become an inner "white noise" I have lived with since I cross the line of addiction has always been present, until now. What I have left is a lot of quiet space between thoughts. When I think of something I can hear it starting up way back in the mind before it makes it total presence known. I know this sounds hooky, but it's how it is today for me. Frankly, it's unnerving and I don't really know how to function with this new state of mind. I am grateful for it, but it has it's own setbacks. Fortunate for me I've struggled so long that I don't really question it and accept it as a blessing.
Today my life is made easier by a grace grater than myself and by those who have supported me in and out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I no longer take for granted the morning I open my eyes and not look over at my phone in dread from my last spree. Today I am capable of taking care of myself and understand that my true happiness does not lye outside of myself. It lays with in waiting to be taped into everyday of every waking moment.
I an uncharacteristically blessed today.
How does one explain the pains of alcoholism to those who are incapable of comprehending the alcoholic torture I have endured. Worse how do I explain it in the room full of alcoholics who have seen me time and time again pick up another sobriety chip. Frankly, I do not know because I don't have the words to express how it is I feel. The words I do possess which are boundless and fruitful do not posses the impact of what I have experience these futile years of attempted sobriety.
What I can tell you is that the gratitude I feel well up within in it's purest form of love for surviving the obsession, compulsion and craving I thought was destine to end my life. I sit here full of emotion that expresses itself with tension, a rapid heart beat. deeper and deeper breathing, the welling up of tears and I am full of joy to have survived my deadliest disease. I'm alive and I am dumbfounded by it. I sit here with the largest smile chuckling at the insanity of it all and as well as the forutine that has fallen upon me, a future.
If I sit quietly and let myself just feel the gratitude I could just cry the kind of cry that becomes uncontrollable and unappealing. It's the kind of gratitude I've seen in the movies when someone is saved when hope had been lost. The kind of gratitude to know that I am one of the select few made it when so many have not. I have seen people die in the rooms of AA and various ways. They flip their cars over, they fall off balconies, the get shot, they get their throats sliced, they shoot others and end up in prison for life, they tie a noose around their necks. I've seen this with my own two eyes and thought me too and sooner than I think and still I drank.
I drank when I found out I was HIV+, when cancer knocked on my door all four times, when I was broken up with and when I broke up with someone. I drank when I had radiation burns down my esophagus and on my torso, I drank when I got promoted, when my sister had her kids, when I was bored, excited, angry, happy and so on and on and on. I even drank when I did not feel like drinking. Worse I drank when I was bored and had nothing else better to do.
Each time I did I put my life at risk and each time the risk got steeper and steeper until I ended up on life support. Life Support saved my life and to know without it and the doctors and nurses who worked so diligently saved my life. Without all of it I would be dead and my tombstone would read: Born 6/13/69 - Died 7/18/10. When I go to meetings and I mention my most recent experience I struggle to come up with the right words that expresses how it felt inside to drink when every part of your being was afraid to, did not want to, was angry because you had to and you did it anyway. I think the get that I have no control, but for me to have gotten enough sobriety chips to equal my heaviest wight is just plane crazy.
The looks I get sometimes make me feel worse than the actual relapse itself because even the people who know what it's like look at me with disbelief and utter pity for my plight. That really hurts the most. Today that is not the case because now when I get a chip they applaud and congratulate me. I think they get how much of a miracle I am in a way I don't.Today, things are very different I do not have the obsession, compulsion or craving to drink and have not since I came to. Today I struggle just as much to explain the absence of what I call the "white noise" of the alcoholic debate:
"Drink."
"No, I can't."
"Yes you can, only one."
"I don't even get that, one."
"Come on. No one will know."
"I will know and I'm not going to."
"Look we've gone through this before."
"No we haven't because this time I'm no longer listening." So on and so on it goes until I drink. It may be minute, hours, days even months later, but I drink.
That conversation which has become an inner "white noise" I have lived with since I cross the line of addiction has always been present, until now. What I have left is a lot of quiet space between thoughts. When I think of something I can hear it starting up way back in the mind before it makes it total presence known. I know this sounds hooky, but it's how it is today for me. Frankly, it's unnerving and I don't really know how to function with this new state of mind. I am grateful for it, but it has it's own setbacks. Fortunate for me I've struggled so long that I don't really question it and accept it as a blessing.
Today my life is made easier by a grace grater than myself and by those who have supported me in and out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I no longer take for granted the morning I open my eyes and not look over at my phone in dread from my last spree. Today I am capable of taking care of myself and understand that my true happiness does not lye outside of myself. It lays with in waiting to be taped into everyday of every waking moment.
I an uncharacteristically blessed today.
Comments
Post a Comment