When I first walked into a meeting, the last thing in the world I wanted to be was an alcoholic. Today, I am grateful for my disease and even wish everyone was lucky enough to experience recovery.
Recovery teaches you how to deal with life, which is something most people either never learn growing up or unlearn too quickly as grown ups. Adulthood, unfortunately, teaches us that we can do it all on our own, that comfort and care are childish, that the way adults deal with problems is by sucking it up or sucking down a few cold ones at the bar, that taking care of ourselves is the least important thing on our list of things to do today. Recovery has given me the right to declare all of that bullshit.
The freedom and joy of this has been settling in on my lately as I muscle through a difficult time in my life. Too many bad things happening at once. Too many things not going my way. You know times like these. The biggest thing I’ve been struggling with is fear. Totally irrational, yet incapacitating, fear. Monsters under the bed shit.
That’s the other thing about recovery; you get to feel your emotions, which is a surprisingly wonderful thing because you get to respond immediately and feel better sooner. You also learn how to not become attached to your feelings , how to feel them without letting them consume you. So here I was feeling this fear, yet I wasn’t paralyzed. I didn’t need to pretend I didn’t feel it and then wonder why, half way through my second bottle of wine, I felt so miserable. I didn’t need to ride that merry-go-round. Instead, I felt that raw terror and I called people I could trust. I asked for help. I got help. Now I feel better. I needed someone to come in the room, turn on the light, look under the bed, and tell me it was gonna be alright. And, today, when I call out in the dark, people answer. That is the miraculous gift of recovery.
Wishlessness 