Somewhere between being totally out of practice and not wanting to write about the only things going on in my life, it looks like January is going to go down as one of those "two-post" times where there's a traffic spike mid-month when I actually do post, but everything else is just two or three people checking to see if I've died or something. For the record, I am not dead. I just smell a little funny.
There's not a really great segue for it and I don't have some plucky lead-in, so I guess I'll just go ahead and say it: I lapsed last week. After one year, one month, 28 days, 22 hours (and some change) without a drink, I got a running start and jumped off the wagon. I wish I could say there was some huge difficulty in my life that pushed me over the edge, but there really wasn't. It was a combination of a bunch of little things that just kinda caught up with me, I guess. It's kinda like the way a tornado works. There have to be certain and specific weather conditions in place for a funnel cloud to actually form, and even more certain and specific conditions for it to touch down, more specific ones to perpetuate it, etc. Everything lines up in just a certain way and, suddenly, the sky's all dark, the wind is blowing every which way, and this massive storm is now ripping through everything in its path and cutting a swath of destruction through what used to be a really nice neighborhood.
I remember actually seeing the aftermath of a tornado up close when I was in high school. I was at a church camp in Nebraska and there had been one that cut right through the middle of the campground. What used to be this really nice, heavily wooded path had a weird, ominous feel because of all these big, beautiful pine trees that had been knocked over only a few days before and the camp hadn't had the man-power to get it cleaned up. It was crazy how odd it looked to see all of these more or less healthy trees uprooted and lying on the ground, like my brain could only handle the thought of one or two old and rotting stumps and wasn't prepared to see this instead. Also, just thinking about the strength of something that could tear down that many trees was kinda scary. I've grown up in Texas all my life and have "survived" a number of tornado warnings/watches, but I still don't think I can really wrap my head around the idea of a spinning cloud that rotates with a wind speed anywhere between 100 and 300 miles per hour.
Regardless, I didn't sit down to write about tornadoes. I guess, ultimately, my point in all of this is that I've pretty much spent most of the last year studying/battling my drinking as a phenomenological object and not really examining (or, at the very least, doing anything meaningful to try to affect change in) the factors that created it. I can sit and talk about how I've used my drinking in the past to punish myself or to self-sabotage my life, but I can't really tell you why. For one thing, I don't really have any good reasons as to why, but for another I don't really want to. I don't want to admit to living a life that isn't meticulously planned and diligently executed. I don't want to say that I have a drinking problem because I have a living problem. I don't want to have to look people in the eyes and tell them that I made mistakes that are responsible for their pain and I don't have anything to give them to make up for it except an apology. I don't want to have to come to the table and admit that I can't make any promises about who I am and what I'll do because I'm weak and unpredictable. I don't want people to know that my word is next to worthless. I want to act in a trustworthy manner and have people like me. I just don't know how to stop doing and feeling the exact opposite.
I took my last drink Thursday night around 10:30. I'm not sure why the time is important, but I remember during the first go-round feeling it to be a very vital and necessary detail. I feel discouraged and sad that I fell down this way, but as my friend Cliff told me Friday morning when I called to 'fess up to it, I can't really change what happened. I can only start where I am with what I have in front of me and work my way out from there. I don't have any excuses and I'm not really even sure they would make much difference if I did. I will say this, though: I need to be really careful not to take my sobriety for granted. I may have worked really hard to get where I was before I kicked it all over, but I didn't earn it and I certainly don't deserve it. For someone with a drinking problem, sobriety is a gift and a blessing and I never should have thought of it as anything else.
I'm going to try to make February a more consistent 'blog month, but who knows what will happen. I'm closing January on a good note, though, and I can be proud and find hope in that. I love you all. See you 'round...
- P -
No comments:
Post a Comment