DAY OF OUR LIVES

DAY OF OUR LIVES

Every day brings something new to blame yourself for. Rather each day renews old opportunities to use old reasons to blame yourself for old things. Or better said, is that each day we look for ways to feel bad rather than feel good. It is almost a default position born from years of low estimations of self worth and often having circumstances and poor behavior confirm those low estimations.

Even when life is filled with all sorts of positive and life reaffirming things we often fall back on the negative. Like Naomi whose son found out that she had used cocaine and for which she had made ample amends. And now, for this, he was bummed. Had he not heard it before? Had he been asleep at the wheel when she brought out the cat o' nine tails, bared her back and showed him the scars?

And she started to really feel horrible having to hear now about how scandalized, and 'scarred' her son 'all of a sudden was'.

So she sat back and listened to his complaint, his pain and took it in. She took many deep breathes and finally came to an understanding with herself and shared that with our AA group that having made her amends, she had cleaned up her side of the street and had done that years ago and repeatedly. It was now time for her to move on and not re don the mantle of guilt that she had born for so long and worked so hard to rid herself of.

And Naomi decided that if her son needed to hold onto that anger, grief and rage, she offered to pay for any therapy sessions he might need to attack his problem, but would not go down that road again with him. A very healthy choice. And she makes that choice by bringing it to the group and letting it go so that she can restart her day, not dwell on the pain anymore and look forward to a more positive next twenty four hours.


Today in our Living Sober meeting we were reminded to live one day at a time, live in 24 hour intervals and remember to reset the day at any time. The importance of this is manifold. First, any mood does not have to last a full 24 hours; any mood that starts a day can be interrupted by restarting the day and terminating that bad feeling.

Living one day at a time is a chunk of life that any mind can wrap his head around. Staying sober for two days or two weeks or two years is no guarantee of sobriety for tomorrow. (One does not stay sober for two days, two weeks or two years.) I don't have to face an unknown piece of time that seems too daunting to contemplate, one that seems impossibly difficult to achieve. I only need to face a chunk of time that I can swallow and that can be this minute, this hour this day whatever is do-able. And then I can do it. And I don't have to count my time because I really only need to worry about the next twenty four hours. The past twenty four are just that, past and I can have three thousand past days but they won't help me stay sober tomorrow. Which is why everyone and I say that we are always new to the program because time may make things a bit easier, but I am only just one drink away from disaster.

I have to continually remind myself that my disease is very patient. So during one of my paroxysms of coughing recently, I had some errant thoughts of lying helplessly, alone on the floor and not being able to help myself. And when this happens, fear shoots through me practically paralyzing me. Thoughts of being bravely independent flee from my mind. Because I realize that I am at my most alone when I am gasping for and catching my breath, barely able to get enough O2 to sustain another gasp before hacking away again and my courage fleas like a pride scatters when the lion king approaches the kill.

I would truly love to be free of the horror of dependency but, if truth be told, I have been down that road of helplessness and it strikes terror in my heart. When I could not walk for the pain in my legs last year and called my wife for help and she initially refused I did not know what to do. Having been so used to her help, I did not understand what it was like to do for myself and it was terrifying to have to try to think it through alone. And it did not help that I was incoherent from fever and sepsis.

So I guess I just have to get used to being alone and being dependent upon the kindness of strangers. That seems so alien after forty years of interdependency in marriage and when I do think about it, it throws my mind down a rabbit hole with no bottom, and I find the pit of my stomach in my throat.

I don't always have these fears but when I do I go to the worst possible places with them and when that happens I have to be extra careful not to pity myself too much. Because the disease of alcoholism never sleeps. It is said that I have a disease that tells me that I don't have a disease. And that my disease is very patient, always waiting for situations when my guard is down (poor me, poor me, pour me a drink!) I have to be vigilant so that when I feel like this I have to tell on myself both to me and to my group.

And then I remember John at today's meeting saying that for awhile he had to keep kicking himself to remember to stop living in the problem and to start living in the solution. And I understand what that means but I'm not sure how that works. Because when the forces of the solutions conspire to prevent you from achieving that solution it is hard not to live in the problem because the solution isn't presenting itself despite all efforts to bring it to fruition .

But I guess that is what one day at a time is all about, because today all I see is all those lines of force aligned against a successful outcome and I guess I need to just take just one hurdle at a time to not over think, over dramatize and over negativize the outcome.

Because like a self fulfilling prophecy, I may be causing an effect that has not yet happened simply by over thinking the problem and over thinking the solution.

'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…'



© res 1/29/11