It's All Going To Be Okay

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Whenever anyone asks me, HOW? How do I do this? My answer is always,

  • Can you meet me for coffee?
  • Can you meet someone for coffee?
  • Can you take a walk?
  • Can you take a scalding hot shower?

My answer is always to ask a question back and that question always involves an action.

For the years leading up to July 13, 2014, my question was always, WHY? I remember a point somewhere in between the time I was so hungover, I had a panic attack, hyperventilated and spent time in an ambulance to the time I threw up red wine everywhere until it looked like a murder scene, both incidences under the impressionable eyes of my little family, the only question I could ever ask was, WHY?

WHY do my friends get to drink and carry on and are never miserable like I am? WHY do they never have any consequences? So many WHYS while I continued to bang my head against a glass door, over and over (and my god, how many sliding glass doors I actually walked into, I've lost count). It wasn't because I was stupid or an imbecile, I just wasn't asking the right question. I didn't know HOW to do it. I didn't know HOW I could live my life without alcohol. I didn't know HOW to write that story where I was the main character who lived her life without drinking.

WHY does not incite an action. WHY keeps you down, as low as a victim as you can be, pity-party of one.

Now that I have been sober for two years, I can start to look back and question, WHY? One thing I've figured out is that drinking compromised my structure. I wasn't being good or bad, better or worse than anyone else. I wasn't a complete fuck-up or a victim or a princess. Drinking compromised my structure until my structure no longer worked. And now I am getting closer to whole.

I am not an efficient machine. There are days when I'll most likely fuck something up at some point. I am messy, complicated, imperfect and contradictory and life is a bewildering, enchanting, exquisite conundrum. I love routine but being open to a certain amount of surprise, curiosity and opportunity keeps my creativity in a flow and honest to God, keeps me sober.

Today, my actions are:

  • Interacting with men and women who have the same struggles and desires as me
  • Moving my body
  • Stretching my mind
  • Being of service to someone in some tiny way
  • Spending time in deep thought and prayer
  • Putting words onto paper
  • Making something with my hands

It requires effort. It requires action and faith and sometimes that means I have to do something different, something that I have to be open to or willing to try. But ultimately, it requires surrender. It means I have to stop fighting the thing I'm resisting.

I don't have a creative project to share today. Honestly, I'm working on too many things at once that I needed this. I've been feeling overwhelmed and I needed to come back to the basics.

Sobriety 101.