This Feeling Will Follow Me Wherever I Go

When I was a kid, I had a few places that made me feel safe. I coveted them like they were as precious as a newborn kitten. Deep under the blankets of my queen-sized bed was one of those places. I got the queen size bed because my room became the guest room when we had guests, but we rarely had guests. I would turn the radio on to the Easy Listening station, the one that played Air Supply and Hall and Oates or the slow Foreigner songs. I would climb into my blanket fort and could happily stay there for hours. I craved it. It was my calm place. It was my alternate reality. It was a dreamland. I was meditating. 

My other physical spots induced the same feeling. The woods, and we had some 20-odd acres surrounding my childhood home, invited me daily. I was a latch-key kid and had a good four hours to myself after school, so I was either exploring previously unexplored areas by foot (and oftentimes barefoot) or climbing a tree. I knew all of the climbable trees. I knew the nooks best for sitting, I knew the trees with the highest vantage point, I knew the limbs that you could hang your fanny from when you needed to pee. Just like my blanket fort in my big bed, I was safe in a tree.  

My Grandparent's house in Alabama evoked that feeling of safety like no other. There is so much freedom in safety. Going through my Granny's creams and perfumes in her vanity drawers, exploring her Harlequin novels, carefully picking through her jewelry box, examining every little piece multiple times, under her tutelage at the standing mixer, sewing machine, in the crook of her crocheting arm, nestled on the couch, Bible shoved into the cushions, Lawrence Welk on as background. I can't explain that feeling of utter safety, but you know it when you've felt it. 

For the last three and half years, I've come to learn that everything I've ever wanted in my adult life was on the other side of sobriety. Some of that I've realized in accomplishments. But you look beyond the tangible rewards, life is just less chaotic, it is more manageable, less baffling. So it must be the feeling I was after. I longed for that feeling of safety. I didn't have to be in a blanket fort or my Granny's arm nook, but the feeling I desperately wanted, I have now.

As the calendar year flipped to 2018, I found myself entering a phase of something I can only refer to as Sobriety 2.0. It seems like that while everything I wanted was indeed on the other side of sobriety, MORE of everything is on the other side of this next version. I have a new quest to go deeper and I intuitively know it's through meditation that I'll get there, just like a knew as a kid, before life got really noisy and distracting. I don't know what is there exactly, but I have a hunch that there is an even deeper reservoir of creativity that I may have barely tapped. I believe there is more compassion there, less judgement. I'm fairly certain there is more love. 

Not much will look different around here. There may just be a little less talking and a lot more listening.