960 Days!

I don’t do this enough. Journal about one of the 960 days that comprise my sobriety tonight. I have many journals of day ones and day 30s and they still mean everything to me and are very much a part of the 960 today.

All of those broken pieces have been repurposed to form the person I am daring to become.

Failing is not forever. They can still be a part of your sobriety story. It’s not all or nothing, which is something an addict has a very hard time digesting.

And my success story thus far may not be much by anyone’s standard, I’m sure. I’m not “living my best life,” few of us are, but it still feels pretty damn good to me. Every little thing I do differently now because I don’t drink resounds like a bell in my heart.

Before, if I were just lounging on my bed like I am now, it would be with glazed over eyes and dark thoughts. Meditating on all the ways I’m alone and unlovable. Of course, it wasn’t like that in the beginning, but it sure as hell became that.

It can start as just a few drinks after work but before I knew it, it had eclipsed my entire being. I started to believe the darkness was just what I had let my life become. Sad circumstances and self-pity. Sure, our pain is absolutely valid, but for me, alcohol became the pain, so much so that I could no longer distinguish between it and what I really felt or believed to be true.

Now, I am sitting here on my bed, excited over the sound of a bird streaming past my screen door, giddy as a ten-year-old boy, ready to grab my camera to capture evidence of one of a million sparrows flittering about the world tonight. You’d think aliens had landed on my patio and the world was depending on me to break the story.

Everything is richer now. Because I’m awake. I’m alive. I’m ME. No shame. No secrets. No hiding. I don’t think about how many ounces of wine I have left or how long it will last me, I think about finding poets akin to Mary Oliver and sift through titles, salivating at words. I remember the girl who graduated from college with a well full of passion and no idea what to do with it all. It has taken me until this moment to even dare gather the kindling of those yester years and stir the coals once more.

I truly mean my tag line with all my heart. “It is never too late to become what you might have been.” If for me that’s just staying sober, taking a few stabs at poetry, paying my bills and watching my cats stretch out in slants of sun…then I have arrived.

In the words of my Mary Oliver, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

God, I’ve never been more careful about measuring my worth against the world as I am today.

So, I’ll be brave. Write, share, roll around in my melodramatic thoughts, screw the typos or fumbling over words. Just participate and open the damn curtains, woman. That’s what the eternal me is happy about tonight. Stop expecting anything to be perfect, or even go well, for that matter. Find what’s gorgeous in all the fray because I promise it’s there and it’s prettier for the contrast.

One last thing I’ll say is I truly treasure and hold dear every human being who is fighting for their lives due to addiction or mental illness because that is exactly what it is. Illness, and 100% a fight to the death. You have a special place in my heart. Life is so damn fleeting and precious and filled with millions of moments we’ll miss even if our eyes are clear and our hearts are full. I want you here to help me gather as many as we can.

Maybe I’m twisted, but I find that so exciting I can barely sit still. Maybe it’s the addict in me, but it makes me want to go outside this instant and start hunting for beauty, even though I know it will never be enough.

Please know that you are not alone. Please know that whatever source of encouragement or comfort I can be, I will be there.

In the meantime, focus on that light in your chest and imagine it expanding like the universe it is.

All my Love,

Sobriety Poet