Living with the Volume Turned Down

Soundtrack:

That's how I describe being sober.
Living with the volume....turned....down.
Way down.

Life proves less entertaining but I'm not almost killing myself and/or others.


My roomate says I'm a bit more angry and quiet than I am when I'm not sober.
He also then quickliy adds that I don't almost kill myself on a regular basis, though.
At any rate, I'm in the adjustment phase.




I keep my life exceedingly basic and narrow and uncomplicated when I'm switching back to sobriety.
A couple guys I keep up with, training, work, and sex with a girl I'm seeing.

I disappear socially for the most part except for hanging out with a few chosen friends. I keep things very simple, very basic, I withdraw from social media all but occasionally, and I eat healthy.
I let the girls on the line who something may have ended up happening with dwindle away.
My ex comes back to town but I don't respond when she texts or calls and wants to discuss the abortion.

I don't reply to the ex-wife.

I all but disappear to all but a handful of close confidants.
It's the way it has to be.
It's not exciting, but it keeps me on the straight and narrow.
---

The new girl and I are pleasant. She doesn't push my buttons. She's good for me.
I doubt whether or not she's sexually experienced enough for me but I'll face that dilemma if it becomes a problem in full.

A friend of a friend is working hard to lure me and I have to be careful because all this free time now that I'm not drinking means I might act out in other ways (sex) and that will just fuck my life up again and lead me back to escaping in a drink. I don't get the urge to drink often lately but I've been staying super busy day in and day out.
This girl is a problem and a half and exactly the kind of bonkers drama and emotional napalm I don't need in my life. A train wreck if I ever saw one and a dense black hole mass of issues that would inexorably draw me in and rend my sobriety to pieces.
I have to be dogmatically diligent about picking and choosing who and what I do with people around me in sobriety, even AA people, because not all of them went to treatment, not all of them have seen a professional, and there's the balancing of that, the professionals versus the AA, and the reality that sobriety is tailored to the individual....and it all gets overwhelming, so I stop and pause, and I push what's agitating me aside....and take a deep breath. I know that in this moment, in this today, I am okay, in this moment I don't have to do anything or be anything or whatever.
I pause, clear my mind, and let it all drift away and find calm.

If it comes to me impulsively, I learn to distrust it.
If it seems to good to be true, too much fun, too awesome, too easy, I watch it warily from a distance.

This time coming back into sobriety my ability to feel is returning more slowly. It's been a rough year with the police and the abortion and the fights and everything with the ex and how we tried to tear one apart the way we did.
I know I have more to feel and the abortion in my mind is a heavy source of guilt and doubt.
I know that I don't have to think about it right now and not to let the guilt from it go back to her.
I can't be her superman. I can't fix us.
I can't be sober and be with her.
It hurts and I feel a large hole in my heart and I briefly feel the time when she was pregnant and the way her hand would tug on my arm when I had to leave her for work and how fragile and dependent she seemed....and the way she would sleep and soak in the feeling of it all, of the three of us.....tears well up in my eyes and I push it away from my mind, take a deep breath and walk out to my car to leave work.

I don't run from the pain, rather, I accept it.
I stand in the light and the basking of it....I take a deep breath and feel it but do not linger unnecessarily beat myself over it.
I take it simply as it is and know that I have many steps and nights and days before me and that fortunately not everything is left up to me.

Good luck and happy hunting,
     - Yrs. in Christ