Setting it Down

My life comes back into order for the first time in over a year and a half.
I'm sober and I'm keeping it between the lines.
I'm cleaning up and clearing out wreckage when possible.

I head out of town and see her.
She reminds me why I'm doing this. She's accepted me sober and not.
It's a strange moment realizing....I'm becoming normal.
I'm making plans.
I'm looking at places for us. Together.
I'm doing for another what I could never do just for myself.

You get tired of running.
Your arms get tired of flapping as do your lips and your mind from running in circles and rationalizations and hiding out from expectations.
You get tired of not having a place for more than 6 months.
You get tired tired of living the Spartan life.
The time in the maelstrom has lost its luster.
You being to enjoy peace. The constant beatdown of hangover and mire of your own mind and neuroses burns the candle at both ends and you realize it's not really living, just a day to day existence where surviving and keeping your head above water is a constant struggle. A hunted animal, savage and feral....ragged, hunted, chased, wounded, manic, rabid and ravenous, slave to impulse.

I'm reminded of A Clockwork Orange and the life unfettered by societal convention but slavishly pursing the id-minded pursuits of drink and lust and freedom.....is just one chasing a high to another...and fleeing the inevitable depressions and sinkholes of running headlong into a wall or another car or the law or eventually institutions....I don't want to tread that path any longer so I work a bit each day to start heading in the other direction.

There is a way to be good again.

I woke up alone.
Physically, sure, but it was more than that.
I didn't wreck the car.
I didn't have an empty bank account.
I hadn't cheated.
I wasn't late for work.

Yet.....I felt the complete absence of connection to the human race.
I felt a vast distance between myself and anything and everything.... all things, all people/persons...everything and everyone was beyond my grasp.
If this was where alcohol would take me....and I saw surely for the first time...that this is where it will always eventually take me, even deeper eventually....that it was time to put it down.

In that moment, I saw the choice before me.
In that moment, I knew it would not be without trial, tribulation, craving, insanity, thirst, fear, anxiety and all the rest.....yet, I saw in stark relief....where alcohol will always take me.

I considered the things I want with her...in the future....or at least the possibility if nothing else...and that alcohol will always take what is good in my life away. Whatever intense, fleeting joy or high I can chase and briefly experience...I'm burned out on the chase and even the feeling of the intensity.

My emotional receptors are faded and....there's a longing for peace and contentment....which I previously abhorred.
I like going out with her and her having a drink or the occasional two, and by 1 we're tired and she rests her head on my shoulder on the train and she's safe and I'm aware of our surroundings and we're home in bed and she quickly drifts off and I'm left in the dark and the quiet to take comfort in this moment and know that as long as I stay sober we don't have to fight, I don't have to cheat, we don't have to end, that I can have more nights like this, more mornings like the one coming at peace and feeling simply normal and clean and clear.....so long as I work to stay on this path.

Hope and faith and.....experience and knowing where the bottle takes me.
So much pain...pain I don't have to drink anymore.
Pain I don't have to reproduce and inflict nor induce.....

So I do the things that have worked and will continue to work to keep me sober.

Good luck and happy hunting,
    - Yrs. in Christ