It’s so easy to lose track of how far we’re come on this sober journey. I ran across a writing of mine from a few years ago, and it filled me with aprication for who I’m today. One day at a time adds up fast.
(I could describe it as layers. Right now I’m at about minus seventy meters. It’s a dark place. My head hurts with dull lights flashing behind my closed eyes, ears ringing, can’t sleep and everything feels dead. There’s a pressure down here that pushes on me from all sides, and I can’t escape. I tried too many times to get a grasp of myself, but I feel like I’m slipping, and I’m in danger of falling deeper, and I don’t want to try anymore. Maybe if I just let go and dropped to the level of no return, it would just be over. I could go for a drive and lose myself in the nightness and let the pain roll up and consume me like a funeral pyre and let the dripping wash over, throw up, and let it be over. I can’t see my way out. I’m a drunk. I don’t even rate alcoholic. I’m just a bum drunk. I think I’m at eighty meters now. I’ve lost my breath, and it’s too far to the top to swim back up and down here light is a dim memory, and the black is all-consuming, and I can feel myself slipping deeper. I haven’t leveled off. I’m falling.)
Thank you for helping to put this misery in the past. I’m a year and nine months on the journey, eight months without a drop. I couldn’t be more grateful.
