The Road Less Traveled

I often wonder what would have happened to my life had I not chosen this long, difficult and rewarding path to sobriety.  Where would I be?  Where would my family be?  Would I even be alive?  Then God sends me a brick...


Last evening I watched the videos that Mrs. D posted on her blog about Christine, an alcoholic in New Zealand struggling to get sober.  The videos saddened me because this woman is looking for someone else to fix her and, as we all know, that just isn't going to happen.  They also frightened and disturbed me deeply and profoundly.  So much so that I feel the need to share that here - to get it out and on "paper" so that I can release it into the Universe and let...it...go.

As I was watching those videos, I was struck by how much of me wanted to be Christine...still.  To be left alone, on assistance, to just...drink.  To go to my solitary place and get rip roaring blotto.  Now you know why I'm disturbed and frightened - that's where I would be had I chosen differently...and it still calls to me.

When she goes through the recycling bin to count her wine bottles (which she is sooooo lying about btw - she starts drinking at eight am and only goes through three or four bottles a day - I call bullshit - it's like more like five or six) my mouth began to water.  Her drug of choice is Chardonnay (although she'll drink whatever is there), as was mine.  For some reason that amber liquid looked so good in that jelly glass. 

Wait...what?  Really?

When she tells the reporter she needs a break and takes a sip of wine (at 9 am mind you), I could actually smell the wine and taste it on my tongue.  When she sighed and looked up at the camera I thought, "Yep...I know exactly how that feels."

Scared the living shit out of me.  She's alone...no family...no job.  She's lost all hope.

But then, when she relapsed and I felt a twinge of jealousy because she got to drink again?  Well that my friends, rocked me to my core.

Let me say here that this was a very, very small part of me reacting.  In no way do I mean to say that it was difficult or hard to fight.  There was never a part of me that thought about driving to the store to buy wine.  There was no part of my mind plotting to figure out how to drink.  There was never a moment that I didn't feel the deep and profound gratitude and love I have as a sober person in recovery.

It's just that I thought I was past that.  I thought I had chosen my path.  Cunning, powerful, and baffling is an understatement.

When I shared it with the hubs he said it was normal.  That I shouldn't feel bad about feeling that way.  That he loves me.  I don't think he grasped just what this did to me.  How could he?  But I love that he tries.

How did I feel after the videos were over and I had some time to breathe?  Grateful.  Grateful that God continues smack me upside the head with these bricks that remind me that yes, I am still an alcoholic and I always will be.  It doesn't matter how long I've been sober or how "successful" I am at being sober.  At the end of the day I'm still a drunk...plain and simple.

But I'm a sober one and, to steal from Robert Frost, that has made all the difference.

Namaste

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

~Robert Frost