I’m grateful for a bright morning. I’m grateful for feeling light. I’m grateful to understand that when I do what I can, it’s enough. I’m grateful to have found a center of gravity. I’m grateful for the steps and the work and grateful for the person it’s producing. I’m grateful for chances to carry the message. I’m grateful for all of the kind, loving people. I’m grateful to be sober.
My sponsor (and an upcoming guest on Breakfast with an Alcoholic!) says something along the lines of sobriety is the opportunity to become the person you were meant to be and live the life you were meant to live.1 For me, making the shift from seeing sobriety as the end of the only life worth living to uncovering the life I was meant to live—well, it’s been kind of significant. I have friends who hit their bottoms in psych wards or jail or cardboard boxes, mine was different and maybe it was the emotional equivalent of living in a refrigerator box.
My bottom came when I was moving here to NY and realized I had no where and no one to go to. I had burned just about every bridge and the only people who were still speaking to me were my therapist and my ex-wife.2 I finally saw what 57 years of doing it my way had accomplished. I think that bottoms are those moments when you realize exactly how far away you are from the life you were meant to lead. I just felt cold and dead inside and I was finally honest with myself about the life I had been leading and where it had finally led me.
As I work the steps for myself and with sponsees, I can see the person emerging and fortunately, I still recognize him. I think hitting bottom is a fairly severe tool for stripping away the last of that stubborn self-dishonesty, finally silencing the voice that says that this isn’t all that bad or it doesn’t really hurt anyone or that it wouldn’t be necessary to drink this much if people would just get their s*** together. The bottom for me was the realization that I just couldn’t live this way anymore. Supposedly, when Michelangelo was asked how he sculpted “David,” he said, “It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.” A minister friend of mine in DC used to say that God uses a hammer on us in the same way, every blow leaving us more in his image.
I had to lose enough to finally see how the stories I was making up in my head, the lies I was telling myself, were just leading me farther and farther away. They say the truth hurts, but I will tell you that lying to yourself for forty years does a little more damage. My bottom provided clarity and light and finally smashed the illusions that fueled my drinking. All of the blows I absorbed were meant to chip away the things that weren’t me, that didn’t belong to me or that weren’t meant for me. It’s hard letting all of that go but I’m pretty happy with what’s left.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
No, I don’t write down every single word. Sorry.
Yeah, it was that bad.
Love that line from your sponsor. Thanks for sharing!