I don’t remember much about the days before I drove myself to a support group meeting but I do remember vowing I was determined to be happy before I turned 55.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I chunk my abstinence from alcohol and my continuing recovery from moderate alcohol use disorder, according to the DSM-5, by date and time:
- December 28, 2012: Beginning of the absolutely most torturous days and weeks and months I had ever lived in 53 years on the planet
- December 30, 2012: Two days abstinent on my 54th birthday
- First weeks: hell
- First 30 days: a thousand nights of hell
- First 13 months: hell
- December 28, 2013: one year abstinent in hell
- December 30, 2013: turned 55 in hell
- Months 13-16: a different kind of hell
- Month 16: free myself from the hell of silence; still resident of different kind of hell
- Month 17: July 4th weekend, 2014, a woman friend from my old life visited and reminded me of who I might still be
- Month 18: still not happy
- Month 19 1/2 – August 14, 2014: Shaken by death of Robin Williams. Knew it was time to say my story was about more than the substance.
- Month 19 1/2 – August 15, 2014: Swam down deep and got to the essence of my sorrow. Drew chalk art on my sidewalk after. Wrote what I found first here. Wrote what I found next here.
- Month 19 3/4 – Asked my friends to help my lonely little self and they did
- Month 20 1/2 – Wrote today’s post the day after coloring with crayons for the first time in a long, long time
- Month 21: to be celebrated on September 28, 2014
- December 28, 2014: Expect to be abstinent two years in neither heaven nor hell, but in reality
- December 30, 2014: Expect to turn 56 happy (off by a year – not so bad)
I can see only one more dark piece to write. Then I think I will have cornered it sufficiently to pare out the brown spots from this bruised peach of a life – or at least enough of them – to live deep, suck out sweetness and spit out poison, and be sturdily present for the paradoxical seed-and-pit at the essence of the rest of my lovely little life.
