When I forcefully managed to spit out a very quiet and unsure ‘yes’ in reply to the question:
“Do you want some help?” I may have been bubbling over with reluctance that pressured me to hesitate and accept help with the same apathy that I approached each day with, but I was also really, really, tired.
In addition to the color black representing my level of motivation, I wholeheartedly believed that my only real problem was staying sober for any significant blocks of cumulative time.
I was convinced that if I could figure out how to not do drugs, I would be fine and everything would naturally fall into place.
But that’s not how it went down.
I did try to quit on my own. I really did. From the outside it probably didn’t look like I was putting much effort into life change, but in reality I had tried fixing myself and cleaning up my life at least a dozen times (and failed) . Every single time all that I found was just another bogus, useless thing that I wasn’t good at.
And so I ended up with a long list of weak, fraudulent, and less than dependable tactics that didn’t help me. I had no idea just how weak they were. Not only were they not successful, they didn’t even come close to being strong enough to win the battle that I geared up to fight through every day.
I wanted sobriety.
I wanted a simple, easily applied solution to very complex, deep-rooted problems.
And what I got was a complete rebuild.
This was more than teaching my body not to rely on a scheduled dose of daily narcotics, which I was sort of expecting it all to be about.
This whole thing, (recovery) has been about being able to discern what is a priority in my life, and what isn’t; to be able to decipher where my responsibilities begin and where they end, and to accept what is and to trust and allow what isn’t to float away.
This journey has been really hard. I won’t ever forget the sweat and tears that I put into all of the forgiving, uncovering, accepting, realizing, submitting, and learning.
But despite the work and even after feeling the warmth from the light that had managed to creep in and breathe me back to a real life human being, I still have work to do. I have realized that I am a huge, messy, imperfect, piece of unique work, created by a God who loves me and all of my imperfection so deeply I can’t even comprehend it.
I have also learned that I may not ever have it all at the same time but I have exactly what I need for the season of life that I am in.
Even though I will never be able to remember the things that I have forgotten or that were washed away somewhere out wherever the memories go when they are mixed with Xanax and Budweiser, I can experience and remember the memories that I have made every single day that I have been sober.
And it seems that I can’t stop certain flashes of memories that might *try to forever haunt me. But I can remind myself that those experiences or choices do not make up the sum of who I am today, nor do they have power over how I identify as a mother, as wife, as a friend, a daughter, or, as a strong woman.
And no. I cannot run and hide from the negative emotions that I experience (and I have been told that I cannot throw or hit things either) and I shouldn’t hide under my covers hoping that when I come out everything will be alright. Because in order to experience and allow myself to completely feel the positive, good, amazing, I don’t want to forget this stuff, I have to face the hard things too.
And I also know that I can’t have the blocks of blank, black, dark holes in my memory back. They are there because I relied this mechanism to keep me safe. I consider that a blessing, but I also know that for me that means that I maybe I won’t ever be successful when it comes to recalling some of the real emotions or feelings from some of the better times that I know, actually happened (evidenced by Polaroids likely taken by one of my wonderful amateur photographer grandparents)
But that’s okay.
Because I can’t have it all.
Maybe this is just another puzzling paradox found within the sketchy parameters of addiction recovery.
Maybe that’s why when we remind ourselves to pause and take it all in,
we can smile even when we think about the fact that we will never (ever) be able to have it all-
because the gifts that this life produces as a result of making healthy choices, show us every single day that we already do.