Grateful

Yes, grateful ,,, that's truly how I feel most days, at least lately.  Some of the intense anger is gone for now, and I don't feel so sad either.  Grieving something that can never be is helpful to a certain point, at least for me, and then it's time to get back into living the present. 

I was feeling grief over the life that I didn't live, partly due to an obsession with alcohol, which I honestly believe kept me from seeing things for what they really were.  I allowed my body, my mind and my heart to be used and de-valued, and that hurts me to accept.  But I can't change it, and perhaps, just maybe, going through those moments is what allowed this moment to finally occur.  Maybe I couldn't have gotten here, this exact place at this exact moment, without the very journey I was on.  I always say "everything happens for a reason", and I believe that ,,, but I guess it's easier to apply that to small things than to 30+ years of ones life. 

I watched the movie Flight last night, and wow did it hit hard.  I sat there afterwards crying like a baby, which is really the first time I've truly cried in private over all of this.  I've cried in a few meetings, but couldn't seem to let go otherwise.  Watching all the things he threw away, all the people who tried to love him, the damage and destruction his drinking created, and when he finally admitted he was an alcoholic, I felt that in the core of my being.  Making that admission was so HARD for me too.  You start out in life with such hopes for yourself, dreams of greatness and success.  And realizing that you, just like millions before you, belong in a room called AA where you come clean about your "stinking drinking thinking" feels like failure at first.  But I'm now starting to see it as growth rather than failure.  I didn't make myself an alcoholic, I was born this way, it's a disease, not something we do to ourselves.  There is no fault that I need to own, so there's no failure.  The growth of admitting it, getting help, having the courage to face life in a totally new and different way ,,, some people don't make it this far, and we hear of their tragic deaths all the time.  With my whole heart, I want this life to be something truly wonderful and magical, and I'm starting to feel that happening, now, finally. 

One of the hardest things for me right now is that the people I'm closest to and call family, have NO idea what this is like for me.  In many ways, this process of getting to know myself all over again as a sober human being, and learning what that means for me, my life & future, is so much harder than surviving cancer ,,, it truly is.  I'm going through this monumental thing, and yet my closest friends ask me questions like "are you still doing the non-drinking thing?", like just "not drinking" is all there is to this ,,, like choosing to stop eating meat, or drive a white/black/blue/red car any more.  To not feel support from the people you love and who love you, for the biggest challenge you've ever faced, is hard.  It's not their fault, I get that intellectually ,,, until/unless someone is walking this path, there is no way to truly understand it, I do get that.  And yet it's frustrating, isolating and hurtful.  I'm so thankful that I have other AA's in my life that I can share those feelings with ,,, very thankful. 

It truly is exciting to finally sense myself becoming the woman that I was always intended to be, that God intended me to be.  I can't really find words for how amazing this feels, it's overwhelming in such a beautiful, hopeful way.  I could wish and have regrets that it didn't happen earlier, but it really couldn't have happened any other time.  I needed to get to this place in the exact way I got here, life is unfolding exactly as it is meant to.  I'm soooo grateful to be here, now, in this place, learning these lessons and overcoming these challenges.  

Blessings!