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Windchaser (at Summer's Close)

85 consecutive days and 153 since I made the decision to get better.

And in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm 19 again, ahead of the decision to pick up a drink in earnest.
I cry a lot, lately.  I feel deeply touched over things that I took for granted before, and sometimes the tears are tinged with sadness... but after I cry, I often feel healed.  When I cry over lost prospects, lost potential, lost years, I bleed some of the sadness off of those memories and can look at them clearly.

I've had a lot of thoughts lately, that maybe I can be the kind of person who doesn't consider a bottle of special occasion wine to be the end of the world.  I recognize that this is dangerous thinking in early sobriety.  I can set that thought aside without acting on it, because I know I am an alcoholic and I cannot trust my mind quite yet, but the black-and-white thinking has eased off some, and I think that's some of my trouble with taking AA seriously.
I'm even looking at my sobriety differently, giving more consideration to the date my mind started changing, not the times I tripped and fell and got up again.  Relapse may be a part of recovery, but it's not the consecutive days I've gone since feeling utterly defeated and overpowered by my addiction... it's the days I continue to shake off the muck and keep digging.

I will never give up the fight to save myself from addiction.  I am aware that I cannot have a "normal" relationship with alcohol.  I am not too proud to admit that I need support and fellowship in some form.
... and I recognize the importance of healing the hurt inside of me, rather than denying it alcohol in a desperate bid to pacify the beast.

So, I try to take it easy on myself.  No, I'm not making meetings.  No, I'm not immersing myself in recovery literature or online communities.  No, I don't "work on recovery" every day and no, I'm not working on relapse instead.  I'm learning to meditate, and have patience.
I'm learning to love, and listen to myself.
I'm taking pleasure in the things I used to enjoy before alcohol became my hobby.
And I'm definitely more likely to treat myself to a celebratory banana sundae than a special bottle of wine, to ring in my 1st year sober.  So... when is that?

I think that's April 9th, 2020.  Regardless of when I took my last drink... that's the anniversary of the day that I took the First Step, even if I didn't know what I was doing back then.
I admitted I had a problem with alcohol, and I started to try.


Today, I leave for vacation.  I haven't been sociable lately, or prone to leaving the house.
I want to travel.  I want to live in different places and get tattoos to mark where I have been, and some day, come back and settle in my own little piece of paradise, with land, and a garden, and animals, and maybe get back into wildlife rehabilitation.  To have my family nearby.
I want to have my friends come and visit, both those I cherish now, and have stuck beside me through the rough bits, and those I have yet to meet on my journey.

And I want to write about it here, in my blog, because between life and death, there are flowers abundantly in between.  That's what this life is all about.

It's okay to take it a little slow, because there is so much here that I must love while I have it.

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