Posted on 10/25/2009 1:24:48 PM PDT by Joe 6-pack
I got sober in January of 2004 at the age of 34, so almost a year had passed before I celebrated my first alcohol free Christmas. During that year, I found a tremendous sense of peace, and a blossoming of my physical and spiritual health. One of my first observations regarded the passage of time. When I was drinking, I would leave work Friday night, proceed directly to the bar, and the next think I knew, I was stumbling out of bed on Monday morning, looking for some semblance of clean clothes, feeling like Friday afternoon had just happened and there had been no respite. Once sober, my weekends seemed endless, and filled with life. When Monday morning arrived, Friday afternoon seemed like something that happened ages ago, and I returned to work rested and eager. Furthermore, this seemed like a microcosmic representation of my life. The 17 years of heavy drinking were a blur and as I indulged myself in sobriety, I realized the degree to which my alcoholism had prevented me from growing and maturing. Time and its passage had taken on a whole new meaning for me, and I’ve been busy ever since catching up on the emotional and spiritual maturation I denied myself during my late teens, twenties and early thirties.
Up until that year, I’d spent virtually every Holiday Season away from home in the military, or later on for my private sector employer. Christmas was typically a day off, and I availed myself of the opportunity to drink right through them…the few Christmases I did spend at home were no different, and while I was in the presence of family and friends, I may as well have been a thousand miles away a I nestled into an alcoholic fog.
I spent my first sober Christmas alone as well, but I called home on Christmas Eve when my parents were hosting a large family gathering. The phone was passed around and I exchanged season’s greetings with the family members; some of whom I’d not spoken to in years. The moment the call ended I was filled with an intense sense of loneliness and isolation unlike any I’d ever known before. A day or two later, I mentioned this to a fellow AA member who had been sober for several decades. I can still hear his words like they were spoken yesterday…”When you’re sober, you feel everything.”
Flash ahead to January 2009. The first time I ever saw K. I knew she was an incredibly special lady. Casual conversation at the dog park eventually led to a date here and there, and last spring, when I took a business trip to California, I kenneled my dog at the veterinary clinic where she worked. We kept in contact for the week I was out there, and when I flew back home on my 40th birthday, she was at the airport with a birthday card, balloons and my dog. On the ride home, I told her for the first time that I loved her, and that her happiness was more important to me than was my own. Granted, this was not the first woman to whom I expressed my love, but in sobriety, she became the first woman to whom I truly meant it, understanding the full implication of the words. In that regard, here I was at 40, experiencing my first true love. The relationship flowered, and became increasingly intense, but in so doing, she became uncomfortable, and as she would relate to me this past week, found herself in a different place, and desiring that the relationship end. While I suppose the cynical reader could (and is welcome to) write this off as nothing more than a “summer romance,” I found that in sobriety, our relationship had been fuller, more consequential and passion-filled than the six years of my long past failed marriage. Never before in my life had I invested so much genuine love and hope in another. She was, I know, struggling with a few personal issues of her own, and there was not enough I could do for her to place happiness at her feet. In the end, it was, she explained, nothing I had done or said, nor a failing on my part, but merely the relationship growing a direction she was not ready for, nor wishing to continue.
Her words struck me like a lightning bolt, and at the time, I saw months if not years of incipient pain, grief and suffering, and yet here, a week later, I am typing with a serenity and sense of acceptance that are frankly unprecedented and for which I am incredibly grateful. Mind you, I’m not free of pain, or heartbreak, but I am able to see through and embrace it, and have found in it a great sense of purpose which brings me comfort,. It is my deepest hope that I can share it with those who might at present, find themselves in need of such solace.
Although overwhelmed by the end of the relationship, my first desire was to remain true to her and to myself. I had told her that her happiness was more important to me than my own, and as she dissolved the relationship, I found myself in the position to prove the veracity of my words. The end of “us” was a necessary condition she felt to finding her happiness, and as I told her, I support that. Certainly, my hope had been to be a source of her happiness, but if that was not the case, I could not fight her or the circumstances and remain true to my words. I came to recognize that to be honest meant being willing to play a big role, small role or no role at all in her life. This was my opportunity to put up or shut up, and I chose to honor what I had once told her.
The most productive thing I’ve done in the past week is to confront my pain…and in order to do so, I’ve had to isolate it. The end of our relationship has resulted in a bowl of mixed emotions that is not unlike a stew, and isolating the pain so it can be dealt with on its own terms is like trying to extract a glass of pure clean water from that stew. I began by praying hard, first for K. and that she truly embraces a path that will lead to happiness. I have begged God to remove the other emotions such as fear, anger, regret, resentment, and petty jealousy and leave the pain to be dealt with. He has been most merciful in helping me get these things behind me far more rapidly than I’ve had any right to expect or deserve. Like the stew analogy, I’ve had to strain, refine, and distill all of those other emotions in order to get that pure, clean, pain out on its own.
Once the pain has been isolated, it can be confronted, examined in its own nakedness. The first thing I noticed about the pain and my sense of loss was its weight and value, and this in turn, unexpectedly led to a deep sense of gratitude. I never had any right to, or claim on K.’s time or affection. That which was given to me was a pure gift, and above and beyond anything I’d ever deserved. I miss her, but I do so precisely because she is such a wonderful, honest, and compassionate person. Had she been a superficial, shallow, or less than honest person, my sense of loss would not be so profound, and although the relationship is now at an end, while it thrived, it educed a joy that I had never before experienced, and will always remember, which leads to my next observation…
…The pain is tremendously powerful, but it is not invincible, and nowhere is this more evident in the area of recollection and memories. I will have memories of K. that will remain with me for the rest of my life…that is something I have absolutely no control over; however, what I can control is whether these memories exist as precious things to be cherished and treasured, or dark ugly things that I allow to haunt and terrify me. Reduced to this simple alternative, this is a very easy choice, and one that God has fully empowered me to make.
Suffering is one thing that people do equally well. Nobody needs to be taught to feel pain, but the manner in which people deal with that pain varies widely. I self-medicated for many years, which in fact, did not rid the suffering, but merely masked it. This time around, I choose to face it, and in some sense, embrace it. This may sound an odd choice, but upon consideration, not so much. Vince Lombardi once concluded simply, “No pain, no gain,” and I can’t begin to count how many times I heard an Army PT instructor declare that, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Obviously, they were referring to pain incurred during the course of physical training, but why should the concept be any different when applied to our emotional and spiritual fitness? When one can see a sense of purpose being served in their suffering, the suffering becomes decidedly more tolerable, and knowing that my suffering is a necessary condition for K. to advance her life in the direction of her choosing, I can humbly embrace that pain, and do so as an act of love. In fact, knowing that embracing this pain may very well be the last opportunity I ever get to demonstrate my love to her, I want to do so wholeheartedly and without reservation. In doing so, I also reinforce to myself the knowledge that what I’ve felt for her is the selfless and unconditional love that I always hoped it had been. Once again, this does not diminish the pain or the sense of loss, but it makes it infinitely more bearable.
A recurring theme of AA can be found in the Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This prayer has been invaluable to me this past week, and sifting through those things I can influence and those I can’t, has brought me a level of satisfaction I would in now way have envisioned myself feeling a week ago.
One mistaken belief and dangerous misunderstanding about alcoholics is, “they must not have any will power.” The fact of the matter is that alcoholics are generally strong willed, stubborn people whose natural will and inclination is to get drunk. Lock an alcoholic in prison, and he’ll find a way to make alcohol out of strawberry jam or shoe polish. Strand an alcoholic on a desert island, and he’ll start looking for something to ferment before he begins looking for something to eat. It’s been my experience as a recovering alcoholic, that sobriety can only result from the alcoholic’s willingness to subordinate his will and desires to God. The words, “…Thy will be done…” take on a profound, intense, central importance to an alcoholic seeking liberation from booze, and having learned to utter that simple petition to the Almighty has likewise, been of tremendous value to me this past week. I know what my desires are and have been, but I also know that almost certainly they have at times, and will continue to deviate from the intent and will of God. Remaining aware of the fact that His will must always take precedence has given me an acceptance of my present circumstances, and it’s an acceptance that becomes less reluctant with each passing day.
There is an apocryphal tale that upon unveiling a sculpture of an angel, Michelangelo was once asked how he could sculpt such an incredibly lifelike, exquisite piece. His answer was simple stating that one need only take a block of marble and carve away all that does not look like an angel. Identifying God’s will in my life, has become a similar endeavor. There are big chunks of my thoughts and behavior that are clearly “not God’s will,” and can clearly be lopped off wholesale at the outset, but as the form begins to appear one must be more careful, and attentive using smaller and smaller chisels, and refining and polishing the final form. Somewhere in the middle ground there are unexpected surprises and differences of opinion between God and myself of what the final shape should look like, but He’s the patron, and I’m merely the sculptor…His design must always take precedence.
I began this vanity post with an allusion to C.S. Lewis, and will conclude in the same way. Lewis’ spiritual autobiography is titled, “Surprised by Joy,” which he in turn borrowed from a Wordsworth poem of the same title (and which also, incidentally deals with the poet’s surprise to find contentment in a period of grief and loss.) K. is not the first person to ever break up with me, and in fact I’ve had much longer (punctuated by alcohol) relationships, but I’ve never before had a truer, cleaner, honest and open love. Yet, with its passage, I am grateful for what it was and the hope and joy it instilled in me. I hope and pray that any person who needs to read this finds it, and that if, by some small chance K. should ever stumble across these musings, that she knows that she will always be loved for what she brought to my life, and that she has in both her presence and absence, brought out the very best in me.
For that I will be forever grateful.
Thanks...that article helps define and organize a lot of my loose thoughts.
Saying goodbye to someone you love with everything you are, is one of the most difficult things anyone does.
This just must be my day to remember, and grieve my grief (*again*). Now I can never read one of your posts without knowing who is writing.
God bless you, FRiend.
LOL...this is FR. Sooner or later I'll say something that really ticks you off ;-)
LOL...this is FR. Sooner or later I'll say something that really ticks you off ;-)
Absolutely. So, when I haul off and smack you down, Joe, I'll know who you are. ;-D
Please don’t tell me that post was a thread killer. I’m really tiny and haven’t ever smacked anyone down, except verbally, of course. :-D
Does her name really begin with a K?
LOL...what does that have to do with anything?
Well I was going to ask a more in depth question about why alcoholics will drink themselves until death. (A guy I knew...liver shot drank until he died with a catheter bag attached. Another alcoholic was in a coma after a work accident still wanted a drink screw that oxycontin. A 90 year old man has hardly any stomache left still drinks...)
But I thought I’d ask the dumb question first and get it out of the way.
I could discuss that question for hours, but my short answer is this. Alcoholics who have not found a healthy system of recovery are spiritual wrecks with deeply buried insecurities and self loathing. Frequently, there's over compensation in one's public persona, and any honest alcoholic will understand the notion of "an egomaniac with an inferiority complex." Why do we drink ourselves to death? Simple answer: it's suicide on the installment plan.
Thank you my friend!
You’re sadly correct. I know an individual that after retiring from the military went into a constant drunk of depression.
This person’s character was not to ever off themself yet they spoke of suicide once in this depression.<-— If that makes sense.
This person although a highly decorated public speaker forced by the military- had social anxiety dosorder.
Your story helped me to TRY to understand them. For I never could.
1)How do you confront and isolate pain?
2) Have you thought of contacting K maybe it is your time maybe not but how do you know?
I am sorry I am getting too deep and personal I have no idea why. If it offends just tell me to stfu.
"1)How do you confront and isolate pain?"
It's not easy...keep in mind my analogy of extracting a glass of water from a bowl of stew. The pain (i.e "water") is simply the medium in which all these other ingredients (i.e. anger, rage, fear, etc.) are mixed. Some are like the carrots, easy to identify and pick out. Others like the broth, are not quite so easy to strain out. For me, prayer has been the primary means of dealing with this. Getting on my knees and asking God to remove the anger, lust, insecurity, etc.) has been invaluable. Identifying to myself each separate emotion makes them much easier to confront and diminish. For example, anger. I was initially filled with anger when she said she wanted to end our relationship. But when I examined what I was angry about, and where that anger might take me, I came to see it as wasted emotion. No good would come of it. I believe there is such a thing as righteous anger and moral outrage which drives people to do brave and courageous things, but in this case, the anger was not of that type. My anger would have only caused her pain, and in my opinion, there was already enough pain in the situation for both of us. Pray to God to take it away, and He will, and like I wrote in my initial post, once all these purely peripheral emotions are dealt with, one comes to deal with the pain in its own pure form.
"2) Have you thought of contacting K maybe it is your time maybe not but how do you know?"
We have spoken, and she knows my feelings for her and my desire for her to be happy and find true peace and happiness. She knows I'm willing to play as big or small a role in that as she wishes me to. I've made the decisions God has empowered me to make, and it would be presumptive or vain for me to meddle in the decisions He has empowered her to make.
Please don't feel like your questions are intrusive or personal...it does me good to articulate these things, and if they bring you some sense of understanding or help in organizing your own thoughts or feelings, I'm glad I could help :-)
Wow. God has blessed you with a very special clarity of wisdom.
You really should do motivational speaking on this matter to help others.
You helped me understand somewhat better another soul.
More questions for thought...
If someones parent is an alcoholic is it inherited or in the genes? or both?
I have seen a circumstance involving beer that the alcoholic stated when they were young beer drinking gave them severe headaches. Then they craved it... like no other?
In an AA book I think I read about alcoholics being severely allergic to hops therefore craving it. What are your thoughts on this?
I've found my relief in considering it a spiritual matter and dealing with it in those terms.
Good for you. May God Bless you and send you an angel for further guidance.
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