Today has reminded me of perhaps the single most powerful reason I drank: to feel.
Odd. As we all know alcohol, ultimately, numbs us to everything. But as a shellshocked child whose mother abandoned him when he was 8 and left him to a father that violently abused him until he finally left at 18, I stopped feeling much an extremely long time ago. Concepts like "love" and "trust" are very conceptual and academic to me. I have no idea how they actually feel.
But when I drank, all of my emotions were exponentially magnified, which felt so good at first, and then inevitably spun me wildly out of control, as it eventually tapped into deep, deep reservoirs of anger, hatred and betrayal. But at first, there was that quick lift, and I felt better than at any other point in my entire life.
It sucks that the price of that perfect feeling, that initial bliss, is so terrifyingly steep that I know I can't go there anymore. I do know that, however.
So on days like today when I feel hollow and dead inside, I remember that there are no shortcuts. The slow, organic, human process of healing that I haven't allowed to happen, that I've numbed myself to for my entire adult life, is happening. But it will take time and there are no shortcuts.
This is my most dangerous feeling, my keenest craving, the time when I most want to escape the profound damage done to me so long ago over so many years.
But I have my own son now, and a chance to do right what my father did so, so wrong. It has never been a mystery to me why I have sought to escape my life, my past, my own skin for all these years. However, it is time to realize that the horror of the immutable past, that will never change and can never be undone, now pales in the face of the wide open future, the course of which my sobriety will largely determine, for me and my family.
With every sober day I lay the foundation for a great life for my son. The acceptance of that which I can not change, and the courage to change what I can.
Day 4, AL free and the in the books.
Odd. As we all know alcohol, ultimately, numbs us to everything. But as a shellshocked child whose mother abandoned him when he was 8 and left him to a father that violently abused him until he finally left at 18, I stopped feeling much an extremely long time ago. Concepts like "love" and "trust" are very conceptual and academic to me. I have no idea how they actually feel.
But when I drank, all of my emotions were exponentially magnified, which felt so good at first, and then inevitably spun me wildly out of control, as it eventually tapped into deep, deep reservoirs of anger, hatred and betrayal. But at first, there was that quick lift, and I felt better than at any other point in my entire life.
It sucks that the price of that perfect feeling, that initial bliss, is so terrifyingly steep that I know I can't go there anymore. I do know that, however.
So on days like today when I feel hollow and dead inside, I remember that there are no shortcuts. The slow, organic, human process of healing that I haven't allowed to happen, that I've numbed myself to for my entire adult life, is happening. But it will take time and there are no shortcuts.
This is my most dangerous feeling, my keenest craving, the time when I most want to escape the profound damage done to me so long ago over so many years.
But I have my own son now, and a chance to do right what my father did so, so wrong. It has never been a mystery to me why I have sought to escape my life, my past, my own skin for all these years. However, it is time to realize that the horror of the immutable past, that will never change and can never be undone, now pales in the face of the wide open future, the course of which my sobriety will largely determine, for me and my family.
With every sober day I lay the foundation for a great life for my son. The acceptance of that which I can not change, and the courage to change what I can.
Day 4, AL free and the in the books.
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