Happy Anniversary to Me?

So today, or I guess yesterday, was my one year anniversary. Three hundred and sixty five days without a drink or drug and I gotta say, at this moment, it doesn't feel as good as I would have thought. I find myself overcome by fear, guilt, confusion, and overall yuckiness. On my three hundred and sixty fourth day I found myself standing in my old apartment, face to face with the man I used to live with, and I can't even find words to describe what that felt like.

He had been drinking, the apartment, with a few exception, was just as I had left it thirteen months ago. Messy, and chaotic. The sign above the bathroom sink, warning "Do not use sink" was still there! For about a month before I left the U bend was removed and a bucket placed under the drain that would on occasion be emptied into the bathtub. This is the solution two drunks come up with for a clogged drain. The bucket wasn't there but the sign still was. It was heartbreaking seeing someone I was once so close to, that I care for so much, struggling through life. Granted he has a lot on his plate, deaths in the family and a Mom going through chemo, but he has no solution for his problems, no tools to deal with difficult situation and emotions. And I am powerless to help.

I felt so out of place, I finally realized how much I had really changed over the last year and it makes me feel sad and guilty and undeserving. A part of me wanted to stay there and slide comfortably back into that chaos. It was the way he looked at me, kissed me on the cheek, hugged me long and hard and even reached out to stroke my hair a couple of times that hurt so much. But when he held me, I didn't feel like I fit the way I used to, that there was a greater barrier between us now than there was when I decided to leave over a year ago. But I guess that's how it goes, you can never go back as much as you may wish you could, and I did. I guess I always had some hope that things would work out and that one day we would reunite and live a happy, healthy and sober life together. But that is just a delusion, a fantasy that I use to keep me company and protect me from having to deal with the pain of it really being over. Today, tonight, I'm feeling that pain, deeply and a little frantically, but I'm allowing myself to feel it. As easy as it would be to find something, booze, pills, sex, to numb myself against this reality, I choose instead to sit here and cry and spill my guts out onto a computer screen.

Guilt has been knotting in my stomach for the last couple of days. Guilt that I can't fix things for him and guilt that my life is going well, I feel undeserving of the blessings I've worked for and received over the last year. What right do I have to be content, to have fun, to smile and sleep well at night? Am I not that same despicable girl that I was for twenty two years? Shouldn't I still be paying for my sins instead of enjoying my freedom and comfort? I worry that she'll be back, that it's only a matter of time and circumstance before the real me comes out again. I find myself second guessing every move, every thought in fear that the addict in me is starting to take over again. "Fear or Faith?" right? I spent my entire life living in fear and I can't go back to that, it would be suicide, and I don't mean that figuratively. So faith must win out, and now I have the tools and support to make sure that happens. If I stay honest, if I ask for help, I never have to meet that girl again. If I stay honest, and ask for help then I can be the good example that one day may inspire him to do the same.


J.

Perspective

On the door of my refrigerator I have the heartbreaking, Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of a helpless and tiny little girl being stalked by a vulture that waits patiently for her to die. The image was captured by Kevin Carter during the famine in Sudan in 1994. Mr Carter later committed suicide.

Many people who see this image so prominently displayed in my kitchen question my sanity. They wonder how I could not be made depressed, angry or bitter by seeing this suffering everyday. But for me this is a constant reminder that anything in my life is bearable. I am reminded to be grateful for what I have. In the scheme of the North American dream I lead a pretty humble life, but when I look beyond my neighbourhood I realize how truly blessed and abundant my life is. I have never known hunger, I have never been without a roof over my head, I have always had people around who love me.

And yet, for many years I felt that my life was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I wallowed in self-pity, fear and doubt. I did everything I could to keep the bad times rolling. Felt that the world had handed me a raw deal and that I deserved more than I was getting. That if others only knew how horrible my life was they would feel moved to pity me. "The Victim" was my favourite role, it allowed me to drink and use and blame and enjoy the twisted attention I got from those around me who fed into my delusions in order to feed their own. I used the tragedies of the world to perpetuate this depression. The world and all it's people, especially me, sucked so what was the point? What was the point?

When I was that fucked up an image like this would have sent me into a downward spiral of despair. I was too sensitive to see such things, all suffering became my own. I couldn't distinguish between my own anguish and those of others. The universe was made up of swirling waves of pain and I was awash in it. In a strange way, I liked it. Pain and suffering held a romantic mystique for me, I wanted to be among those tortured artistic souls who created the works I so admired. Of course the fact that most of those tortured souls ended up dead before their time didn't dissuade me, to die a beautiful, tragic and creative death was appealing.

But the day came, lying in bed, hungover and empty and wishing the earth would just open up and swallow me so I wouldn't have to suffer through another day of being me that I realized that death and suffering are never beautiful, never romantic and my suffering was entirely of my own making. I had no outside force or person to blame, I was not the victim but the perpetrator. Sure bad things had happened to me, but it was me who allowed them to take over my identity. So I was date raped in my teens, but how many women have suffered the degradation of gang rape during times of war, seen their daughters brutalized before their eyes? How many people have suffered the humiliation of repeated sexual abuse at the hands of someone they are meant to trust? Suddenly this thing that happened to me in a bizarre fifteen minutes of my life doesn't seem worthy of years of shame and guilt. So I was beaten by someone who was supposed to love me, but how many victims of torture are there in the world at this very minute, how many spouses and children are murdered by a "loved one"? So another relationship failed, but how many men, women and children are lost, abandoned and alone, without someone to talk to let along hug them or even look them in the eye and smile, one human being to another?

When reality is not blurred by my ego, when I can place my suffering in context, realize that I am just a small part of the whole, and be honest and humble enough to realize what real suffering is, I can allow myself to feel blessed for the life that I have. This little girl, starving to death on my fridge every morning when I make breakfast makes me mindful of what I have and encourages me to give away what I have been given. I may not be able to solve the world's problems but when a chance is presented to be of service to someone in pain, someone alone, or someone in need I now have the ability to not just uselessly empathize but to do something about it, even if it's just to smile, one human being to another.


J.

Evening Prayers

In my program of recovery I seek to build a connection between myself and a power greater than myself. To feel the Divine and to follow the path laid out for me in this life. This includes regular prayer and meditation, morning and night and throughout the day. This is my evening prayer, said on my knees (with the help of my meditation cushion) before my "altar" to Kuan Yin, The Buddha and Thich Nhat Hanh. It is an amalgam of Christian, Buddhist, AA and original prayers put together in a way that makes sense to me.


Goddess, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can and
the wisdom to know the difference.

Goddess, I offer myself to you, to build with and to do with as you will.
Release me from the bondage of self, that I may better do you will.
Take from me my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness
to those I would help of your beauty, your love and your way of life.

Goddess, I am now ready that you should have all of me, good and bad.
Take from me every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness
and grant me courage as I go out from her to do your will.

Lord make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

Divine Master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Teacher, I take refuge in the Three Jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
I entrust myself to the Earth and the Earth entrust herself to me.
I entrust myself to the Buddha and the Buddha entrusts herself to me.

Goddess, I offer (name of someone I care for and worry about) to you to build with and to do with as you will, to care for as I cannot.

Goddess, I pray for (name of someone I find difficult), that they may find peace, prosperity and happiness.

Thank you for today, for the love that surrounds me, the roof over my head and the food in my belly. Watch over all those I love and all those I've never met.

Your will, not mine, be done.

(while kowtowing)
I have arrived, I am home, my destination is in each step.

Goddess take from me my obsession for alcohol, pills, nicotine, and sex,
that stand in the way of my usefulness and degrade this body that you
have so lovingly given me.

Help me to carry your message with honesty, loving-kindness and compassion.

May I do your will always.


J.