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.