Can you even imagine - throwing it away? What that would be like - to throw away two years of hard (and I do mean hard, and did I mention extraordinarily painful) earned sobriety? It is hard for me to believe that there could be a thing I couldn't get through sober - or that I wouldn't want to get through sober. After all, I managed to move t0 another state, change jobs (and it's a stressful job), get married, live in a dysfunctional relationship, while surviving breast cancer, and then get divorced - all in my first year of sobriety. So can you imagine throwing it away and starting over - and for what? A night, a drink, two, three, one night of obliteration? That is assuming the next day you walk back into an AA meeting - which seems less and less likely the longer I stay sober. I drank once after coming into AA - on day 35. I have a hell of a lot more to lose now than I did on day 35.
I'm still reeling from last night. I just see how easily it can slip between your fingers. I can understand how someone can show up and say they drank after 15 years and they don't know what happened. Of course it is possible to pinpoint exactly what led to it - but I understand what they are saying when they say that. When I imagine that happening to me - it feels just like that - like an accident almost. Like I would just order something as if it were no big deal. I know that it is a choice of course and everything AA that I do is meant to ensure that in that moment, like last night - I am able to make a right choice. But damn, how easily it would have been to just make the wrong one. It literally terrifies me. It terrifies me, because sometimes in those moments - the voice in my head - it isn't loud enough. The cunning, baffling and powerful part of this disease - as it refers to it in "How It Works," tells me in those moments that maybe it wouldn't be that bad to start over. Sometimes it's just a matter of which voice is louder in my head and honestly, last night, the voice telling me to be careful where my head was going - sounded more like a whisper.
You know what happened I think - I went into last night - thinking I've got this together. I can do this. This is easy - the staying sober part is easy, living is hard, but just not drinking is easy. No it isn't. Not all the time. I've been talking to someone new a lot - which is the best thing to keep you sober - I've been praying, reading - I do the things I need to do, or so I think. And then a night like last night, is well, it is humbling I guess. Maybe I have been lacking in humility lately. I honestly have to say that if it weren't for the woman I've been talking to this past week or so - and particularly the conversation we had yesterday via chat before I went out - I literally don't know if I would have stayed sober. I just can't say that I feel confident about that. It very well might be that this almost stranger who is very quickly becoming a good friend I hope, saved my sobriety last night. This is the program in action. This is how it works. You can't do this alone - as people always say - it is a "we program." We stay sober, I get drunk. Is it a coincidence that a friend put me in touch this woman who was looking for someone to talk to about ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) on the day my mother called me to ask for money? I doubt it. I do think people show up in our lives reasons. I owe my life to so many people who have kept me sober over the past almost two years. My gratitude, it is overflowing.
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