2008-06-19
Now We Are Six.
Today: six years sober.
I'm having a lousy day.
It's not like I woke up expecting a ticker tape parade in my honor or anything. Countless people are in these very shoes, doing this recovery thing a day at a time. I know this.
I just...I don't know. After this last year I sort of wanted a day off from this life crap. But the bathroom still needs cleaning, I've had a splitting headache since around lunchtime, and at the rate I'm going, it wouldn't surprise me to come home and find that locusts, toads, and cat shit have rained down upon my abode.
Here's where some of those unbearably chipper recoveryphiles would remind me that at any point, I can start this day over in my head. Yeah yeah yeah.
I'm my own worst enemy sometimes, I really am. I cannot stop picking at wounds that should have healed long ago. They remain angrily-red and inflamed because I get some kind of satisfaction out of sitting in a corner and pick-pick-picking. Look at all the things I DON'T have. Look at all the terrible things I do because I'm basically six years old today and haven't learned to stop being so solipsistic and, well, shitty. It's a tremendous amount of work, being a narcissist with zero self-esteem.
Last night I spoke to a group at a rehab center. I stood up there talking about how I'd painted myself into a corner and couldn't fathom a way out of it. Some of them listened. Some of them slept. Some of them kept looking at the clock on the wall. And at the break, a nurse came out with a plastic bin full of cigarette packages, each one labelled with a patient's name. One cigarette per patient.
"There but for the grace..." and all that. Jesus Christ. Why is it so hard for me to remember to be grateful?
Jon and Michael and Becky are coming over tomorrow. We're going to eat pizza and rehearse our skit ("West Side Story" in 5 minutes, Michael and Becky as Tony & Maria, respectively, and Jon and I playing EVERYBODY ELSE) for our high school drama teacher's retirement party this weekend. I have such amazing friends who have been my friends for so long.
I can turn this day around right now.
But I still have to clean the bathroom tonight.
lisamcc at 4:34 p.m.
4 comments so far
lj lindhurst
2008-06-20 13:41:23
Congratulations! Six years is quite an accomplishment.
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Spooney
2008-06-20 19:33:48
6 years, wow! I can vaguely remember that party at my place when you Chris Farleyed onto my coffee table. It was so long ago. Seriously though, Congrats!
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Jess
2008-06-20 21:09:37
Congratulations, Lees! Maybe you don't have it COMPLETELY together (who does?) but you took control of one major aspect of your life. How many of us can say the same?
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andrea
2008-06-22 20:49:01
That is a great anniversary. Congratulations.
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