I was sitting here thinking about the difference between comfort- ability and loneliness. I am sitting here alone, but I don’t feel lonely. Rarely do I get those feelings. Part of the reason for that is that I am generally comfortable with myself.
That certainly wasn’t true, when I came to this program. I was very uncomfortable with myself and I certainly was suffering from a great deal of loneliness. I was even lonely at home with my family and terribly uncomfortable there. My years of drinking had taken its toll on my family and I felt the stranger there. Now that I was no longer spending my nights in barrooms and on the street, I didn’t know how to handle this “new” way of life. At dinner time, I would eat separately from the family. Gradually, that all changed. But the feelings of discomfort and loneliness still hung on.
I was prompted to think about those early days, when a friend of mine was telling me of his own discomfort and the difficulties he is facing. As I listened I tried to encourage him and tell him how all this is going to change. Now that I have time, I stopped to think about what it was that brought this change about.
It’s easy for me to say that time takes time. It’s just as easy to say that sober living is going to bring these changes about. But it’s hardly comforting.
We all have to go through what we go through to get to where we are today. Nothing I’m going to say or do is going to make a difference. I know it was that way for me.
It’s hard to ressurect those old days in my mind. I knew I didn’t want to drink again and that held me in the program, despite my “thoughts” and feellings. What I do know is where I am today and what I am doing now. And what I’m doing now is thinking about sobriety and what keeps me sober. That comforts me and protects me from those old feelings of loneliness. I know that’s what I saw when I entered into this program. A whole lot of sober people, who were comfortable in their own skins and talking about their escape from the darkness of chronic dunkeness and into the light of a new way of life. I could see that they enjoyed this. They were examples of the joy of living. I desperately wanted what they had and became willing to go to any lengths to get this. It inspired hope in me.
That hope is still there, even though I know I have realized what I sought. Hope is the key. But it’s always preceded by what I was taught at the beginning. Pereseverance. I had to doggedly hang in and was encouraged by those around me to keep coming back. I kept coming to meetings and listening, even though I was filtelring what I heard through a damaged, alocohol soaked brain. Eventually some things began to penetrate and stick.
It was from this that I graduated to faith. A faith that works. And then I began to experience the love of one alcoholic for another.
Time takes time, but there’s no time like the present to begin to change our minds and our attitudes. Each day is a new beginning for me, as long as I stay sober. Each day is a new adventure. It’s up to me to grab onto it and make my day one of peace and harmony through the practice of the twelve steps.