The year that tried to kill us

 2020, huh?! What the hell was that? A global pandemic, a president who was crazy as a shit house rat, Georgia turned blue, Iowa's governor is actively trying to kill her constituents, and I relapsed. 

I thought I would sneak that in at the end and maybe you wouldn't notice. You would think this is a post about politics and decide to pass on it. I had 2.42 years, 29.12 months, 889 days, and 21, 333 hours of sobriety and then I didn't. I now have 41 days of sobriety. 

December 30, 2020. I made it almost to the end of that horrific year and then I forgot who I was. I let my addictive brain lie to me and tell me that I could do what I wanted because I'm a grown ass woman. Physically, that high felt amazing. Spiritually and emotionally, I felt dead inside. If there is any testament to the change that has happened in my life, I confessed my sin just a mere 8 hours later. First to my therapist, then to my sponsor, and finally to my wife and son.

It's hard to explain the way an addict's mind works to someone who doesn't have an addiction. To explain how even the threat of losing everything you love and everything you've worked for still doesn't stop you from wanting that high. 

I have no one to blame but myself. I was in essence driving to the gym but sitting in my car. I had a program but I wasn't doing the work. I wasn't doing the things that I have learned from addicts with many 24 hours of sobriety and from those with just a few. 

Here is what I did learn. I am loved. I have everything I need to succeed but I have to do the work. No one else can do that for me. So, I have recommitted myself to my program. I am using all the resources I have available to me. I'm not just sitting in the car but going in and doing what I know works. 

I'm telling you this because I want pity or anything else. I'm telling you this because part of my program requires me to be honest and act with integrity. I'm telling you because you guys have been there showing me love and compassion for so many years. I'm telling you because it happens and maybe if you know someone or you yourself are suffering, you will know there is a path out.

Sobriety is so much more than not drinking or not using drugs. Its not just abstinence it means the absence of problems (for lack of a better word). In my program, the first step is when we admit that we were powerless over that addiction and our lives had become unmanageable. For me, that unmanageability was lack of control and what a friend of mine calls "stinking' thinking'." Or as a friend once told me, "don't believe everything you think." Those thoughts are the ones that keep you from living your best life. 

So, as always, I am a work in process with 41 24-hours under my belt, a willingness to learn from those around me and from my Higher Power. Mostly, I am reminded once again how incredibly lucky I am to be loved by those people who surround me.