Stay in the middle

Sometimes in recovery I hear things that don't really make sense for me until much later.  I love the sudden revelation when it clicks.  I recently had one of those moments.

Early on I remember hearing someone talk about sobriety and recovery as being on a boat.  The safest place to be is in the middle.  You may be ok for a while on the edges...it may feel like a nice ride.  But when the stormy waters hit, the people standing on the edges can be knocked off with almost no warning.  But in the middle of the boat you can get through the storms.  You'll feel the rocking.  You may even get knocked around some.  But you won't go off the boat.  So the message was, "Stay in the middle."  Stay in the middle of recovery.  Be involved.  Be connected.

I kind of understood what was being said then, but like most things I had to live it to really get it.  I've never been one to do recovery half assed.  It's saved my life and given me a life worth living.  That's not something I want to mess around with.  I don't always do things exactly right, but I've gotten a sponsor and worked hard.  I've gotten to know other people, shown up regularly to meetings, talked about what I'm going through, and been willing to take suggestions.  Beyond that I've gotten involved in other sober activities...my softball team that I talked about and another social group.  As hard as it is for me, I've come out of my shell and allowed myself to really get to know others in the program.  I've opened up and let them see the real me...not the many, many layers of defenses.  (Ok I'm sure some of my defenses are still there! lol  But closer to the real me anyway...).

At times some of the involvement has felt a bit silly and a bit over the top.  Why do I need to keep going to meetings and keep hearing the same thing?  What's the big deal about spending so much time around sober people?  I'm fine around alcohol now and 99% of the time it doesn't bother me.  I know I can't drink.  End of story.  No big deal.  But recently, when shit hit the fan, I was very very glad to have put myself so much in the middle.

As I mentioned before, my best friend suddenly walked out on me.  It has sent me into a tailspin of grief and loneliness.  It made me start to wonder why I bother with anything.  I'd put so so much of me into that relationship only to have it disappear in a day over something completely out of my control.  Beyond that she's now spreading crap about me, which makes it even worse.  There's other issues going on too...my struggle to find a job and therefore being entirely broke...my fears about finally graduating from school....searching for an internship...etc.  I started to make some phone calls, because that's what I've been taught by AA to do.  Unfortunately none of the people I called answered, and I started getting more lonely (hence the previous Friend post).  On top of it all my sponsor, the one person I really really trust, was working overtime and forgot about her meeting with me.  Even though I have 2.5 years of knowing better now, I had thoughts of maybe I should just go have a drink to take the pain away.  Maybe I should give up on trying to be a better person...trying to get out of my shell....etc. etc.  I got more attention, more "love" when it was just sympathy for the "poor me" victimhood I was stuck in.  Why not go back to that?  Why keep trying to get better?  I stopped doing any of the things that would make me feel better.  I sat in front of the tv and hardly moved for days.  If anyone tried to talk to me, online or otherwise, I just got angry.

It's scary to look back on.  I'm pretty comfortable in my sobriety and my new happy life.  I don't want to lose that.  And yet in a matter of days I was ready to give it all up.  But there were little things that kept me holding on.  My sponsor apologized and we went out for dinner and a nice walk to make up for it.  People started calling me back.  I went out to see a friend and ended up running in to another that I hadn't seen in a long time.  This one I hadn't seen for so long was there on my very first day of sobriety so he knew how far i've come.  He went on and on about how great I look and how changed I am.  And then there were silly things.  My softball team needs their 2nd baseman!  The email list that I'm running for one of my AA groups is expecting me to send out emails.  It may sound strange, but at one point those two things...softball and the email list...were all that was keeping me going.  I had told people I would do it, I was going to do it.

It hit me then that that's what being in the middle is all about.  It was easy to offer to be a part of these things when I felt good and positive, and was at a meeting full of other people talking positively about sobriety.  It became much harder when suddenly I was alone, depressed, having nightmares, etc.  I didn't have to sign up for the softball team.  I definitely didn't have to run the email list.  It was my idea to start it at all.  But I wanted to be a part of.  Of course the softball is all about fun for me.  I do get some fun from the email list but that was more out of a desire to help the group.  I saw a need and wanted to fill it.  At the time it was more my offering of service/volunteering.  But later on, it became a life saver.  Another time, a little over a year ago, I was saved by offering to dog sit for a friend in the program.  I had a similar sudden spiral into misery and I wanted to drink more than anything.  The one thing that kept me sober was my friend's dog.  I kept thinking how horrible would it be for me to dog sit for someone also in recovery and be drinking when she was trusting me with her fur baby.  Both of those times I didn't know the fall was coming.  That time it was triggered by a sudden gruesome nightmare that brought up a lot of new memories that made me scared of myself, and therefore scared to let anyone get to know me further.  I wanted to run before anyone found out how bad they were.  But those few more days of dog-sitting got me to hold on long enough to find a better option than running for the bottle and away from the people who cared.

In the last few days, people have been calling me back, and I've had the amazing opportunity to get to know people that previously i've only seen once a week or so in meetings.  It's been such a gift, because even though I know everyone has struggles, when I see them in meetings they just seem like they have it so together.  It's beautiful to me to get to hear what they're dealing with, and I feel honored to be trusted with it.  It also helps me realize that we're all equal as humans and we all have pain, whether we've been sober for a day or 20 years, and no matter what we've been through in life.  I have some friends who had picture perfect families growing up.

The point to all of this is that my higher power will always give me a way and a reason to hold on, but I've got to be there to see it.  If I get thrown off the boat at the first big wave, I won't have a chance to rely on friends, on my support system, on the tools that I've learned over the last 2.5 years, etc.  I've gotten rocked around on this boat a lot in the last couple of weeks, and it's been painful.  But I'm still on the boat and I feel ok again....because during the ok times I didn't wander away.  I kept myself in the middle even when it would've been so much easier to just go do my own thing.  It's been such a great lesson in taking care of myself no matter what, and such a gift in seeing how the world will support me when I let it.

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I'm so grateful for the network I have today.  The people that "saved" me this time around are a very unlikely cast of characters....but because of them, and some surprising series of events....i'm back to being ok today.  I'm starting to feel like myself again after a very scary week or so of being horribly angry and just not caring.  I still have a ways to go, and a lot of fear and grief to process, but I'm starting to feel like me again.