Closing Bell

One thing I do like about being an alcoholic is the new finish line for the day, this day, or any other day. If I didn't have a drink today, then job well done. No other accounting really matters. You can relieve yourself posthaste of any worry, doubt, anxiety, or fear related to what you did, or didn't, produce. You can relieve yourself! You don't even need anyone else to say it.

I did not do so much today. I went to a meeting this morning and I listened attentively and I gave a message of nonverbal love, affection, pride and gratitude to K., who both spoke at the meeting and received his one-year medallion. I gave him a hug after just to say congratulations, and suddenly we were holding on to each other for dear life.  What was that unexpectedly intense and long embrace, congratulatory hug turned into wordless communique of hold on, thank you, I love you, I love you?

When you're in anyone's arms for long enough, shit is going to surface, I suppose. It turns out K. is my AA buddy but he is also a soldier, a simple stupid grunt, like me, and we are fighting to save our lives and our souls in this war. Maybe that was it. He told a little of his war story today, and I had to grab onto him as veterans grab onto each other.  I was there too. I saw that shit too. I almost died too. I can never thank you enough for what you did for me. I love you. I love you. And at the end of today, I can look back on it, and I understand that those words are about me and about K. and about both of us together. And they're true. So perhaps I should have known that I was going to bury my face in his chest, and he was not going to let go of my back and neck and shoulders for awhile, and we were both going to have eyes swimming with tears at the end of it.

Christ. Usually we're talking about if the cookies are any good that day and where the missing people are: treatment, relapse, or jail.

It was a positive thing, but for whatever reason it also sapped me of everything and at 9:07 am this morning I was pretty much done for the day. A lot of West Wing reruns and website visiting followed. In my former life, I might have thought this was unproductive.

But if you drink the AA Koolaid, which I suppose I have (really, you're either in or you're out, and I am all done testing the out part) you can arrive quickly at this: If I didn't have a drink today, then good job, and that's job enough. End of story. You've had your hearty meal of churned butter and rough bread and farm stew after rinsing your dusty neck and face at the pump, and now you can sink into clean sheets and downy pillows in well-earned exhaustion, and sleep the beautiful sleep of the totally spent.

AA says: One day at a time. Just for today. Keep it in the day. All any of us has is today. A truism and map for living that is both scientifically correct and spiritually nontheistic but, nevertheless, uplifting in a Buddhist simple-essential-truth kind of way.

Enough then. I stayed away from a drink today. I did not put a drink or a substance in my body today. I have one day sober. I have a great number of days before this that I was sober, but those are all the past now. They are gone. I have a great number of days to come that I will be sober, but they do not yet exist. They are a fiction. There is only today.

So, K. and his red T-shirt. Not too much else to tell. A low-ball day. But an honest and true one. An awake one. A sober one, for a recovering alcoholic.

One magnificent, fine fucking day indeed! Beautiful. I love it. I love AA. I love K. I love that its enough, and that I get to have relief, and peace, and go to bed happy, full, alive, and absolutely spent.

I hope I have a deep and peaceful sleep, with dreams. I wish that for all of us.