I’m still an alcoholic and the world is still for me sometimes filled with a million forms of fear.  I don’t sleep well at night because I don’t know how to relax.  I worry about work.  I worry about my family and sometimes I just worry.  For no apparent reason I have general anxiety that I can’t name or put a face to.  Sometimes it’s just the committees in my head that have conversations or I have arguments with myself that keep me up at night.  Sometimes I’m afraid of the dark, the unknown abyss that lies looming in front of me.  After a night tossing and turning the morning brings an emotional hangover that includes a headache and sometimes a little nausea.  The day begins and sometimes all I can do is just show up to work and do the next right thing.

The funny thing about these nights is that I’ve learned how to ride them out.  I’ve learned how to show up for myself, my family and my friends.  I’ve learned that all of the things I worry about never come to fruition and it’s a lot of wasted time and energy.  Most of all I’ve learned how to roll with the punches.  The punches being the endless worry.  I’ve learned not to trust the committees while at the same time trusting in myself and my ability to overcome any challenge that I may have.

You see I’ve come to accept that I am bodily and mentally different from normal people.  Most of all I’ve come to accept that this is part of me and my alcoholism and I’ve learned that I don’t have to be normal and I’m comfortable with my crazy.  I don’t have a need to fix it or cure it.  I can be with what is.

Although I don’t need a cure and I don’t need it fixed, I do have a solution.  I have my 12 step program that I can trust and rely on.  It has never failed me because it gave me a tool box.  It taught me to suit up and show up.  It taught me one day at a time.  It taught me how to connect with a higher power of my own understanding.  It taught me not to quit before the miracle happens.  It taught me to do the next right thing. It taught me live and let live.   And it taught me to trust that if I follow the principles I will stay sober and that there are certain promises that come true.  When I first got sober I hated these trite one line phrases that are supposed to make me feel better but didn’t.  After some time in the program I became indoctrinated, maybe even brainwashed.  They became a part of me, a habit.

Because of the principles of the program, I live a good life today.  I have a loving husband, I have family and friends that love me, I have a degree and a good job that give me a comfortable living.  I know that my fears have the capacity to sabotage all of that and that’s when I pull out my tool box.  I tell myself to live and let live.  None of my worries are life threatening.  I tend to catastrophize.   

Tonight, when I can’t sleep I know that this too shall pass and I don’t beat myself up because I can’t stop obsessing.  I recognize it for what it is and that it’s part of the disease of alcoholism.  I pull out my tool box and pray.  I practice meditating on what’s good and right in my life.  Just like an athlete or musician practices their plays or the score in their head, I practice creating the life I want in my head instead of the life I’m afraid of.  I make a mental gratitude list and I write.  Somehow when I write it pulls together all of the lose yarns and weaves them into a scarf that I can wrap around my neck and get some warmth and comfort from and if I’m really lucky someone else will too.  That’s the hope, that my experience can benefit others and that’s the promise.

Just for tonight I’ll meditate knowing that I’ll sleep when I need to and knowing that all is right with my world.