In AA, there is a tradition of celebrating one's anniversary of sobriety as a "birthday". On September 4th, I turned 21. A legal adult.
I am understanding on a deeper level that this is indeed a birth day ... when we get sober and put down the bottle, we are actually beginning to live, to be in the world. The beginnings of sobriety are truly infancy years, just learning how to figure out how the world works and how to be another living being interacting and interfacing with others. There is a LONG learning curve -- in the program of AA. And, I learned the painful life lesson that you don't "graduate" from AA and forget about working on your recovery. It will come back to bite you in the ass and remind you that you are not the one in charge.
My sponsor was at the meeting last night where I celebrated my AA birthday -- complete with cake. Her only words to me were: "You are officially a sober adult and it's evident that you are living like one." I really took that in. Chronologically, I am more than double my sobriety age and, the Truth is, I really am just beginning to live like an adult.
It is said that the age we begin drinking is the age we stop growing emotionally. Alcohol halts this development and we stay "stuck". That would mean for me that I have been a perpetual 16 year old ! Still at that place of not really knowing who I was, who I wanted to be. Constantly looking to the outside to define myself and my feelings. Both awkward and clingy in relationships. Wanting to individuate yet victorious only in rebellious ways. Full of anger and fear. Not wanting to "belong" anywhere so that I did not have to experience being abandoned -- kill off rather than be killed.
On my actual 21st birthday, I got so wasted that I missed most of it. I was still in college and stayed that summer so I could drink in a bar legally (even though I'd been sneaking into them and getting served illegally since I was 19). I blacked out and passed out by mid-day, lying on a lawn chair while others polished off the keg I bought.
When I was 21, I was physically dependent on alcohol, the consumption of which included desperately trying to fend off regular panic attacks.
When I was 21, I was raped during a drunken episode.
When I was 21, I became pregnant from that rape incident and had an abortion.
When I was 21, I graduated from college, having attended 5 years versus 4 so that I could extend my period of drinking and not be responsible for having to get a "real" job.
What a contrast to experience my 21st AA birthday -- wide awake, present, fully engaged with people and life, in reality. Those former ways of being in the world seem foreign and so distant. It is a life that was lived with the "who was" that existed then. As it is said in The Promises: "We won't regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it." I have to remember this time, as it is a sobering reminder of both the impact of alcohol and of not working a recovery program. I don't ever have to live that way again.
It is a relief and a joy to have a second chance in Life and to turn 21 in a brand new way.
No comments:
Post a Comment