Holidays are a strange time of year, if you ask me. As I walked down the San Antonio River Walk with my father and his girlfriend, fighting the urge to piss, streaming past the bars, recollecting on the notion that no longer are those places ever going to hold the same appeal to me anymore, I recognize how sad I almost feel. I don't really know why is that I feel sad? Is it because lately I fight the urge to drink? That's not it, I'm an alcoholic in early sobriety, that's what I do. I call my sponsor, work with people, and pray- I'll be okay. The problem with that for me is that I'm so young, it's hard to imagine sixty plus more years without taking a drink while my alcoholic peers that are in the elder years are getting clean it almost doesn't seem fair, but then, in reality, I've got it good- I get to nip my problem in the bud, early and save my life and give me a chance to really live. I have it lucky.
But, I'm going on a tangent.
Why do I feel sad, then, on Thanksgiving, then?- the day where I should be grateful for all that God gave me? Maybe it is because all I can think about is all the things I took away from the people that loved me. The hurt and pain and anguish that I cause. And yes, there is those moments of self pity washed with abysmal need for sympathy and a cry for a dash of humanity but in the end it's a lackluster sense of melancholy. I watch under the darkened lights of the once festive river walk, closed for the holiday, glittered with the occasional bar and restaurant serving patrons drinking monstrous margaritas and eating chips and smoking cigarettes and we, us three, we walk. I listen to my father and his girlfriend talk, and they are as content to be free and lively as the lights of the place could be, but me, and I sink in the dark bottom of the river.
Why? I have no idea. Maybe it is the medication. Maybe. And then, I get to thinking about my life recently. I just got a raise. I just got my car. My relationship with friends that I thought I would lose back home is only getting stronger, and my realtionship with my parents is better than ever. I am still sober. And besides Michigan losing to Ohio State, life can't seem to get much better for me. So as my father reminds that we forgot to make the salad for dinner tonight, I smile to myself. I realize why I was sad for Thanksgiving. I was sad for all the Thanksgivings before when I was falsely happy. I had to pay tribute the murdered holidays. And now, I sit back, and give myself the pleasure of moving on. Of looking around and being older and wiser and sober and happier. And what's greater, believing that I deserve this happiness.
There's so much time we have believing we don't deserve happiness for all the pain we created, when in reality, most of the hurt we caused those we love and that loved us was because we were hurting ourselves. I think the common element of all of the amends I have made is that everyone just wants me to stay sober and be happy. For that, I am grateful. For that, I smile. For that, I can close my eyes gently and sleep kindly and dream about a future where I live in a mid-western dream with snowy winters and colorful autumn's and the smell of the fireplace in the brisk air. I have found peace of mind in the words of Robert Frost: "My gentle house upon the hill where I stand so still but fly at will."