Yesterday, after closing in on the days work and preparing to go home, my phone rings. The dispay shows me an unfamiliar number and with the same reluctant curiousity, I answer it, curious as to whom it could be. It turns out, an old friend of mine that I have known over ten years that came into the program about over a year ago and relapsed has come up here to Kerrville, has about a week and a half sober and is thinking about moving up here.
I got to hang out with him last night for a good deal of time when I didn't think I was going to be able to because my meeting was cancelled, and arguably had the best day I have had for a very long time. We talked some in a comical manner of our combined past times to our mutual friends in Kerrville of our high school moments in College Station together, played guitar, and spoke little of the true tragedies that brought us together here in Kerrville together. While he looked jovial in outside, I saw a wrecked shit floating in his eyes, and as he drove me home later that night, we spoke of the gravity and reality of our lives.
A weird sensation swept over me at that moment. I saw a dichotomy of my past and my present. I've known my friend in his alcoholism and through that, I could see myself. I saw who I was and who I am now, and I realized through all the thick and thin the necessity to never forget that who I was and who I am are exactly the same person just looking at the world through a different shade of glasses.
I asked my friend to move up to Kerrville. I told him there was an opening in my house, and I'd help him get set up, which I really could, but I don't know if he's ready for it. Let's wait an see.