Grandiose

Today I am grateful for the awe of stars in the morning sky and how that sense of awe helps me feel connected to a wider universe.

Grandiose is the "g" word on my mind today. It can be defined in a variety of ways. Excessively grand and ambitious. Bold. Overambitious. High-flown. They all fit. I especially like high-flown. It fits the elusive feeling I sought with each drink I took.

Alcoholics and addicts are grandiose in our thinking, especially when we are using. It may not last long, but it's a powerful grandiosity when it hits. It usually hit me a few hours into my drinking and not long before I bottomed out or passed out or blacked out, or all three.

My drinking days were well before cell phones and social media, and I am most grateful for that for a variety of reasons. But I was known to pick up the phone and call a few select people when I was in that grandiose mindset, late at night.

I had it all figured out and I wanted to talk about it. "It" was perhaps forgotten by morning. Or lost in the physical discomfort and mental anguish of hangovers and memory lapses. From a grandiose high to a despairing low within a matter of hours. Do that often enough and a person doesn't keep bouncing back. At least this person didn't. I stayed lower each time. The disease progressed.

I used this line in yesterday's post: The freedom to pursue real dreams, not the grandiose ones born in drunkenness and quickly dashed in sober reality.

Today I am grateful for the real dreams I have and the clear head and heart I pursue them with. My sober reality today is a place I am comfortable residing in, not the post-drunk place of dis-ease it used to be.

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