Void
Today I am grateful for an enjoyable meal in good company, and for recovering people who bring laughter and honest sharing to our time together.
Void. That is what I felt in my very being, even before I began drinking. An emptiness. A vacancy. There was something missing that I couldn't put my finger on. When I put my hands on a drink though and consumed enough, the emptiness was filled for a time.
The pain of the void was dulled. But it never left and was larger and more fully felt the morning after. It grew for years, becoming like a gaping wound. It is what makes sobriety, early recovery, untenable for some. The void pulls us back in. Or we fill it with something else that becomes just as unhealthy.
In my early recovery, I became a raging workaholic. I made some recovery connections, fragile and tenuous, hanging on by a thread. I thought sobriety should be enough. It was too easy, as a single young person, fully immersed in my new career as a teacher and coach, to become fully immersed in my job.
Sure, I was sober and that was a start, yet the void kept me detached from my own emotions and the truth and healing I needed to face. Survival and slow growth marked my first three years of recovery.
I took a new teaching job across the state and with me I took the resolve to do more than just be sober. In my new home, I took the few threads of recovery I had and started stitching them together. I wove real people in real recovery into my daily life, and also began weaving a relationship with a Great Spirit who had always been there, not always acknowledged by me.
The fabric of my life started to change and the patterns became healthier, more beautiful. The cavernous void was slowly filled with these weavings. The weaving continues today. The void lurks, looking for a hole it can rend wider.
As long as I work toward a grace-filled whole, there is no hole for active alcoholism to slip back through.
Void. That is what I felt in my very being, even before I began drinking. An emptiness. A vacancy. There was something missing that I couldn't put my finger on. When I put my hands on a drink though and consumed enough, the emptiness was filled for a time.
The pain of the void was dulled. But it never left and was larger and more fully felt the morning after. It grew for years, becoming like a gaping wound. It is what makes sobriety, early recovery, untenable for some. The void pulls us back in. Or we fill it with something else that becomes just as unhealthy.
In my early recovery, I became a raging workaholic. I made some recovery connections, fragile and tenuous, hanging on by a thread. I thought sobriety should be enough. It was too easy, as a single young person, fully immersed in my new career as a teacher and coach, to become fully immersed in my job.
Sure, I was sober and that was a start, yet the void kept me detached from my own emotions and the truth and healing I needed to face. Survival and slow growth marked my first three years of recovery.
I took a new teaching job across the state and with me I took the resolve to do more than just be sober. In my new home, I took the few threads of recovery I had and started stitching them together. I wove real people in real recovery into my daily life, and also began weaving a relationship with a Great Spirit who had always been there, not always acknowledged by me.
The fabric of my life started to change and the patterns became healthier, more beautiful. The cavernous void was slowly filled with these weavings. The weaving continues today. The void lurks, looking for a hole it can rend wider.
As long as I work toward a grace-filled whole, there is no hole for active alcoholism to slip back through.
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