Golden Pink Miracle

I’m not who I was a decade ago, before getting sober and consistently, diligently working the program. Proof is that I just spent ten days traveling with my mother and son to three different cities with a 9-hour time change and we all had a good time. Perhaps some would say, “Of course you did, — you’re on vacation, you can pay for stuff, you have loving family, why wouldn’t you have a good time?” To them I say, be grateful you don’t understand.

To those who get how seemingly impossible it can be to simply enjoy life as it is, to be with it, in the midst of other people and situations that you can’t control, I say: If I can do it, anyone can.

I’m not gonna lie, it has been a process. It’s not been like switching a switch and voila, I’m not pained by how other people are, how I am, how these logistics are working out, how that situation unfolded, how we didn’t get to see the Spanish Steps. Or find that restaurant. Or buy spices. Life has plenty of disturbances, small and large.

But before the program I would have made myself and everyone around me slaves to my needs, my external cravings for relief from that ever-present gnawing not-okayness that seduces and charms and barks like a general howls like the Devil: If you line it all up just this way - get this thing - then you will be okay and everything that stands in the way of getting it is the enemy. With that mindset, small disturbances become disasters, day-crushers, life-crushers.

And then of course relief — external relief, is sought like water in a desert. Doesn’t need to be alcohol or a substance. For me work, exercise, relationships, my looks, my kid dressing a certain way — can all override  my highest priority, my true  essence, which just wants to be okay.

I think of it as a color more than words, or a frequency, but it’s something like the flavor of love and kindness. And truth. The truth that beyond or underneath all my intellectual learning, skepticism, diversion-seeking, and emotional waves is this oceanic calm peacefulness - a desire to love and be loved - golden pink - where I am okay as I am and so is everyone and everything else. It’s a miracle. I’ve learned I can hang out in that, return to it when disturbed, take refuge when turbulence hits.

And then, if something’s important, like life & death, I can choose to get on it, or not. But I’m not driven by compulsions to do or be this or that, or to make you do this or be that — I can let other people be who they are and choose to be pleased with them or take space with kindness. I can walk with other people at their pace and be okay. I can walk at my pace, alone or with others, and be okay. What a blessing! I’m gonna keep going.

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