That is what I do. Sometimes with a great deal of joy and ease, and other times not so much. Regardless I have been on this sober life journey for some time now. And it is a great life. So much better than the one that I would have had had I kept drinking. I would be dead if I had kept drinking. Like twenty years ago. But I stopped and I TOOK directions that I didn’t want to take, did things that I KNEW wouldn’t work, and found a God that I totally did not NEED and here I am.
I THOUGHT I knew so much but looking back now, I know that I was just running scared. Terrified really. Bluffing my way through life...and doing it poorly.
Ever since I turned that corner and began to accept that perhaps I was the biggest problem in my own life, life has gotten easier. Not easy. Not by a long shot. But easier than the way I was living. I was really dying on the installment plan. Each day a new day and opportunity to burn my life to the ground...and each day I would wake up, still here and more desperate and sick than the day before. It was fucking awful.
And I didn’t think there was anything worse than the way I was living and feeling. But I was wrong...
Watching your child live that way is worse. Watching your child make the same mistakes over and over and over again. Watching him destroy himself on the installment plan is way worse than doing it to yourself...except, we are all somebody’s kids. So it is always twofolds of worse. You are killing yourself AND you are killing someone’s child. Maybe you learned the behavior from them. Regardless, dying from addiction is fucking terrible. Such a waste of life.
My son who recently moved to Houston to start this GREAT new life texted me the other night that he was going to kill himself and asked me to come to Houston to get his remains. Update - he didn’t kill himself and I doubt he was really serious, it was just another manipulation to get me to re-engage. I haven’t spoken to him or engaged with him at all for two weeks now. I have no plan to re-engage any time soon either. I can’t take the abuse anymore. He is toxic and when we are in relationship with each other, I come out so much worse for the wear. Maybe he does too.
So again police were involved. I never thought in a million fucking years that I would be seeing so much of the police. I didn’t see them this much when I was out there doing bad shit with bad people. But my son seems to attract need for them on at least a weekly basis...
Apparently, he hit some sort of bottom that night and is boarding a bus for Austin today to go live in sober living. I pray he makes it and I pray he is able to find something within himself worth saving. Because what I know for sure is that you can’t do it for someone else. You can love them, show up for them, care for them and do everything in your power to show them life is good and worth living, and they get to choose not to.
There is nothing left for me to do except let go. Cut ties. Remove myself as the savior I have been for years because so long as I am swooping in and rescuing him it can and will always be my fault. And in truth, none of this is really my fault. No more than it was when I was self destructing all over my life that is was my parents’ fault. They did the best they could with what they had. And I know since we are all sober now, they really wish they could have done it better. And they have.
I pray for my son. I love him and wish for him to find what I have found. A host of friends. A God. A reason for living. Service. Being able to live contentedly in my own skin. But I also know that living sober isn’t easy and is subject to daily temptation to check out and that checking out seems temporary but that is also outside of our control. Life is hard. Living it completely fucked up and blaming everyone else for your awful plight is so fucking much harder.
I pray he really does learn how to live sober. I know I have been a good example. His grandparents have been good examples. The sober living he is moving into will be full of warnings and examples. It is his life. I pray that he makes choices that lengthen and improve this life of his...but I remain forever powerless to change anything.
God speed son. I will tell you what they told me when I got here:
Sit down
Shut up
Listen
Don’t drink or use
Ask for help
Keep coming back
I did all of those things very imperfectly and I am still here. What we have is a plan for living that works, it really fucking does. I pray that you can get out of your own way long enough to allow it to work for you too.
