The evening’s dread approach no longer finds solace in thoughts of you… your chill clean sweet release.. your thoughtless escape from all the hurry-scurry. You’re no longer a friend, a secret buoy, a kind invisible force to bring peace. You’ve not taken everything from me yet, but I know you will. If I follow you where you want me to go — to a land of more and more and more…. to a place where just one is never ever enough, I’ll lose everyone I love.
But still it feels like a loss. A huge terrifying loss. Without you, I’m so much less than I dreamed I’d be. So much less. When a beloved friend visited this week, she who is still so free, I sobbed for the way I used to be. Before marriage, kids, jobs, life… How far below joy I’ve fallen.
Rebuilding and crafting change and renewal from this tangle of addiction and craving is so much harder sometimes than at others. When I realize how much I relied on you to get me through. How asleep at the wheel I’d become.
The novocain is wearing off now. I’m girding myself with new people and meetings and new rituals. I’m starting over, every day… Hoping to replace oblivion with real loving (self) kindness.
There are others like me… many others. Other women who are trying to love and reconfigure their lives so there is more joy, less hassle, less dead air ….
Whether it’s alcohol, or work, or sex, or kids, jobs, mortgages or in-laws… many of us have neglected to find anything more than mere pittances for ourselves and we’ve completely and utterly lost our way… Remember those wild hopeful girls we used to be? Let’s find them again. Together.
#2
Hmm. I hadn’t thought of the possibility that we could be wild and hopeful again. Most days it feels like, this is it–suck it up.
wild and hopeful … I like the idea of that…
I have never felt more wild and hopeful then I do now tht I’m taking care of myself. I hope you find that too darling.
Hang in there. You will find that wild hopefulness you seek. It’s all there. I know it.
I cannot tell you how proud I am of you
Hold on, hang on, whatever you have to do. You are bigger than this, and we’re wishing and hoping good things for you!
Okay. Low blow. I started crying. Which makes no sense, because I just constructed THE most kick-ass Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday cake EVER, but there it is. Full of excitement for the birthday party tomorrow, full of dread for the chores between now and then, and for the inevitable despair when the time comes for clean-up. When the house is quiet again, and I finally fall asleep with my well, once again, empty.
I might be filling it a little too often, lately, with wine and television. I’m starting to get that feeling - waiting for graduation day. When do we graduate from this inability to give ourselves a little love without the guilt - without the dread? When does “tired” take a rest, and make room for wild and hopeful?
Right there with you, baby. Right there with you.
I love the book Wacky Chicks. It’s about all sorts of women who were wild and hopeful and made it count.
It’s up to us to make our own lives count for something other than bills, carpool and laundry.
Great post!