I recently went back to Caron Treatment Center, where I went for treatment in February of 2014. I have been back a number of times now, once to get my year coin and then for volunteer training and this past time to meet with one of the directors about the idea of publishing a children's book about addiction. After the meeting I had lunch with some of the therapists who so lovingly helped almost 18 months ago. After lunch I was honored to be able to sit and speak with the current patients on the relapse unit.
Honored because I was asked and honored because I could provide some hope to people severely beaten down by their disease and mired in regret and shame. I told them a bit about my journey and answered questions along the way as best I could. I spoke about recovery and about the state of my marriage and about how to talk to kids about addiction. When I mentioned that Frank and I had met when I was 15 and I had really never dated anyone else and had thought we would make it through just about anything, one man raised his hand. He told me that he was in a similar situation as he had met his wife as a teen and they had been married for a long time now. He said that he just assumed she would always be there and now he is afraid she may actually divorce him. I completely understood. I had taken Frank for granted for sure and it just never crossed my mind that he would ever leave me.
He hasn't really left me as we see each other nearly everyday, talk everyday and co-parent quite happily, but we are not together presently and we live apart both hoping we can piece the union back together. But I well understood how this man felt. I well understood the fear that grips him as I felt the same after I moved into my apartment and it still creeps in to knock my equilibrium askew from time to time. I felt unmoored, set adrift to find my own way back to shore and I was terrified.
What I was able to tell him was that once I started exploring spirituality and started working through the steps as they are laid out in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, I started to find faith. Faith in a higher power, a universal connectedness I had shut myself off to. Faith in myself as I saw my whole self for the first time and didn't shy away from the full image. Faith in the good and the bad in myself and the knowledge that the good far outweighs the bad. Faith that even if Frank and I don't manage to patch up our marriage, that I will still be me and I won't be swallowed up in some black hole of non-existence. To be sure I will be devastated should that come to pass, but I have faith now that it will not break me.
You see fear and faith cannot coexist. Once I started to have faith, my fear decreased. It didn't completely leave, as there are times when fear rears its head, but it does not overwhelm me as it used to, it does not rule my thoughts and actions as it used to, it does not run riot through my life because I have faith.
If you are afraid, find a way to have some faith and your life will be so much more fruitful.
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