Belonging

“Belonging”

 

“The pessimist complains about the wind.  The optimist expects it to change.  The realist adjusts the sail.”

                        William A. Ward

           

I am at a place now in my recovery where I no longer crave a drink.  I can honestly say that I don’t think about drinking anymore.  I guess that isn’t entirely accurate.  I think about it all the time in terms of recovery and addiction and meetings and sponsees and living my best life and knowing I can’t do it etc… But I don’t think about it in terms of longing anymore.

I went to rehab and started attending 12-step meetings so that I would stop drinking because I saw that as my problem.  When I got some periods of sobriety under my belt my life would improve because the chaos caused by drinking would be removed but eventually I would relapse because I had not taken care of my underlying issues.  What I had not realized before doing the steps was that it wasn’t the drinking that was the actual problem, it was my thinking.

My thinking, my general unease with myself and my lack of connection with a spiritual life was the root of all my problems.  Drinking was a symptom.  Drinking was what I turned to so I could shut off the noise and interference going on in my head.  I didn’t know what it was then and I didn’t understand how to interpret it.  I do now.

I don’t mean to say that I don’t still experience the noise and interference.  I do.  For example, this past Thanksgiving I spent the day at two different houses.  I had two dinners with two families.  I felt for part of the day, adrift.  I felt disconnected and uncomfortable.  In my head I heard myself saying, “I don’t fit in anywhere.”  This was a genuine feeling I had.  This was nothing anyone else made me feel however.  Neither family said or did anything to make me feel this way.  I made myself feel this way.  It took me several hours to turn that around and see the reality of the situation.  I had two Thanksgivings.  Two families cared enough about me to have me at their houses and accept me at their tables… and yet somehow I managed to feel as though I did not fit in rather than doubly loved?

This is an example of the fundamental flaw in the way that I can sometimes think.  But now I am able to recognize if for what it is.  I see it as my humanity and vulnerability cropping up and reminding me that I am a singular mortal link in a chain.  When I am in that state of mind I feel all of my naked insecurities and I imagine myself alone.  But because of the spiritual journey I embarked on doing the steps I am reminded that I am not alone and that I am indeed a link in a chain.  That chain is love and it is endless and eternal and all-powerful and I may not understand everything that I encounter, but that I don’t have to understand it all to live a happy and fulfilling life and know that I am loved.