Yesterday, I had to shit or get off the pot. Not literally - I just had that moment when I had to decide to walk (or ride) through my fear, or let it overtake me. I have allowed fear to creep back into my life, and haven't done much about it. Yesterday I was going to go on my first real bicycle ride of the season. I didn't want to. I felt 'tired'. I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep.
It didn't make sense. I love bicycle riding. Yesterday was the perfect day for a ride - sort of cool, sunny, and fairly calm. I knew I would feel good after a ride. Over the past two years I've ridden over 3000 miles on my bicycle, and I had just had my wheels trued and tuned up my bike. There wasn't a
(←see that Freudian slip?) thing keeping me from my ride.
So I got up and went, and had a great ride. But, it wasn't the reasoning that got me going. It was the recognition that I was going down the slippery slope of fear, one that will only lead to my next drink, which I'm still postponing. I don't know how much living in fear I can take before I relapse. I don't know, as far as my mental emotional state goes, where the point of no return is. So, it pays to not try to find out.
I'm thinking as I write this that it might be helpful to treat fear like I treat the first drink. The basis of physical sobriety is to abstain from the first drink - then one doesn't have to be concerned with which drink is going to cause trouble (is it the 3rd? The 5th? The one I take the morning after?) Perhaps the basis of emotional sobriety might be to stay away from the first 'drink' of fear.
Emotional sobriety isn't as clearly defined as is physical sobriety. For instance, I can blow into a breathalyzer right now (I actually have one here as I write this) and be able to tell whether or not there is any alcohol in my body. However, we haven't invented a device that can test my emotional sobriety - one that would measure my level of serenity, or check for negativity, anger, fear, arrogance, lack of gratitude, etc.
I've lived my whole life with a high level of fear and dread. I used to hate waking up and getting up in the morning. In fact, I used to pray to not wake up. I've gotten much better - now I only dislike getting up, and sometimes I'm even ok with it. Anyway, every day I would have to face living, and I hated it. So I learned work-arounds - ways to escape from the fear of life without actually escaping. Drinking, drugs, food, computer games, sleeping, sex - there are a lot of things that I used to escape. And I also learned not to feel. I became emotionally dead, and a very good actor.
Over the past two years, I've made a great deal of progress in reversing my fearful nature. Two of the big ones are that I no longer fear supporting myself, and I no longer fear your disapproval (much). But there are a lot of areas that still need work.
So, without feeling when I'm fearful, as it seems quite a natural state by now, how do I know when I am allowing fear to inform me? I've been around the block enough to know most of the signs of my fearfulness:
Procrastination - totally centered around fear. Whatever I'm procrastinating about is something I fear doing.
Hatred - if I hate something or someone, there is fear surrounding it or them.
Avoidance - (very similar to procrastination) - if I'm avoiding something or someone, I fear it.
Sleepiness - If I'm craving sleep, especially when I don't have a physical reason to be tired, I'm fearful.
Food cravings - food cravings for foods that make me feel better are an indication that I'm being fearful about something.
Computer time - surfing the web is a great way to avoid!
I wrote in an earlier post about my discovery early on that I can view life as my Higher Power, or view my Higher Power as life. So long as I go from the standpoint that Life really is good and supportive, I can take what comes my way each day as lessons and experiences that are good for me, no matter what they might seem to be. When I began to embrace that, my life becomes much richer.
Writing is often about self-discovery for me, and as I'm writing this, I realize that I have a huge opportunity here to step up my recovery program. I've gotten several signs lately that I can go ahead and begin living with less fear, less timidity. Today, I have a lot of faith and evidence to back up that I have nothing to fear. I like the idea expressed earlier that I can treat fear like the first drink, and stay away from it. When I feel like doing any of the things listed in the previous paragraph, I can simply go ahead an do what's in front of me to do. A large part of recovery is doing what I know to be healthy despite how I feel in the moment, and I can begin to expand the areas in which I do this.
I really have nothing to fear anymore. I only need to go ahead and prove it to myself.
If you've read this far, I really do appreciate you! I'm coming up on two years of sobriety next month, and I recognize more and more each day how much my sobriety isn't my own - it's a result of awesome people in my life and a lot of things and people of which I may not currently be aware. I used to be the boy in the bubble - forever protected from the 'germs' of life, but incredibly miserable. The bubble is gone now, and I'm one with the 'germs', and it really is ok. Thank you for being a part of my life!
Namaste,
Ken
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