Jan 08 2009
The Plateau, Part 2
Hello all, actually only three of you, but hello all the same, today I will continue from yesterday’s post…”The Plateau”. I hope you enjoy and be sure to share what you think…I am very interested![b]
Part 2: For instance, today as I sat at Starbucks enjoying a Chai Latte, my fave, venti, 7 pumps, no water, soy, no foam, OMG!!!, you have to try one…anyway…where was I? Oh yeah…enjoying a Chai Latte and the old school jam playing on the patio, I looked up from my book ever few minutes to see the cars passing by or to notice the other soujourners on the trek for the holy grail of morning beverages, I noticed a larger than life Yukon XL parked in a fire zone. I noticed for two reasons…One, I want one…desperately, and Two, It had a large manly trailer attached with a large grill riding shotgun. As I gazed upon the Muhammad Ali of trucks, I was taken into a magical place…in the ten minutes the owner was inside getting his morning fix, I played out the completion of my life in that truck. It was a beauty, high gloss black paint job, shiny silver trim, and pristine rims. This glimpse, the symbol, or so says the circles I run in, the icon of a life that has reached a plateau. The plateau…I can afford a big, overly expensive manly vehicle…the unspoken status…”you my friend have arrived!” As I sat there lusting over this piece of machinery, that would establish me as a success, at least in my own eyes, I imagined the good life such a purchase would usher in. I mean, “If I can afford this truck, then surely there isn’t anything in my life that is wrong…I have a good job, my house is nice, my family is proud of me, I AM A SUCCESS!!!” In those few minutes, I had visions of acceptance and success in whatever endeavor I attempted and wherever I found myself this status symbol would speak for me…even…especially to complete strangers. My wife would proud and always romantically available to me, because her husband provided so far above and beyond her wildest dreams. My children, so proud I was there father, unashamed to be taken anywhere becuase their manly and virile father takes them in his truck. All of their friends would want to be BFFs, instantly, and their enemies would be uber-jealous…(a word my 12 year old uses, I hope I used it correctly) - The big black Suburban would enable me to do all the things in life I have never been able to accomplish. ”Surely, I will be different in this truck than I am in my current transportation.” ”Finally, I have beaten this addiction!” ”All is good!” ”All of the problems from my past are resolved….” Then…the guy waved as he got into his truck and drove off. As the truck pulled away, I was eye to eye with “Ole Bessie”, she is my Plymouth Acclaim, I paid six hundred bucks for her, her air and heat didn’t work, her radio only picked up two AM stations, Talk Radio, and not the good ones, and an AM Country Music station, so I drove her in silence. During my eye to eye encounter with Ole Bessie, it hit me, it happened, a moment of crystal clear clarity. The big black truck represents the life I assume recovery will bring me. In that moment, I was face to face with my inner demons again…reminded of the failure, pain and harm I have always caused. I am an addict and this is my life. I looked my demons in the eye and said, “I will not lose!” They in turn, smiled and looked me in the eye and said, “As long as you want a better life now, You have already lost!” The big black truck incident forced me to look inside where the truth of my wicked heart boasts, “You, my friend, have mistaken the purpose of recovery.” It was true, I had, I believed recovery to be a magic potion given to return my life to the same it was for years, without the messy being an addict stuff. The purpose of recovery is restoration! Plain and simple, recovery is designed to make me what I was intended to be from the beginning. Recovery is a relationship! Its about my relationship…with everything…the problem was not in my behavior but in me! That is enough for today…I am exhausted! I promise to come back and share my story…enjoy…be encouraged…live authentic! ~T2009-01-08 - 00:20:42
So when you say that having that truck would mean you’ve arrived, you really mean that it was say you’ve arrived at that place where people have more money than sense, right?
Anyway, it’s interesting you write about having missed the point of recovery because tonight hubby and I were discussing how it (life in general) isn’t about where you start or where you end, but about the journey, those seemingly infinite single points in time that make up the whole of our existence…
It occurs to me that this same philosophy can be applied to recovery. I mean, if you think about it, the beginning of the story doesn’t matter; you have to just accept the past was what it was and acknowledge how it’s shaped you to be the person you are now. And really it doesn’t matter how things end up because there isn’t an end, not with recovery. You don’t get to wake up one day and say, “Gee…I think today’s the day I’m not an addict anymore.” So the only ending would be death, but, well…you’re dead so…yeah.
It is the journey from beginning to end that makes life worth living. All those little moments of life are where the finest moments of recovery occur. It’s in the midst of the journey we suddenly realize at some point we found grace.
Your words ring true and remind me “My level of serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations.”
When I looked life in the face clean, sober, and abstinent, there was extreme polarity between the magical thinking of how I had perceived recovery would be if I ever got there, and how fucked up my life really was.
I understand the symbolism of the big black Suburban. Mine was a piece of paper.
Counseling credentials.
I wanted to be a counselor and save mankind just like 99% of the other newly recovered people i knew.(In my case I was most effective one man at a time.:)
I went to college, worked hard, and I got it. But it wasn’t enough. Next, I had to be the supervisor, then a program director, then on the right boards, always struggling to get good enough, yet no matter what I accomplished, it didn’t fix me.
I came to the realization, on a visceral level, that recovery- real recovery, is not about going to meetings and not taking a drink or a drug- is about how I walk the talk between meetings. It’s an inside job.
Let me know when you write more. I look forward to disagreeing with you.
Steel sharpens steel.
Roxie
http://recoveryrocks.today.com/