Thousand

This week I am one thousand and then one thousand and onetwothree days sober. This blows my mind a little, but comes as no surprise.

When I quit drinking the last time I really quit. Back at the beginning on that day onetwothree it was all I could do to keep a grip on just getting through the motions of my day. Now I can have a friend come visit and she and my husband can sip wine one day or have a beer on the porch the next and no one gets hammered and I don't flake out because I just don't drink alcohol and that's just that.

My truth is that I am an alcoholic. Their truth is that they are not. We all have our own truth- our own truth. Sometimes I get so bugged by how big the sobriety part of my truth is: goddammit, can it be a less part? Do I always always always have to be so aware of being in recovery- of my self that gets nervous when beer walks in the front door? That I have a thousand bits of shame willing to wash up on my shore at any random moment to remind me of the woman I used to be? Or that I am still big time changing and not the same me as I was five hundred days ago and I know I'll be different in five hundred more? It can get so exhausting sometimes. It makes me want to lay in the middle of the bed and stare at the ceiling for a week.

A thousand of anything can get pretty tiring I suppose.

I will always always always be so aware of my sobriety- of my recovery- of my healing from this disease that kept me unhappy and unwell for most of my life. I will always honor the depth of strength it took for me: one woman me- to get myself sober. You don't get sober by yourself, but you do. In all the minutes that go into a thousand days the only person around for each and every one was me. I did it- I do it. I am a little different: I find comfort in the solitude of healing myself- I don't go to meetings or therapy or spend a lot of time discussing being sober as much as I just do. Maybe because I am still perhaps getting used to this me and not able to push myself to the middle of the class for show and tell, maybe because the right people are still coming to my life who will help prepare me to be brave enough to stand center stage. I know they are: I signed up for two classes (a ten week yoga one and a six week writing one) this fall, yoga teacher training in January. I'm putting myself out there because now I'm ready. I will probably be so flush with teachers and mentors that I'll start having yard sales of them just to manage the overflow. Just thinking about it means I'm readying myself: because I am sober every day my life gets bigger, and different, and more.

The gratitude I feel towards myself is uncomfortable and incredible. My dear friend who came to visit got me thinking hard about the hiding that I still do. How I want to make me getting sober into just another ho hum casserole thing when it's actually this amazing astounding miracle! I am as embarrassed by my successes as I am my failures. Here she was, in my thousand days week, to come and firmly remind me that I must celebrate and own my accomplishment. That I can be proud and humble all at the same time. That when I diminish what I've done I go backwards. That it is wonderful to be me since along all these days I have become the woman I longed for: capable, reliable, steady. Full of gratitude, full of grace. A foundation for the things to come.

A thousand of anything can be pretty amazing. It was amazing on day one. It was amazing on day fifty, day 247, day 400, day 708.43. And today, it's amazing today. It's amazing to know that 1000 days can be joined by another 1000. That the thousands can go on and on forever. That my life, this good life, can be counted on and accounted for.