Grains of Sand

Being sober has all the slow burn of the getting of wisdom. Most days there is nothing dramatic or mind blowing - just the steady, cold reality of yourself and the world. Without the get out of jail free card of knowing you can have a drink later on and it will all be fine.

So the revelations come thick and fast early on, when you are learning all about yourself as though you are something new and unexplored. But then after six months, you reach regular roadblocks where your internal dialogue comes up tired and flat and almost ready to submit.

The once seemingly indefatigable enthusiasm of your new found personal insight seems a little over the top. You feel like a bit of a born again virgin and it becomes like you are just another recently sober know it all. But you are really just a grain of sand.

"Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential."
William Thomas

And suddenly it is like you are back at the beginning again. You are humbled and alone and vulnerable and terribly exposed and just seeking all over again. So you have to work harder and delve deeper and try to penetrate beyond, and it is all your own mission.

"It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age."
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

Like learning to become left handed in old age. That awkward moment of expecting respect and seniority but knowing your glaring weakness is exposed like a plump pale belly. Looking at your left handed fingers like they are foreign, willing your brain to grow connecting neurons so things just happen naturally. It takes time, and another 'left hand' - patience.

Foiled, you have to walk away, and look at the problem from another angle. Eying it up and down and across ways as you pace around it, like a fox at the hen house, nudging, touching, feeling. It is right there in front of you yet you can't get it, not yet anyway.

Morris Townsend: For God's Sake! What do you think I am? I'm not good enough for you! Not nearly good enough! What do you want me to do?
Catherine Sloper: I want you to love me.
Henry James, Washington Square

Maybe that is the answer. Maybe you are good enough and maybe you do have to just do the obvious. Stop being distant and critical and rejecting and embrace the fear and Love yourself back.