Today was a bit gloomy. It rained a steady sheet of heavy drizzle most of the day and into this evening. The sky was gray and it was chilly and damp. I walked in the morning on the usual route at Butterfly Beach. My friend walked with me. There were only a few die-hard walkers out in it, including my daughter and her husband.
On my way down to the beach I received a call from an old friend who lives out of state in Montana. He wanted to give me a “heads-up” that he had divulged my whereabouts to another old friend who might be calling me. The call came soon after I returned home from my walk.
Hearing the voice of the “Montana” was comforting. We had lost contact for many years and were reconnected about a year ago via face book. He has grown older and wiser but still has the youthful spirit I remember from thirty-five years ago. His hair is white now and he seems calmer and wiser, more at peace with himself than he was when we were in our twenties. Thinking back to that time makes me smile. Both my friend and I are in a good, sweet part of our lives at this time and each of us is in a happy marriage. We are still “walking the walk” although we live in different parts of the country.
The call from my second old friend was gray and sad like the rain falling outside of my window. His life has not been as sweet and he finds himself alone and destitute, living in a sober-living house In Ventura with other newly sober men. He said he had come across the phone number of our Montana friend and taken a chance on finding him. Hearing his voice took me back too, to a time when each of our lives held such promise, and I was struggling to find my way.
At the time we were friends, I was in between marriages, in my mid-thirties and working full time at a job in fashion downtown at the Mart. Two of my daughters were in high school and the third was in college. I had a dog and lived in a rental near the beach. My days were full of work, dating and the details of raising teenaged girls. I was happy I think, but probably more in survival -mode than striving in any particular direction. I was probably at the pinnacle of my co-dependence, and I had some rough years ahead of me but I didn’t know it yet.
I was still to experience another marriage, which ended shortly in divorce. I was yet to face and walk through the illnesses of and the subsequent deaths of both of my parents. I was ill prepared for any of this and it all came too soon for each of us.
The most painful memory the call from Ventura evoked was that of myself at that time. I was living a good part of my life honestly and out in the open, while there were parts of my life that I kept secret. Those were the parts that I did not trust to a higher power. Relationships with men in particular.
I had been married and divorced three times. Not a great record, but I had an explanation for all of these failures. First, I had married too young. Next I had been in “the cups” of alcoholism. The last one was still a mystery to me, but I later saw that I was unwilling to look at the parts of myself that needed changing and do the work to change. I think the final blow came when in couples therapy, my husband said I was “just like my Mother!” So true, but I did not want to believe it at that moment.
Then there was my dating life. I did not know how to say “no”. I never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings. Consequently I had multiple relationships, overlapping and spilling guilt and shame onto my heart. Finally, I married again, this time with the selfish motive of wanting to be rescued from myself.
When the fourth marriage ended in divorce I had to look at myself. There were no more excuses that made any sense. I was the common denominator. I realized if I were ever to be able to look myself in the mirror again and be taken seriously by anyone I would have to change. Change everything, that is.
This is when I sought out a new sponsor/mentor who had what I wanted and had not been able to achieve doing things “my-way.” I was sober nearly twenty years. It was a humbling experience to admit that in my forties, with two decades of sobriety I was still behaving irresponsibly. I had not “let go absolutely” of my selfish ways and I needed help to accomplish this goal. I was afraid but desperate. I surrendered to the twelve steps and taking direction from Noel. My life changed dramatically from there.
The marriages of my daughters, the births of my grand children were happy, wonderful times. Then came my marriage to Tom, my fifth and most likely final husband. But all along, I stayed close to the winners and “walked-the walk.” Now I am asking myself what happened to my friend? Why did I make it and he has not? What does it mean to have “made it?”
These questions have been in my face of late. I saw my sponsee in jail today just after I talked to my old friends. She is another one who has had the same opportunity I have been given and yet she hasn’t been able to stay sober and stay the course. I want to know, why me, or more importantly, why not them?
My only answer, aside from pure Grace, is that there came a time in my life when I stood at a turning point and had to choose. I had to choose to let go of my ego, my pride, my ideas about how to live, and allow myself be led. This, as it turns out, was a “life-or-death-decision.” Death of the “old me,” to give life to the “new me.”
So here I am today. It is a rainy Saturday, in my sweet, sweet, un-dramatic, un-complicated life. My plans for the day include breakfast at a little French bakery with my husband, shopping for food for a special dinner for my grand daughter’s eighteenth birthday dinner, the meditation of cooking and creating magic for my family and later a walk on the beach with another grand daughter. I will probably take a nap and then serve a delicious dinner, infused with love and gratitude to twenty- seven of my extended family. Tom will help with the dishes and I will go to bed tired but happy and filled up.
It was Grace that offered these choices, but choice that gave me my true self.
My life is so glamorous. It is not fair, lucky for me!
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