Overcoming the Dark
Tomorrow I head down to Seattle to UW Medicine for an important appointment in the progress of Steve’s condition of spinal stenosis. We will hopefully walk away tomorrow with an appointment for Steve’s surgery, a critical climax to what we have been going through for almost a year. Or in a sense, many many years as we did not know what was wrong with Steve until recently, but he has been suffering from mobility issues for some time. I am grateful for this move forward, and I feel ready to tackle the challenges ahead.
This last winter has been a long winter of cutting back on drinking and smoking and battling the addictions that plague our lives. We have made much progress. I have spent hours upon hours in my journal, reading tarot, and attending my group to discuss The Power of Now, as well as attending Quaker gathering and a women’s circle. I have processed much with friends and family, and I have pushed past the urge to smoke a million times and refrained from drinking any alcohol for many weeks.
It is a process, however. I may go for a whole month without drinking or having cut back to five cigarettes a day for an entire month, and then I slide back into old habits all to willingly. It is true though that time spent working out is time spent working out and it does not go wasted. Every cigarette I have avoided, every drink I have abstained from, I have stayed more in the moment and aware of my inner workings. This is my best argument for being a non drinker. I am in the moment, I am present and aware and potentially in consciousness when I am sober. I stretch from consciousness and become increasingly unconscious the more I drink. I also lose the moment. It is in the moment that I heal my pain body. More time spent aware of myself is good even though it can become painful after a time. I have spent many hours this winter, housed up in my little home, feet up, bored out of my mind. I turn down yet another game of cribbage with my husband and I opt for starting at the wall.
Spring it proving itself to bring some added excitement into my life. I have started attending the gym almost every day and I feel much less bored as the days become longer and the nights shrink in their looming darkness. I am feeling the benefits of sticking with it this winter, of disciplining myself and allowing myself to sit with the dislike I feel for myself at times, and the ability to stay present even when the world is spinning slowly and it would be so much easier to just check out. I am grateful for this homework I have done, and I look forward to continuing to improve on myself and overcoming addiction in general in my life. It is so much more than just smoking or drinking. It is in our thoughts, our beliefs about ourselves, our eating habits, our emotional drama or lack of it. It is everywhere and it needs to be tackled form a three dimensional perspective. So here is to a summer of enjoying the sun for being the sun, loving my body as it is as I try to improve on it, and to a future without deep unconscious pain. May we all be free of it.