A Brief Morning Retrospective
The morning breaks. A timorous sun, yet unseen, promising a warmth yet unbeheld. Birds tell their story, as they do, their language incomprehensible yet comforting, seeming to cast back the shadow of the night that plays out its last few notes in minor key through the shadows of objects still too indistinct to be seen.
On this day, two years ago, I took my last dose of kratom; a gas station opiate that took eight years of my life and stole the memories of the difficult days of my marriage, my children's young lives, my parents last few healthy years, and countless warm summer nights and compressed them into a mushy and vague feeling of "then". Few distinctions remain except for brief images and inexplicit emotions that beg for attention but find no articulation.
The time that has passed since has been a flurry of disquiet, difficulty, loss, and heartbreak with seemingly brief moments of respite that beg the question: "Was it easier being loaded?". I honestly don't have an answer to that question. I know that it was, on the surface, easier. I always had a friend that I could call on that would make me smile and bring me back to simpler times awash with nostalgia and simplicity—a fifteen dollar portal to childhood. I have spent very little time reminiscing of my times getting high, though. Something you learn through addiction is that lingering on the thought of using will inevitably lead to you using, and that is not something that I want to revisit. My life since sobriety may be marked by periods of extreme emotional difficulty, even briefly dipping into complete emotional breakdown within the depths of anxiety and depression during a phase of protracted post-acute withdrawal, but considering the lie that I was living before I wholeheartedly choose, everyday, to face those emotions with open arms.
However, although I do consider myself a sober person, I do not consider myself to be anything but an addict. I still see my addiction play out in my life generally uncontested and waiting for its chance to find the dry brush necessary to roar back to life as a raging fire threatening to consume the life and the trust that has been built since. I struggle with self-control to a degree that I never thought possible. I never considered it a struggle before because I simply did not push back on any thought or urge that I met. So, I suppose that is progress. I am aware of my desires and now they play second fiddle to a silent Will that speaks from the corners of my experience. Call it conscience, but it is not guilt I feel—it is more like someone is calling me from beyond the horizon towards something I cannot put into words, and to ignore that call is distasteful to a degree that feels abusive.
I honestly don't know if I will ever truly master my impulses and fully live with the presence of this Will that calls me forward. I have faith in what it tells me, but in the moment giving in to my simple pleasures and comforts is infinitely more "real". But bread turns to ash in my mouth, and water to dust. The world is a grey harbor awash in fog and there is no distinction between any one thing or another. Their pleasure is a memory, distant and undefined as only a memory can be, and their promise is hollow; an unfurnished room in a house as empty as their assurances.
The coffee has gone cold in my cup, as I type this. The song of the birds has ebbed to a sporadic chirping. Another day. What am I promised? What will I say yes to? Will I sit with my disquiet and allow the lessons of the eternal present to guide me into the fading light and into the realized promise of that which is just over the horizon? Resolve was felt as real as the presence of a close friend on this day two years ago—I knew that I was done with my active addiction. But now? What do I know? The silence of this moment is my only answer and in that silence I step forward into the infinite and eternal present.