Perfectly Timed Trains

“Go where the love is.”

Best thing I’ve heard in a long time and like magic, exactly what I needed to hear this morning. Something Willow was told by the person who became her second sponsor and what she’s now passing on to me. It’s so simple, isn’t it? And so beautifully, perfectly right! Go where the love is. But of course! I find that’s true for the most precious truths, they are so often really obvious when you think about it. Going where the love is resonates with what my gut tells me anyway and how I’m beginning to think of my Higher Power – something almost instinctual but almost always a mixture of physical and mental. So perhaps I’ve come to think of feelings as messages I receive. Feel good? Good! Keep on doing that!

Quite the opposite of the conversation I ended up having Saturday. It was really quite bizarre and I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a frustrating position before. I came away feeling crushed, insulted, belittled and quite frankly humiliated. It feels bad. Very bad, in fact. I’m sensitive (because I’m an alcoholic, some would say, but I’d hazard a guess that sometimes you’re just sensitive regardless of any other ailments you happen to have) and sometimes I’m just like a sponge and soak up every last little sprinkle of words that are thrown at me. I take things personally and I take things to heart. I discovered over the weekend that I could go from feeling full of joy, love, strength and hope to feeling absolutely trampled all over. That’s not good for anyone and I don’t think it was enjoyable for the other person either, it can’t have been. But just like Willow suggested, I am going to go where the love is. I can’t take on other people’s preconceived ideas, feelings or judgments – I can only be true to myself, be honest in all that I do and have an open heart. I can’t keep on absorbing other people’s views and allow them to hurt me when I know in my heart that what they are saying isn’t my truth.

And it isn’t necessarily THE love and going there. It’s the right type of love. I know that no matter how rubbish it made me feel, it came from a good place – I truly believe that because I’d be horrified if it was all said to cut me down to a size they preferred me to be and I just can’t imagine that. It’s important – I believe – to regardless of how much something hurts, look carefully to see if we find any truth in the words that have cut us. And if we can’t, then move on. If we can’t, it wasn’t about us anyway. Go where the right love is. Damn straight.

It’s now almost six weeks since I gave up drinking and I can honestly say I’ve never felt better. Crazy really, because I was pretty damn happy as it was, only I kept pouring alcohol on life and in doing so set myself on course to eventually ruin it. Crazy, eh!

As things are, I am half expecting something bad to happen but I’m learning that feeling good is GOOD! I also know why I feel as freaking amazing as I do – I feel this way because I’m not drinking. This also comes with the knowledge that I’d just need to do one thing to send my life off course once again, just one thing to spend a large chunk of it in black-out and wake up feeling rotten, and just one thing to miss out on how glorious this life really is: pick up a drink. That is all it would take. Just one teeny, tiny little drink and I could in an instant go from feeling this good to really, really bad. That, or surround myself with people who have the same effect. Not going to happen. My sobriety and the life I now get to have because of it are way too precious to me to either pour Sauvignon Blanc all over them or listen to hurtful and judgmental gibberish that wasn’t about me in the first place. Nope!

I feel it is in order to list all the things that made my heart soar this morning, it being Monday and all!

• My morning coffee – always MAGICAL! I look forward to it when I go to sleep, I kid you not, it is THAT glorious to me. (Do I need to get out more?)
• My son, even when he is in his morning grump and hugs me with resistance so intense you’d think I’d been rolling around in dog shit. That little chimp just blows me away, it’s scary to love someone this much. It’s like I gave birth to him and from that moment on my heart is walking around outside my body. Scary but so freakin’ beautiful.
• My husband’s delectable bottom in the brown trousers he’s wearing today – quite the delicious sight I must say. His bottom is always a sight for the gods but this morning it he looked particularly tasty.
• Feeling alive on the tube. Oh yeah, I feel so good even sitting on London public fkn transport fills me with happy-happy-happy. I know, unbearable, isn’t it? Found myself glancing at my fellow passengers and in my head said a prayer wishing lots of good things will happen to them all today.*
• Being on a roll – trains just pulled in at the right moment all the way to the Swedish Embassy and back and I only missed an hour of work. Do you ever get that? When you’re driving somewhere and each time the lights go green JUST FOR YOU!
• Seeing my bosses this morning and feeling grateful that they are such lovely people and chatting away with another couple of colleagues. Jeez, I’m so lucky!

Life really is quite extraordinary when I’m not drinking. If I’d still been drinking, chances are I would have been hungover this morning. That would have meant no morning coffee (can’t have coffee in the morning with a hangover, it makes me more dizzy probably due to dehydration). Getting on any type of public transport (or even leaving the house in the first place) would have been a struggle and even if the trains had all pulled in at the exact right moment I would have felt too shit to appreciate it anyway. I would also have avoided any conversation at work due to being too zonked to keep up with any conversation aimed at the over-3s. There are so many exciting things lined up and I can’t wait to see how incredible the Big Things will be without booze if the everyday, seemingly unimportant and small stuff makes me this happy. Fucking HELL, remind me why I ever drank?? Oh yeah…. The illusion that it’d add something good. Glad I finally woke up. Phew!

So there we are. Today I am not going to drink.

*My apologies if you weren’t on the Hammersmith & City line heading eastbound at around 8.30am this morning, here’s some happy thoughts now instead: have an amazing day, you are loved, you are important, this world is good because you are in it and remember to smile – it might be the only smile someone sees today so make sure you do.

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