If…

If I would have known last week the things I know now I might have done some things differently. That could be a theme for my life.

I don’t know exactly what I would do differently, I just KNOW that I wouldn’t want to do last week the same. Over the course of the life of this blog you readers have been riding shotgun on my life and recovery. There have been ups and downs, failures and successes and I try to give an honest reflection of it here amongst the bits and pixels. Strangely enough the statistics reveal that when I am down my readership is up and when I’m doing well people read something else. With that history I would imagine that last week was a prophecy of a blockbuster on the blog this week.

I had a lot of things come at me last week. Some were pretty substantial, but most were not. In and of themselves they would likely fall under the heading of “Annoyance”, but with all of the larger episodes, the small ones just added weight to the pile. I toppled me over and I crashed on an emotional level. I have not spent so many hours (yes hours) just staring as I did last week. Everything seemed to bring me to tears. But weeks have weekends, and weekends are supposed to end the week, right? So I am going to focus on that.

Friday nights are the best. Friday nights mean Celebrate Recovery and time with my forever family. They LOVE ME, and I LOVE THEM. The ability to be honest is a relief. Part of me is scared to admit my weaknesses and failures because I am afraid that someone will say I should step down from being a recovery leader. Then what would I do? The thought scares me into silence. I scares me into denial. It scares me into failure. My Forever Family just allowed me to be me and not be perfect. That is an important part of my healing and recovery.

Saturday brought a trip out of town with my wife. We had tickets to a play that neither of us were particularly excited about followed by tickets to a concert that I was pretty sure she would despise. Not very promising way to begin a long day. The play lasted 2 hours and 50 minutes. It could have been shorter, but it turned out better than I expected. And it was good to just be. I was given ticket to see Frank Zappa’s son play in Hollywood. Now I love Frank and his music, but it is one the few acts that Bev has been vocal about disliking in our relationship so I was really hesitant to drag her to a late night show by his son. It was therapeutic. As I leaned against the barricade in front of the stage I listened to music that was a s complex as my emotions; as divergent as my thoughts; as chaotic as my week; and as beautiful as my recovery. Again with the tears. “Why is that guy crying at a Zappa concert?” My week washed out of me as I listened. Dweezil described the experience of a person listening to his father’s music for the first time and said something happens that just changes your DNA. Yeah, that happened to me on Saturday night. Not the change (that happened years ago), but I got back in touch with it and accepted the difference. Instead of trying to fix the problems of the past I just looked at the beauty of the now.

I’m not healed…not yet. But I am a little better than I was. My friends are still my friends. I am still loved – not universally, but unequivocally by the ones that really matter. I was down, but I will…

–Rise Up!!!