Blog entry for:

i acknowledge, first, that i do not yet have a foundation, that my addiction has made my life utterly unmanageable. okay round two! when i went to save what i had just written, all of it was lost. i will take it as a sign from the the forces beyond my control, that perhaps what i just wrote was for my benefit only. so it goes…
…what i wrote about was how dealing with my grandmother’s passing over the thanksgiving weekend ten years ago, and staying clean, laid the beginning of the foundation that has sustained my recovery this past ten years. in case i have never written about this event, my grandmother died the friday after thanksgiving in 1997. she had slid into the twilight of dementia as her body failed her bit by bit, stripping away the money she had accumulated over her lifetime, as well as, thankfully, comprehension of her reality as her dignity was stolen from her a little bit at a time. anyhow what i did over the course of the week after her death, before facing twelve weekends in jail, set the stage for long term recovery for this addict. i could have easily justified using, i could have easily justified running away, but i sat my a$$ in meetings, shared about how i was feeling, and did not use no matter what. i have been feeling a bit off all week, yes part of it is sitting between steps six and seven, but that did not explain the whole set of feelings i was having. what hit me last night was when another addict shared that was their first thanksgiving clean, and of course i tripped back to mine and BOOM there it was! a significant anniversary was upon me, the ten year anniversary of my grandmother’s death. all of a sudden it was clear what was going on inside of me. i am reliving a bit of sadness, attributed to the intense grief i felt at seventy-five days clean. yes i miss my gringa, and yes i have more than a few regrets about how i treated her in the end stages of my active addiction, and yes i have made my peace with that piece of my history. nevertheless here it is again, a bit of sadness, a bit of regret and a bit of gratitude, all wrapped up in a holiday weekend and the giving me great excuse to go SHOPPING! the real problem is, i already have been perusing a shiny new gift for me, BUT all i did is look…
so it is time to say so long for now and be part of the living, so i can celebrate this thanksgiving and be a part of the lives that are still a part of mine. CU tomorrow!

∞ DT ∞