Your Share
After two years here, I’m beginning to feel the creep and constraint of smallness. Oh sure I don’t need millions of people nearby to embrace a sense of honest engagement, truth is it only takes a few. Yet still, I have identified the need to step outside my comfort zone (and zip code) for a bit.
An hour away is a darling town four times the size as 2K home, so I thought I’d give it a try. The first place I visited downtown pulled me in instantly, a hip coffee shop with amazing food awhile gorgeous friendly people milling all about. Ok, this is working.
And I connected with a small recovery community, sitting in on an intimate three-person meeting later in the day, three people attending including me, leaving more than six open chairs free.
Seemed like options were arising.
Day two in 8K town was less vibrant. I arrived back at the coffee shop but learned it was an hour before they were going to close. The staff from day-previous was out sick hence the shortened operational hours, yet the customer base still filled the space with joyous pleasure. I sat and stayed a gleeful while. A quick step across the street to the bakery, then I was off to explore more of the town.
Funny how the weather coming right off the lake is so dramatically different than 40 miles inland, it was 25 degrees cooler walking the scenic lakeshore path. Some fun was had with monster pup Maximus, then I thought to rejoin the recovery group for a special back-to-back double trouble set of meetings.
Mostly in these rooms I keep my recovery time a secret. I’ve experienced that the average clean or sober time is multiple weeks or months, not decades like mine. I might be looked upon as a gold winged unicorn in meetings, but not always. Elsewise at the tables I am deemed irrelevant, because of too much time out of the game. Anyways, I usually produce some sort of profound share, and am welcomed to keep coming back.
Said piggyback meetings produced a full room for the first go round, and half a room full for the second.
Although not always stories of great depth are shared, one thing you can count on is that not a single no one is making shit up. There’s no one-up-manship afoot, and often the output of personal tragedy and legacy hardship brings the speaker and / or listeners to tears.
One amazing fact arising is that despite the struggle, people still get up and make it to group. I cannot overstate my awe while listening to someone spill their fricking guts all over the damn floor. It’s their tenacious will that dumbfounds me, recognizing what was required for them to get up and make themselves presentable, or at least put on a pair of pants, and make their way across town to be here. Ridiculously humbling it is, their courage in defiance of profound self harm, humbling for real.
Yes, a tear or three was shed by yours truly in both back to back meetings, and I quickly scribbled the note below once I got home.
Per usual I had set out on an adventure of self, only to find my earthly meaning as a supporting actor in the play of us all.
Within our warm and cushy homes we sometimes lose sight that this very minute, someone is struggling horribly with the essential needs of survival, that being the search for the will to live.
How is it, despite it all, that the sun still shines
Our heaviness feels too dark and lonely, at times
Yet the butterfly flutters, the windows shed their shutters
The world opens, urging us to come play
We think ourselves too injured, abandoned, so inside we stay
Hoping to catch a break we try to try, staring out the windows
If doing inventory we’re alright, but many times lose the sight
Anticipating something better coming just ‘round the corner
We get up to go, working to bury the burden
My hope for you is that you find your way
To not fall for the lies, to not give up, but stay
The world, this one right here, is so much nicer with you in it than without you.
