So, in less than 2 weeks I’ll be a year without drugs, and naturally, I’ve been reviewing my recovery. I guess reaching a year was a big shiny dream where I expected to have everything I ever wanted. At the very least, I expected to have my life in order and be in a better position to help others.
But I’m not ready to help anyone. I can still barely look after myself. It’s turned out that this year has been more about learning about the new me. My strengths, my weaknesses, my limitations, my delusions. Without drugs, I imagined I could do anything, and yes, I can still do anything, just not in the time frame I expected.
So I feel it’s time to practice some humility. It’s like starting from the beginning again. This time last year I’d ‘almost finished my book’, but after letting a couple of people read it, I realised there was still work to do. So here I am, a year later, having ‘almost finished my book’.
It makes me realise that this isn’t just a matter of recovery. My life is on hold until I publish that book. Once I put it on amazon, I can guage the next step as well as focus on other things, like promoting it. I remember once hearing that a writer’s life is a lonely one. I’m beginning to understand what that means. It’s not just about the hours spent, alone, writing. Even when I’m in company, I feel isolated.
I’m not really there with them because I’m living somewhere far away, in the created world of the novel. People ask what I’ve been up to. What else can I say? ‘I’m still working on the book’. And no one knows, not even me, if all that hard work will pay off. But even if it doesn’t pay off financially, it will pay off. I can use it as a springboard for another project, and of course, I’ll be able to say: ‘I’ve published a book, aren’t you know’.
Addiction Alchemist 