Coming Home To Me
Finding my way back to me……………
For a very long time I was lost, completely lost and then I wasn’t. This is how I found my way home. This is my journey back to me.
There is someone waiting for all who are still suffering in their painful habit. Someone waiting at home with open arms and heart. I promise you x
Four years ago, sometime in May, I stood in my kitchen, staring at the last few inches in the half bottle of vodka that I must have missed the night before when I was drunk. I had walked, in a daze from my bedroom, half of me dreading my reaction to the booze in front of me, the other half experiencing an emotion I couldn’t identify then and still can’t now.
Would I do my usual, pick it up and swig the remains straight from the bottle? I could justify it, I had passed my self-imposed, but flexible, “I never drink in the morning” rule and even better, I didn’t have to do anything that evening, other than a quick visit to the shops to top up my not-so-secret vodka stash, that would necessity hiding my drinking those dregs.
This time though, as I picked the bottle up and examined its contents, the first of many incredible kaleidoscopic shifts occurred within me and the landscape of my life, my future changed forever. Just minutes before I had been in total despair as I wrote a letter of love to my son. A letter attempting to explain the un-explainable – that I was going to leave him, to die because I couldn’t stop pouring booze down my throat, and that although he was and always would be the love of my life, I had no choice but to put alcohol before him because I was an addict, and that quitting was, as he had already seen far too many times, completely beyond me.
As I wrote sobbing in defeat, knowing absolutely the mountain of unnecessary suffering my leaving would cause him, a door in my cognition had opened almost imperceptibly, and it was this opening that had got me up from my desk and down into the kitchen to the vodka bottle. There that door had burst wide open, straight off of its hinges, and I had understood, finally after more than 27 years of feeling hopeless, powerless and out of control around alcohol, that I had chosen drink, it hadn’t chosen me. I was responsible for all the chaos and destruction my choice to drink had caused, and that I alone, not alcohol, was to blame. Then, incredibly, with that one simple insight, and acceptance of responsibility over my choices past, present and future, I was free.
I let the drunk, broken self I had become, stumble through that door and into a place I had dreamed of for so many years of my life, a place that I never thought I could reach, that had no space for someone like me. A place that I had on rare occasions been allowed to catch a glimpse of, but always and forever denied entry too. And as I faltered forward uncertainly into this new place, I was met by a kind, compassionate woman, warm and loving who opened her arms to welcome me, without judgement or condemnation.
A woman who had waited patiently for me all those years, knowing that I was lost, so very far from home, desperately sad and feeling utterly alone. Her beautiful smile told me that she had always known that I would come back, that I would make it through the darkness and storms of my addiction, believing in me and loving me as she had through everything I had done.
I fell into this good, kind woman’s arms and she held me close and forgave me. Then as I clung to her and she comforted me, I dissolved first into the essence of the lonely little girl who had grieved for her mother for so many years before she had died, before maturing into the desolate 27 year old who no longer had the chance to make peace with her mother, to tell her she loved her. And from there shifting in form into the mother I myself became, isolated, frightened and suffering from severe post-natal depression, before finally settling into the woman who had longed so much to be the mother her child deserved, the mother I sensed I could be, but could never quite become.
This lovely woman, generous of heart and spirit, held me tight as she kissed away that little girl’s loss, and together we let her go. Then, following her departure, the spirit of every other painful person, every incarnation of the drunk I had become followed, acknowledged, forgiven and in peace.
I gave in that day in my kitchen and allowed myself to be claimed by someone who loved and cared for me above anyone or anything else. I did this because I had recognized as soon as I saw her. I knew she would never let me down if I just trusted and put my faith in my survival in her.
After all my pain was gone, after the drunk me had been absolved and understood, what was left was just the two of us, a mirror image of each other, no longer separated by the hurt, damage and chaos my drinking had caused.
I had come home, I had found a way back to the person I was before I was a drunk, and I knew instinctively, as we clung together, both in relief and release, that this good, kind and loving woman was me.
Love & respect to all those who are lost right now x
Sonia x
