I’d address you by name but you have so many so I’ll just call you booze. When I first met you, you made me feel loved, secure and at peace. You lent me your strength. Your charm rubbed off on me. I felt like a better man when I embraced you. You had me from the very beginning. The unspoken agreement was unknown to me. I didn’t know that by accepting your many gifts I would lose some of my own….even if I hadn’t found them within myself yet.
At first it seemed like a good trade. I had never felt sane. You could have my non-existent sanity. I didn’t understand self-respect….or that you could take that too. I didn’t want you to take the love from my life. You did, even though I begged you not to. You took my family and friends. You ruined relationships. You turned people against me. I thought it was them but at this point we had become one.
I stopped seeing myself as a separate entity from you. You became part of me. You started to steal things from me. There was no “deal” anymore. There was only things you wanted….that you needed me to provide. As we melded into one I became my own god. I was the one stealing, cheating and lying. I became booze. I manipulated others just as you manipulated me in the beginning. I gave toxic gifts camouflaged as hopes and dreams. This made you so happy. We would not suffer alone. I preyed on other’s fears, wants and needs. You were my mentor. My teacher. My Father and Mother.
You were so proud when I became you and everything that you possessed. I learned to hate. I learned to resent more strongly than ever before. You gave me all these things. I was your life as much as you were mine. You took my money and my jobs. You took my home and my comfort. No matter where I went you followed. I must admit, most of these things I gave to you freely. I was ignorant. In the very end you took my soul. After all we had been through when you saw I had nothing left, you dragged me to a deep dark place and there you locked me away. You kept me hostage in my own mind with shackles of my own making.
It was there that I wept long and hard, never ending tears of self-pity. You sat with me there in that dark place. You stopped giving me things. You left me all alone with nothing to sustain me. Then, on the very precipice of death I found AA (or maybe AA found me). In the blackness I clumsily felt around and found a key! It unlocked the heavy, rusted and worn shackles weighing me down. It unlocked a door hidden by the absence of light in my mind. Only I could open it but I had grown accustomed to the engulfing abyss.
I was scared to push the unlocked door open. I didn’t know what was on the other side. I was terrified! In my desperation, I leaned against it and it creaked open. A tiny sliver of light burst through with no warning or filter. It’s as if I was thrust into a new world. My eyes were unaccustomed to the intensity. Everything was blurry at first. My mind started to adjust. I slowly continued to push the opening wider until finally, it was all I could see. I bathed in the light. It was warm and safe. I washed away the fear and terror that had gripped me since before I could recall.
Then came a day I had only dreamed of. With the precision of a brain surgeon and the sharpness of a scalpel a new being cut you out of me. It told me that I could be loving, understanding and tolerant. It never introduced itself but it didn’t need to. It was apparent to me that we had already become acquainted - my Higher Power and I. I had heard of such a thing but never communicated with one. Now that you had been removed I had a gaping hole inside me that my HP quickly filled. It didn’t seem to want anything in return for freeing me from your deathly clutches. I have continued to speak with it ever since that beautiful day.
I don’t know what happened to you. There never was a formal goodbye. I’m not sad anymore. I fill the void inside myself with love and peace and serenity. It’s with love, peace and serenity that I now say my farewell to you - officially - and all that goes with you.
Goodbye my old friend. Father, Mother and enemy. My caregiver and caretaker. My warden, my accomplice and my master. Goodbye….for you have no hold on me now. Goodbye for we are different. Goodbye for I have found a new guide and its name is Higher Power.
