DAY IS DAWNING

I'm sitting up in bed very early, with the curtains drawn back, waiting for the dawn. Just 5 or 6 lights shining a reflection into the water across the bay, and a very few scattered lights on the hillside. So different from a big cityscape of lights. Beautiful in its quiet smallness and simplicity. Soon I will have a bath, and from there I also have amazing views which give me such a feeling of richness within. Nature in all its glory, after city life for the last 12 years, is so very welcome back in my every day life.

Spring is officially here tomorrow but it's already started and it's wonderful to be having beautiful warm days lately, although it's raining just now. The boys laid the ready lawn last week and it is like putting the icing on the cake. I just love it and it looks amazing and really finishes the place off. Been doing some more planting too with the help of a lovely lady who Rory met at the dump and introduced me to.
The corten steel cladding is now finished and starting to rust and although it won't be to everyone's taste it is certainly floating my boat bigtime. Oh, and on my way home last night I picked up my beautiful copper sculpture after the exhibition ended at the Little River Gallery. It is an extravagence for sure, but one I will enjoy forever, and the money is justified by the fact that I could have drank and smoked the same amount in about 10 weeks.

Next weekend I'm having a gathering of some of our sober clan from Living Sober. There will be 16 of us if they all make it, and we are renting my sisters and my nephews houses to help accommodate them all. They are keen to check out the new house and it's a good excuse for a get together. It is quite an honour to have them all wanting to come, as they are coming from Auckland, Hamilton, Perth, Wellington, Blenheim, Dunedin and Christchurch. Most of them have witnessed me dreaming about building this house, pulling the pin for a while, then deciding to bite the bullet and get on with it, and the rest is history. They've been there, listening, sharing in the triumphs, and the pride I have in my son Rory the builder, the frustrations and anxiety sometimes, and the joy in seeing it all come together, so its awesome that they will be here now to occupy and share in it for the weekend. What I love about these new friendships is we are all like a bunch of licorice allsorts, so very different from one another but with a bond of trust and loyalty and honesty second to none. These people, my new sober friends, they really "get it". They understand what a big deal it is to be living a life with no booze ever. Mostly it is just fine and its my normal way of being now, it's not as if I think about it all the time or wish for my life to be different. But it is good to feel understood. It is good to be around people who have walked the same path and know the myriad of emotions involved in arriving at this place of inner freedom.....and staying here. 

The booze will always hold that lure for me. When I crave it I really crave it. I almost smell it and taste it, and I imagine that liquid honey sliding down my throat, and the feeling as it takes it's effect, and I long for it sometimes, still. But I don't ever long for all the crap that goes with it. I don't long to be less of myself because of it. I don't long to get loud and raucus and talk shit. I don't long to wake up and feel like going back to sleep because I don't want to face the day. I don't long to live with that nagging knowledge that I have a problem and I need to deal with it. 

I absolutely LOVE the freedom from all of that, and if it comes with the small cost of occasional cravings and a way smaller social life, I will live with that. I will also find the advantages in that. One is that it is way easier to make this transition to come and live here in beautiful Takamatua, where I have no friends, yet, and definately no social life, because I am already well used to my life being way smaller in the ways of social interaction. I am preferring quality over quantity. I am enjoying my own company too. I am getting things done. I still see my children as often as before and that is what matters. I am taking a leaf out of Charles Bukowski's poems and appreciating my solitude. I am okay. I am enough.

ON AN EVEN KEEL

I've woken this morning bright and early with an amusing little epiphany. I was reading an article last night which linked solitude to creativity, so I am hoping I may become inspired creatively at some stage. 

Then I thought in the meantime I shall just continue to write my blog, even if it isn't so much about alcohol or the lack of it any more. It is about my life as I go forward without it. Then that led me to think about my life now as being on an even keel. No big highs and no big lows. Then of course that led me to think about a life of drinking, my previous life in fact, as being quite similar in a sense to very rapid cycling bi polar. Sailing along on an even keel for a day or so, then getting on it and having a major high episode, talking loudly, getting over excited, doing and saying things we probably wouldn't normally, sometimes getting a bit out of control, lots of laughter, or sometimes hot headedness, impatience, or anger. Possibly saying hurtful things to someone close in the heat of the moment. Sometimes just having fun, dancing, laughing and feeling happy. Then bed. Then wake up. Feeling low. Feeling lots of feelings that go with feeling low. Physically under par, feelings of remorse, guilt, shame, nagging worry, regret, sadness, lack of motivation, tiredness, all leading to feeling a mini-depression for the day. We battle on through, then towards the end of the day we decide to make ourselves feel good again, and away we go on a new tangent. Often they are just mini tangents where there is no bad behaviour, no particular excess and it's quite mellow, but another little drinking tangent it is, and underlying nagging worry and guilt accompanies it, for me. Have a few more and that mostly goes away, until the morning, or more often the middle of the night! Having close links to someone with bi polar I am qualified to make this comparism. I don't mean in any way that is actually anything to do with being bi polar. I just woke with the similarity in my mind. Like a mini version of it. For someone like me. Bi polar is something a person is born with. Some argue that alcoholism is too. Whatever the truth is in that, with bi polar a person has no choice. With alcohol they do.

So all of that led me to look at my life now, three years down the track of being sober at all times.

Although it has been a very emotional and enlightening journey, facing everything that life dishes up to me, good or bad, with my feet planted firmly on the ground, never once altering my state to soften hurt feelings or bad news, or to lift my spirits (funny wee pun) in times of sadness or in celebration, or to ease feelings of pressure and stress after a hard day's work. Or to cut loose and join in with friends and family and enjoy the familiar loosening up and fun and camaraderie and communication created by sharing an evening of drinking together. The latter is what I miss the most, sometimes achingly so. I think it is very sad that I don't fit in to anyone's life much anymore. Just because I don't drink. It says more about them and about our culture and our society than it does about me, I think.

So here I am, living in solitude a lot of the time, in the home I have designed, bespoke for me, with the help of an excellent and creative architect, and the tremendous effort, skill and passion of my adorable and generous son Rory, and many of his friends who've worked on it in their various professions. Now that this project nears completion I am hoping that soon some new creativity will enter my sphere and inspire me. 

In the meantime I am living my life on an even keel. I feel strong, good, quite alone not surprisingly, it's me that put me here where I know almost no one. It is beautiful here, kind of empowering, and I feel way more peaceful in these surroundings. I know I have set myself up for a fulfilled and purposeful life. I will be patient, grateful, and hopeful while that unfolds.

My rudder is steady.