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.