"When "i" is replaced with "we" even illness becomes wellness." - Malcolm X

Even now, 13+ years into continuous sobriety, I am shocked and amazed at the emotional imbalances of my early recovery. I'm so grateful that I have a written record of much of those early years. I was so broken and I need to remember how shattered I was. In early recovery, I wrote:
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"Now, when I cry for others, why do they feel like the tears that I should have had, but never did, never did shed for myself? Is empathy a rear view mirror? A way to not cry out alone? A backlog, a log jam of tears. Why am I now bleeding where once I should have scarred? Why are the tremors I am now feeling the sober echoes of my unfelt, drunken, painful past?"
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Geez-o-whiz! 
Emotions in the bottleneck, years and years later, continuing into my early recovery. Addiction sucked the life out of everything and I am still recovering. Still the drunk dreams, the drug dreams. "You can have drunk dreams sober, but you can't have sober dreams drunk" continues to ring true today. I, for one, will not, must never forget the way it did not have to be. 
Addiction fed itself on me and I was consumed. This is a new and better life for me now. My clarity increases with time, even as my slow decline from age slowly takes over. I don't really feel that yet, but it is as inevitable as December following the Fall. Life is for living. Sober. Serene. In Recovery. Today.
Emotions anesthetized by decades of booze took years to reach their equilibriums in recovery. Balance, finding balance took so much time. The harmony in me uncovered, discovered, recovered. 
It took time for my rollercoaster of my emotions to come to a full stop. The momentum of thirty years slowly become a glass of Recovery filled to the brim with gratitude.
Truly, I do not wish to repeat the past... again!
Sincerely, The (former) Relapse King
P.S. When I first got sober, it felt like my life would be forever leafless and dull. Instead, my life went from NEVER green to EVERGREEN! New life replacing the old.

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"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more."
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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
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Passages in quotes are excerpted from ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
Recovery Tweets: http://twitter.com/JimAnders4