I’ve never been a morning person. As I type this sentence, my mind chews on it…it doesn’t resonate. Yes, I am a morning person, when I’m waking up to do something I love. Camping with my dad, him waking me up before the sun to go fishing, tapping my feet as I sleep on the hide-a-bed. As groggily hungover as I am, I think about sitting on his boat, feeling the hum of the lake through the fishing pole, and the sunrise I know will take my breath away. I think about the memories I’ll make with my father—we really don’t have much in common aside from fishing and our mutual love for my two boys. This is how we connect.

So yes, I can be a morning person. It’s currently 5:59 AM, and I set my alarm for 5:30. When I have the boys, I throw pity parties for myself because I never seem to have anytime to do what I want. Yet I do…I just choose to spend it on 2 hours of sleep I really don’t need because I’m either a little hungover or I really don’t feel like getting out of bed, or both. I like this solitude.

My dad is on my thoughts a lot…memories of waking up as a girl, coming upstairs to say good morning to my dad as he sat at the table, reading the newspaper and drinking his coffee, black. He was always so relaxed in the mornings.

I went to my second AA meeting last night. My therapist, mom, and boss all suggested it at different times. I resisted, memories of AA meetings daily while in treatment running through my mind. “I don’t want to rehash my drinking over and over, or hear other people brag about how bad their drinking was.” The way some men looked at girls like fresh meat when we walked in, and the creepers who couldn’t, wouldn’t get the message we weren’t interested still makes my skin crawl. I considered Al Anon…as heartbreaking as it was I really appreciated the families sharing their stories of just how much alcohol wreaked havoc on their lives, through no fault of their own, only because they love someone locked in a battle with their demons and losing. Thinking the very thing robbing them of their power, their essence, not realizing it’s taking their soul and leaving them a shell of the person they once were. If only they could see the ending if they continue walking this path— how it will cost them everything and give them nothing in return but a fleeting false sense of security and courage…that they’re sleepwalking through life, anesthetizing against pain that isn’t as horrible as they make it out to be.

Anyway, not really sure where all that came from. I found a women’s only group that meets Mondays and Wednesdays at 5:30. Honestly what got my attention was I saw it was a book study on Wednesdays, and not realizing it was the Big Book, got excited thinking of reading and discussing different books. My friend from treatment laughingly explained to me no, it’s the Big Book and went with me because she is so good like that.

As soon as I walked in, I realized I loved the vibe—shackles on, shackles off? Most definitely shackles off…it almost reminded me of going to church on Sundays, that elusive sense of peace that I was exactly where I am supposed to be for the moment. Genevieve Davis talks about this feeling—”the Glimpses”

“A flash of knowing, of bright recognition, smiling anticipation, and bubbling excitement. They were otherworldly, yet so familiar It was like I was seeing another life once lived, to be lived, or perhaps being lived right at that moment, in another place, another dimension. It was like autumn leaves underfoot, the breathless silence of midnight snow, the spicy, icy, tinkling tingle of Christmas, the smoky evening hum of a summer festival. It was something ancient, but also now. What is that?” —Becoming Genevieve

I’ve been praying to find my tribe, of fellow women who support me and whom I can support as well. Now that I’m not drinking, they seem to be everywhere. Fellow artists, creative souls. I realize writing this now just how much alcohol isolated me, made me think there wasn’t others out there, so I might as well have another to pass the time.

Yet last night someone comes—I assume she’s an oldtimer as this is my first Monday meeting. I come in right at 5:30 and sit on the same couch. Later she says it’s her first meeting, and after we talk, and realize we’ve taken a class together in the past. I think about Powerlessness as it means in AA:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of Providence can remove it from us.
No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one.

Flashbacks of treatment—of a phenomenon called “dry drunk”. Unless I dealt with the emotional baggage and thought processes that make me want to drink, I would still be miserable sober, if not more so. At the time I wasn’t ready to confront my “shadow side”, and instead convinced myself I only drank because I felt trapped in a marriage and if I could only be free, I wouldn’t need to drink.

Fast forward two and a half years and one divorce later, I’m right back where I was, only my life is going so well and I don’t have anything to blame. I’m almost done paying off my awful credit card debt and repairing my credit, a boyfriend who is supportive, who listens and understands, and even more importantly, lets me be me. Two healthy, funny, beautiful boys, a job with a boss and co-workers I adore, living in a Montgomery Ward farmhouse on thousands of acres as cows stroll past the backyard. There’s nothing to blame, except myself. I am miserable, because I am too afraid to confront whatever emotional pain I’ve hidden away in these invisible trashbags I carry with me everywhere I go. And yes, they stink.

The Universe blows my mind. I look out the window to my left in this room Tyler helped me set up as my art room, taking in the sun starting to rise. I think I should maybe read a devotional, so I open the The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo to today’s date and read:

The Moment of Dawn
A Rabbi asks his students, “How do you know the first moment of dawn has arrived?…You know the first moment of dawn has arrived when you look into the eyes of another human being and see yourself.”
It is essential to realize and embrace the paradox that while no one can go through your journey for you, you are not alone. Everyone is on the same journey. Everyone shares the same pains, the same confusions, the same fears, which if put out between us, lose their edges and so cut us less.

I struggle with shame, the fear of others judging me. Yet the more I share my deepest thoughts and feelings and allow people to know the real me, the more I realize I’m not alone.