There really isn’t much to say, or if there is, it’s not coming to me. It would be a great disservice to myself and everyone who helped out along the way to let it go unmentioned. Today marks ten years of sobriety.

Ten fucking years.

The funny thing is, the last year has in many ways been filled with as many challenges as any year leading up to it. They haven’t been challenges to sobriety though. They are simply life challenges. There hasn’t been a single moment that it felt like checking out would be a solution. It didn’t even come into my head at any moment to just say fuck it and go out. It’s become quite the opposite. It’s the good days sometimes that you have to watch out for, like those sunny, happy days walking by a gin mill with an open door and seeing someone plowing into a freshly drawn pint. It’s more watching other people celebrating absolutely nothing. Even then though there has never been a point where I wished that I was one of those people that could do that.

So the deal is, life doesn’t necessarily get better, but I am better. Shit doesn’t get easier, but it along the way it became easier to flow with it. It’s A-O-fucking-Kay. Somewhere over the last ten years I grew up some and that’s okay.

I’ve had time to reflect on a lot of shit. I’ve reflected on the situations I thought were relationships where if the truth were told, weren’t relationships at all. We were just hanging on and hanging out with nothing really tangible to hold onto. Also, the situations where I thought we were just hanging out and hanging on that upon reflection were truly life-changing and gave me the blueprint for the the relationships I want in my life and those I absolutely don’t. This paragraph began as a thought on love and romance but lets extend that to friends and family. I know now who belongs in my life and who doesn’t. I know the sort of people I want in my life and those who can go taking a fucking jump off a cliff somewhere. Sound harsh? Whatever.

I saw some shit in 2019 too, and I know I’ve gone down this list before but it bears repeating. I saw a dude get run over by a truck and mangled beyond recognition. He spent his last seconds of life grasping for the things he was holding that he had dropped when the truck backed over him. A couple months later there was a guy on the sidewalk turning gray-blue from an overdose. When the cops blasted the Narcan into his dying breaths he came back to life and levitated like Jesus, swinging around reaching for nothing at all but life itself. He was up grabbing at the remains of a life nobody in their right mind would want. Then again, I’ve been among people in the last ten years who were nearly as far gone who rebuilt fulfilling lives out of nothing at all.

Both those incidents shook me to my core. Nothing can be the same. What has been seen cannot be unseen. Watch out carefully for what you put the most value on. Maybe don’t put value on anything at all but breathing. Everything else is just decoration.

I had some random motherfucker try to knock my block off. We both ended up in the ER. I went home the same day. He didn’t. I’m not celebrating that but it bears mention if for no other reason than as a reminder that you never know what any given day is going to bring you. You just never know. I am mindful of that.

I saw that despite everything I fucked up royally, both my sons grew up and aren’t anywhere near as messed up as I thought they would be. I came to the realization that WE, all three of us, are okay. They are whole. I am whole. We are whole.

We are whole. That’s a big deal. There were moments in the last ten years that it didn’t seem likely that we would ever be so.

I guess it’s time to cut this short, because I have to go do that grown up thing.

Let’s just say…

Ten.

It doesn’t look anything like I thought it might, but it’s okay.