Oct 11 2008
Casting Call for life’s movie….
I was having a talk with one of the many people that I talk to since I started recovery, and I had a very good conversation about how people react to me now differently than a few months ago. The biggest difference is that I actually am aware how people react to me and treat me since I am not in an alcohol induced haze anymore. There is nothing more embarrassing for me than talking to someone and not realizing that they had told me something very important, that didn’t register in my head at the time, since a few billions brain cells were waving goodbye to the rest of my head. What it basically comes down to, and I am paraphrasing another person, that life is a big movie. We all have our scripts that we pick up, and that is how we play. Dropped into any random situation, we will continue to play our script the only way we know how. For the longest time, I was typecast. Like Al Pacino playing a mobster, I was the social screw up. People relied on me to basically be unreliable, and that is how I always viewed myself, and when push came to shove, I even went out of my way to play that, since it was easiest. Nowadays, I have my stuff together and many people are not knowing how to treat me. I have my bills paid, I have lost an enormous amount of weight, and I am much happier than I have ever been. Some people take me being happy as automatic sarcasm, and they can’t understand why I am happy, and sometimes even go to the length of trying to complain about things to get me to complain and be miserable, just like I used to. To all you folks out there struggling to get out of addiction, the challenge, and fun of watching people adapt to you after you have cleaned your life up, is incredible. I spent the last week buying clothes that I would have never bought a few months ago. I fit into a size pants that I haven’t fit into since high school, and I was so stoked, that I went out and spent a few hundred on expensive designer clothes. What I spent this last week, trumps the total monetary value of my waredrobe up until now. But you know what, that is money I would have spent on booze. Quiting the sauce not only helped me drop over 65lbs in a very short time, but it saved me a ton of money. I can also walk around the mall shopping for hours without sweating like I just got done jogging in a sauna. Just like actors, it is fun to play new parts. I don’t know how this will all end, but for the first time in years, I’m sharp, motivated, and love proving people wrong. Like my very wise brother once told me, I want to be “that guy” who kicked a terrible disease, and although I had every excuse in the world to drink, from family sickeness, to losing the love of my life and my puppy in the same day, I was able to rise up with a full heart…..and spend $120 on a pair of jeans……It is possible, and there is a major difference from the high feeling of forgetting your problems through drugs and alcohol, and the amazing feeling of eliminating your problems and facing adversity one on one, eye to eye, and rather than using booze to cover the pain of a shot…..throw the first punch and knock bad luck on it’s ass for once…..ML
