Making hope wider
It's always darkest before the dawn. I can attest that hope was always brightest at dawn. It was dusk that crushed my soul.
The fear that was in me when I first realized I could not stop.
Hope for me, at that time, was trying to climb through the eyehole of a needle. It seemed an impossibility at best. It was a sliver.
Day in and day out the constant thinking of drinking. The awful emotions of darkness. Of a complete lack of hope that I could make a change.
How do I make hope wider? I thought. A funny thing to think but that's what it was. How can I make the end of my day hopeful?
That's one of those things about early recovery I hated most. The humongous gap between want and action. Between morning and evening. Between hope and hopelessness.
I gave hope a chance the first day I stayed sober. Well at least the first evening I stayed sober. I woke drunk everyday.
I gave hope a chance when I first reached out here on SR and got a response. Lessons about who I had become from strangers that did not know me but knew me at the same time. I felt hope then. But not wide enough I could crawl through to the other side.
I gave hope another chance and another chance with the constant declarations of sobriety and the constant and seemingly inevitable failure.
I learned a very sincere lesson about making hope wider. I learned it from the folks here. It's simple really.
Hope is not passive. It is an action to be taken by me. It is tangible not in my words but in me asking for help. Going to a meeting. In posting on SR. Taking my lumps and making them triumphs.
I am not saying anything new. Just sharing how I saw it. Hope to me is action. The sobriety I have today is very different than it was a few months ago. And it's probably going to be different than a few months from now.
Make hope wider what ever way you can! And you can. I am so sure of that because I am doing the same thing. Thanks for always being there for me SR! Just thought I would share today.
Ken