What does sobriety look like for you?
My therapist asked this sort of question repeatedly over the weeks and months and years.
Where do you see yourself in the future?
What does happiness look like to you?
If you were to be sober, what would that look like?
And I’d say
You know that I’m no good at these guessing games
Prognosticating
Trying to make up something I just can’t see
Same as if you ask me to watch my thoughts floating gently downstream
And out of sight
My thoughts won’t sit on those leaves and even if they could, I can’t see the leaves nor the stream
Unless it’s the stream of my father’s dream, but that’s not my dream
I don’t have a dream
Having been sober a little while now, I can promise you that I would not have successfully
Prognosticated
That the beast would still jump out of the bushes
Startling me even though I knew IT was still there
I would not have guessed that I would spend damn near an entire Saturday afternoon
After 20 months (610 days! 14,630 hours! But hey, who's counting?) engaged in idle and inane conversation with myself about
What it would look like to go to the liquor store
What’s more
I would not have predicted with any degree of certainty that I would eventually give up
And go upstairs to change into pajamas
Sealing the deal that I wasn’t going anywhere at all
And for now, I’m perfectly fine with
(irritated with, exasperated with, but still fine with)
Sobriety looking like staying in pajamas night and day, if that’s what it takes
To make sobriety look like it looks for me today