hope
 

I finally have it.

I came here for the first time in July, went to my first AA meeting the next week, and slowly started to let new ideas in. I've slipped many times and have struggled hard (still do) with imagining a sober life wherein I'm happy.

However, I kept listening, kept going to meetings, kept showing up here, listening to tapes, reading stories about other alcoholics who found their way to sobriety and...I have hope.

I knew I needed a sponsor. I went to a huge meeting last night in Boston, listened when a woman said, "if you're a woman and you don't know what to do next, find me after the meeting." I went to her and she agreed to be my temporary sponsor.

I'm humbled and insanely grateful for the willingness of others to help and share their stories.

I don't know what my life will look like, but for the first time, I have hope that I can do this and that it will be better.

:ring

Hi lala. I love to read posts like yours, it is so cool to see hope start to creep back into the picture. I struggle imagining a sober life, but if I don't get too far ahead of myself it settles down. I guess that is why it is so helpful to have each other to lean on. I am so glad you had a good experience last night! :)

Lovely post Lala :)

This is where it all started for me too! Hope had to take hold but once that happened it was a slow and steady climb back to real life. Glad you're hear and headed in a positive direction. Keep on keeping on!

Hope:

"The chronicity of addiction is really a kind of fatalism writ large. If an addict knows in his heart he is going to use someday, why not today? But if a thin reed of hope appears, the possibility that it will not always be so, things change. You live another day and then get up and do it again. Hope is oxygen to someone who is suffocating on despair."

-- From David Carr's book, The Night of the Gun

great stuff lala - hope really is a gift, I think :)

D