Redmayne

Johnathan Livingston Seagull rules, ok!

Said only because today, 6 years and 4 months sober, I treated myself to a run to the coast. Fleetwood, what was a small fishing town on the north west coast of Lancashire in the UK.

Where,for the first seven years of my life I was raised by my late Mother and beloved Grandparents, with nary a drop of alcohol, never mind the smell of it in the house ever. It didn't exist for them, ever.

Sixty years have passed since then, and I sat at the entrance to the beach near the place I'd meet my Gran, in the summer, after primary school had finished and we'd have our tea, sitting their until the sun started to set and the evening chill touched the air.

Today, I was met by a still calm ocean and a clear sky, the colour blue was everywhere and you could see for miles in any direction...and I sat there, on my own, hiding my tears from the passersby and wept...

Untold grief an feelings poured out of me, for all that I was as a child, for all the promise life held for me in my late teens and twenties and everything my alcoholism took away from me, starting in my thirties and lasting another thirty years, until the date I was relieved of y alcoholism and the desire to drink, which I count as the 15th Feb.,2008...for this was the first time, addressing both my alcoholism and sobriety, I'd ever had the opportunity to be in a place that meant so much to together with the 'ghosts of the pasts' of people who really, more than anyone else, really mattered to me and for who I still pray every day and just let the memories of my alcoholism go, whilst at the same time really valuing the gift of my sobriety. What it's brought me, both in the present and in the future...

Johnathan Livingston Seagull? Because, I was identified with Richard Bach's character way back in 1988, and what was not only to be a turning point in my life, which brought much darker times in my life. In which there's no doubt my alcoholism played a contributory, but not the primary part in being the catalyst in events that meant, other than my son. I twice lost everything and I do mean EVERYTHING...

Yet through all this and the years that followed, 'Johnathan' kept popping up in my life. I've lent more copes of that book, never returned, than I care to remember. I have my own copy now, and nobody gets that!

Of course, whilst today unfolded, me sat there weeping, the clear blue sky provided space for the odd seagull to soar overhead landing far out in the ocean, reminding me that as a child. I used to see them flood, the now extinct mussels beds as the tide went out. Making me think that 'Johnathan' like the god of my understanding, together with the 'hosts of the past' Mother, Grandparents was always with me, and still are today. Perhaps that's one of the gifts of sobriety, simply because I'll always remember today...Johnathan Livingston rules, ok!