This is my daily inspiration. Seems simple right? I break it down. I, as in me. Choose: “decide on a course of action, typically after rejecting alternatives.” – Dictionary. Life: on it’s face that is not death, per the Dictionary, “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.” Capacity for growth… continual change, sure after all we aren’t stagnant creatures. The next 2 words love and happiness are ones that make this particular affirmation challenging.
Love: “an intense feeling of deep affection. – a great interest and pleasure in something. – feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment to (someone).” It’s a word that has so many meanings. From the definitions above it could mean friendship, family, an obsession with a hobby, a drug or sex. With me, my history of trauma has left me with with a distorted understanding of the word. It’s hard to choose Love if our past experiences formed an understanding of Love, that really wasn’t Love at all. If you asked me to pick up a pizza and I came over with a pineapple, you’d question if I’d ever had pizza. With a puzzled look I’d say “Of course I have, it’s this”, and point to the pineapple. Because that prickly sweet fruit, for me, was always known as pizza.
Happiness is even harder for me, because I don’t know if I’ve ever been truly happy. Happiness: “feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.” – Dictionary. Based on that definition, I look up the word contentment, the definition is circular. Similar: “Well being, peace, serenity, fulfillment, satisfaction, happiness.” By that definition, if I’m starving and someone gave me a sandwich I’d be happy, in a state of happiness. The quenching of the need, fulfillment. But I don’t think I’d take pleasure in eating the sandwich. I’d probably scarf it down hardly chewing in an attempt to squash the pains of hunger as quick as possible. I find the definition lacking. If you’d have ask me weeks ago if I was happy, I would have said yes. Did drinking make me happy? “Well of course it did”, I would have said. In hindsight, I now see, it was squashing the pains of hunger. I really derived no pleasure from it, although at the time I thought I did. It really just numbed me and allowed me to accept my definitions of love and happiness. It allowed me to continue to believe my pineapple was pizza. Even though on some unconscientious level, I’d seen enough commercials and movies to know it was a lie.
I read somewhere that we stop growing emotionally when we start using. For me, that makes me about 14. I’m 47 now and I recognize my understanding of love and happiness are severally distorted. These distortions have influenced all aspects of my life, the choices I’ve made and ultimately where I am now. On being sober , I find myself questioning everything, looking before I leap. No longer going through the motions with a liquid blindfold. I now recognize that I cannot choose love and happiness without truly discovering what they are. Sex is not love. Silencing the crying 14 year old child with drugs or drinking isn’t happiness. My pineapple isn’t pizza and I can no longer deny it.
There is a part of me that is scared to define those words. What if I discover that my very life is at odds with the my true definitions. What if this journey leads me toward a path that I’m currently not on? What if I have to not only leave the drink behind, but the behaviors or people who feed my delusions? What if I discover that the love and happiness I had been choosing weren’t love or happiness at all. What then? There are things in life you can’t unsee. Putting toothpaste back in the tube isn’t possible. Today I choose not to wear the blindfold and face the fear of potentially disrupting my entire house of cards. I’m accepting my pineapple as it is acknowledging the purpose it serves, but it isn’t pizza.
Lola Trying 