Gratitude

The purpose of me writing this is to tell you what it was like, what happened, and what its like now. I tell my story not to hear myself speak. I am telling my story in the hope it shows someone else how to overcome the insurmountable problems in front of them just like the countless people who have done the exact same thing for me. I am not writing this in an attempt to claim responsibility of authorship for anything written here and anything that belongs or appears to belong to anyone else is indisputably their works and all credit due will be freely given. I say that because if it was left up to me I would not be writing this. I am only writing this by the grace of my higher power, the skin of my teeth, and the giants that have come before me, who cleared this path.  

The greatest gift I have ever received was the gift of desperation. I had tried everyway to implement my will on my life and I was absolutely failing at everything. I was destroying my family, I was destroying my body. My friends were gone, my extended family was gone. I was running across an open plain while the four horsemen of my own apocalypse were riding me down with the intent to annihilate me with brutalistic barbarity. I was allowed to see my future and the only thing that I shown was death watching and waiting. I was facing my own destruction. There was nowhere to go! I could not turn around and hide behind the corner. I had worked my way to Dante's inferno's 9th ring of hell. I was given two choices; stay, or grasp the flimsy reed that was presented to me. I know for a fact that I cannot run my life by myself. I know this because I tried everything within my power to retain any form of control in my life. It wasn't until I had been utterly and savagely beaten into reasonableness was I willing to grasp that flimsy reed. That flimsy reed has proved to be the loving and powerful had of God. I equate my putting my faith into my higher power as jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft with a questionable parachute, packed by who knows. Standing in an an aircraft you have a sense of control, but when those doors open up and the wind crashes in, the light turns green and the jumpmaster says go, you have to give up your control, focus on the things you can control. Like giving the people around you plenty of room because flying a parachute is just like driving a car. I am surrounded by a bunch of people who are scared out of their minds, are not paying attention and probably cant see past their own noses even if they have their eyes open in the first place. Some people can claim to have only jumped night jumps because they had their eyes closed the entire time. 

I am grateful to be an alcoholic, because without the devastating and savage beating I endured that crushed and ground me into a state of reasonableness I would have never found my way into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have finally given up and handed all of my broken and pulverized pieces over to all of you and my higher power, and by the grace of my higher power those pieces have been slowly put back together piece by piece. Each piece held together with a beautiful strip of gold. I can tell you that I think i am starting to resemble a beautiful flower pot that I along with my friends and family, and my higher power can plant flowers in and we can all watch them bloom. I will never be put completely back together and that makes me smile, because I can continue to add little bits of my destroyed pottery and a little bit of gold to this vessel that I can now store whatever I want in. I am going to take my family to a pottery painting place and try to replicate a Japanese kintsugi flower pot and then I am going to plant some flowers in it. 

God I am grateful! Thank you so much for letting me share this.