I feel like I’m in a strange place in my recovery lately. I haven’t had any urges to drink. Not in a very long while. I’ve been told that’s when I ought to watch out. I’ve been told constant vigilance should be my mantra. I’ve heard my disease is out to get me and one of its best tricks is that it pretends it doesn’t exist.

I’ve been pressing at the edges of boundaries that I used to stay far away from, encouraged by my growth in the last three years of sobriety. I am not without fear or discomfort, but I am willing to put myself in a vulnerable place in order to gain something greater.

But I also wonder if I am the best judge of knowing how much is too much. I’ve learned a lot of healthy coping tools through the steps and therapy. But I haven’t found the right instruments to manage some of the elements of my past. Or maybe I am just not applying them properly. All I know is I stop short each time I come up to the issues.

My overall feeling is that it will come out when it comes out, but I have a fear that not actively seeking to address it will give it power to hurt me when I don’t expect it. I tend to be proactive, and I dislike having this unfinished business.

I heard a long time ago that people can’t dream about dying because if they do, they will die in their sleep. The idea was that people could not psychologically conceptualize their death, so to do so would cause a shut down of brain functioning. I don’t know what sort of study was done to say this, but I have dreamt of dying many times, including some end-of-the-world scenarios. Recently, I’ve been dreaming of reaching the edge of the universe and being warned I can’t go past the border, but for some reason, I feel like I need to break through. In both cases, I feel this sensation like I am holding my breath for a very long time. I wouldn’t be surprised if I am doing that in my sleep. I have no idea what is waiting on the other side, in fact, my general feeling lately is a vast nothingness. Sometimes I dream I am in that nothingness. Yet, I feel this need to penetrate that void.

I drank, in part, because I was trying to either escape this same puzzle or figure it out. Or perhaps master it. Alcohol was the apparatus I used to make me feel more adept. I thought it helped me get into that obscure place, that it greased passage without judgment. I’m pretty certain I was an idiot. Alcohol made everything worse, made my death more of a surety and me out of control. I was becoming consumed by the blackness.

Turning to chemical substances to deal with the dark isn’t an option, nor is ignoring it. I’m in a very good place in my life right now, there is a part of me that wonders why I can’t leave things well enough alone. Why can’t I simply shake off the remainders of the bad memories and get on with things because what I have now is everything I could have dreamed of and more? Obviously everything came out alright for me now, so it must not have been all that bad, right? Shame on me for making mountains out of molehills that so clearly were easy to scale.

Whenever I try to tell myself that, some indignant voice cries out. I wonder if it is my disease talking or if it is a part of me waiting to be exposed to the light. I want to be free of this invisible constriction, whatever it is. I feel daring and wicked. I fear these feelings are wrong. I fear not ever getting away from the weight of my locked memories. My shame pins me down, tells me I should knock it off, get over it. Grow up.