Sometimes
Apr 9, 09- (by Mama MPJ)
- 9 responses
- Sober Salon
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I know what you’re thinking, ’cause right now I’m thinking the same thing. Actually, I’ve been thinking it ever since I got here. Why, oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?
~Cypher, in The Matrix
I feel good about my recovery work and good about the way my life is. I’ve come to accept that life doesn’t work the way I thought it did and that my marriage wasn’t what I thought it was. I’ve come to understand that happiness comes from my own mind, not from working endlessly (and without error) to ensure that everything in my life remains in a constant state of perfection. And that’s so freeing. I’ve found a relationship to my Higher Power, that (when I can tap into it) brings me a peace and serenity and freedom from fear like nothing I’ve ever known.
But sometimes, I still miss the life I never had. I think of that scene in the movie The Matrix where Cypher is so sick of eating real life gruel that he’ll turn in his friends for a chance to eat imaginary steak again. I know the steak I miss doesn’t really exist, and yet sometimes I long for it anyway.
Sometimes I want to fix other people’s problems by bossing them. I want to live in that belief that I’m smarter and better than they are because I have their lives all figured out for them, and I would be able to follow through where they can’t.
Sometimes I want to slide into that land where everyone who loves me acts in my self-interest to the detriment of their own, because that’s what love is: everyone else putting me first.
Sometimes I want a lie detecting superpower that would let me know in absolute terms who I could trust and who I couldn’t.
Sometimes I want to dive into that lottery fantasy where I own my own island and swim in pools of hundred dollar bills and all that wealth insulates me from every having to deal with anyone or anything disagreeable anymore, so my life is perfect.
Sometimes I want to work hard enough and do well enough that I can quit, retire, stop having to be in recovery and just be a shining angel of white light.
And sometimes all I need to do is admit all that and know that I would choose, still do choose, to be where I am today, in the real world.
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But the pool of $100 dollar bills does sound kind of nice.
this post made me cry…. only because I can relate so clearly…I just wish that it wasn’t always so hard…
As JW likes to say: Word.
You are such a wonder writer, you nailed it…..again. It brought tears to my eyes because I so get this. I hear you about other people’s lives, it is so easy to give advice, perhaps this is why I ended up a Social Worker. It seems so clear to me what other people should do, but your right, I (we) don’t have to do their work. Just our own. Sometimes I get so tired of doing “my” work, but in the end, I know there is no better way. Except sliding into that land where our self interests are always first sounds pretty good to me!
XXXXX
I think about that quote all the time. Just got my roomie to watch the Matrix for her first time. She totally got it, it’s great. I never get sick of analyzing it or drawing parallels.
This is really a hopeful post, filled with self-awareness. For me, there is often too much other-awareness. This afternoon, I told my husband of 30+ yrs. I couldn’t be around him. He denies his acting out behavior and prefers to think that I am the crazy one. Well, I am a little crazy from all of this, but not because I refuse to believe his tall tales, not from trusting what I know to be true. I’m just taking this one hour at a time. That’s how you break a 30+ year addiction, right? One minute, one hour, eventually one day at a time. Your post gives me peace when I would otherwise be totally freaking out. All I want is emotional and financial independence. I give it up. I can’t do it alone. In AA they say, “I got kicked upstairs!” Thanks.
I agree - I wouldn’t trade my life for any other. That owning your own island fantasy is a hard one to give up, though!
I feel this way too sometimes. I fantasize what it would be like to win the lottery………….but I wonder would it cause a lot of problems as well.
I have that too, and have often wished and wondered when that missing-the-life-I-never-had would go away. But ultimately it’s comforting to know about the Matrix. Because knowing means I have a choice. The fact that I know and I’m still hear means I have found the strength to know. And that gives me flashes of peace at the deepest level I have ever experienced.