Women Without Cocaine

     One of the best things about getting sober is the light bulbs that have started going off in my head.  Every day that the fog lifts a little more, I get a little more clarity on where I have gone wrong in my life that drove me to drugs and alcohol leaving me in the depths of hell.  Recently, I have really enjoyed the time I have to myself and feeling very satisfied with spending time with me.  When I first got sober I would completely crash after my meetings, feeling lonely wishing I had a woman in my life.  Looking back on the last twenty two years of my life, it occurred to me that women have played a big part in my downfall.  I have spent the last two decades and two years chasing a woman, getting out of bed, into bed, into a relationship, out of a relationship, and everything under the sun with a woman.  The last relationship finally taking me to the darkest place I have ever been finally bringing me to my knees.  Today, I am a new man with a new perspective on self-love, relationships, and what my part in all of it is, was, and will be.

     There is part of me that would like to say that I never let that crap with the ex-girlfriend affect me.  Why would I?  There are so many fish in the sea.  Well I guess you could say I met my match in a sense.  Maybe, I had built a huge wall of defense around me all those years the women came and went without a thought, leaving nothing more than an imprint on the pillow where they had slept the night before.  I wish this was the case with the last relationship but it is not.  It left me depressed, low, full of anger, rage and borderline suicidal.  Now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and those wounds almost healed, I can honestly look at my part in the whole mess and see why I allowed myself to be treated so poorly.

     Fortunately this clarity has lead me to the realization that in order to not let the horrors of my past haunt me for the rest of my life, work must be done.  I hate to use the word fear, but if I had one today, it is the fear of not being able to trust another woman again.  I think to myself, I did not know the last one was lying to me when she told me she loved me. How will I know with the next one?  So, today I am working on not letting the faults of others control my future.  I am working on building healthy relationships with a few women today.  Women that I think I can trust, slowly building a solid, real friendship with.   Hopefully, this will be the final chapter in healing those deep wounds and I will know what an honest relationship with a woman is like and my trust in the opposite sex will be rebuilt.

     It just occurred to me that I have been intimate with only one woman that I shared a true and honest love with.  That woman is the one I lost my virginity to.  This realization takes my breath away the more that I think about it.  Now, I was not one to play dirty pool and tell women that I loved them to get into bed with them.  Some part of me never felt like that was right, and I have always found it quite appalling.  Now that I have been on the other part of that lie, for whatever reason, I now feel like celibacy is in order.   I no longer want to be intimate with some one that is going to lie to me when they say those three words, nor do I want to be with someone that I don’t have those feelings for.  Lets face it at 38, I am not suffering from a lack of lovers over the years.  Like my sobriety, I am working on this new promise to myself.  To hold myself respect and dignity a great bit higher when it comes to sex and women.   I no longer have any interest in having sex just to have it.  I have enough memories of past experiences stored up in my head to get me by until the right one comes along, that is deserving of my love and affection.

     Reading the words I typed above scare me a little bit.  I have to look in the reflection on my computer screen to make sure that it is Erin who is writing all this.  It is scary and relieving at the same time.  Being able to recognize the growth over the last seventeen months is a beautiful feeling.  I can honestly say I love the person I have become.  It is like a new friendship that is exciting and full of wonder because it is so new.  The best part is that friendship is with me and there is a whole world out there to discover with my new friend.  Today, I am finally ok with who Erin is, where Erin has been, and where Erin is headed.  Yet, another blessing from sobriety.

If morning's a bitch with open arms and night's a girl who's gone too far
Whiskey is harder to keep than a woman and it's half as sweet but
Women without whiskey, Women without whiskey
Whiskey is hard to beat
Whiskey is hard to beat

(Cooley / DBT)