I don’t know exactly what it is with us. Was. What it was, with us. I just don’t know exactly what it was about us. There was something though. Something. A connection of some type, much different than any other.
A cosmic connection, or magnetic forces.. something always brought us back to one another. Even if we never really were. We were not ever an us – but we were always us.
I knew it before I even had the slightest thought of it. I knew it before I ever really even knew it. I felt it. That sounds so strange, even reading it back to myself. It sounds like a narrated script read aloud in the very first scene of a sad movie. It sounds so scripted. So fictional. It isn’t though, it’s real life, and real thoughts. I’m just writing them as they come.
I’ve lost some of the most important friendships and relationships in my life, to drugs, and death. Drugs always ultimately result in death. Period. Note that. Save that. Highlight it. Remember it and never ever forget it. It is nothing but the truth.
Early on in my first attempts at recovery, I was always taught that; Relapse is a part of the process, it is a part of your recovery. You must fall to get back up stronger. You need to fail to know what it feels like, to always remember.
It was something that was said by lots of people, in lots of places. Recovery specialists in programs, counselors, therapists both inpatient and outpatient, long time recovering addicts in the rooms of AA & NA, C.O’s and or fellow addicts in prisons, or institutions. It was the nice way to react when someone was feeling bad about themselves for relapsing. When someone who had been clean for some X amount of time had a slip up, and continuously beat themselves up for it. Of course, that won’t help them, but will it? Whether they had 10 years clean, 10 months clean, or 10 days clean, “relapsing is a part of recovery.” I can still hear some of the voices that I’ve heard… saying the words. It’s almost haunting.
I’ve come to conclude that, that does not have to be the case, and it should not be said as such. We need to find a better response to say to a recovering addict who has just slipped up. Telling them us, that it is all a part of the process, and that relapses are supposed to happen, just isn’t always going to be okay anymore. I don’t think so at all. Yes, our personal failures, slips, falls, and relapses, are in fact, for sure a part of our process, but it is not a part of the actual process.
You do not have to relapse to hold onto your sobriety.
The why.
My why. Why do I believe this so strongly? Well, my friends. They are why. The people I’ve loved. They are why. The people I thought I would have in my life for all of my life, that is why. They are why.
Their relapses were all a part of their recovery process. Their Relapses were a part of their recovery process?? Their Path to recovery? One would get clean one way or another, stay clean for however long, relapse, or not, and start all over again. Right? That’s what I’ve always done. I go back to what I know. I have a go-to plan. I’ve always followed the same steps that I know I need to follow, that I know will get me back to where I needed to be.
Luckily, in the meantime, in the learning /process to my recovery, I did not die. By the Grace Of God, I did not yet die.
My people though. They relapse, and they die.
Now, they are forever sober. However, they did not leave in that way. Their relapse, the ‘part of their process’ to recovery, got them dead. It took away their lives and their chance at ever working the process again. It took away everything. The relapse that is a part of their recovery, killed them.
This is why I believe that we need to stop telling addicts that it is okay to relapse. Because it is not okay. It is not safe.
Forever in their 30’s. Forever your age. Forever Clean & Sober. Forever Loved and missed. Forever, may you rest peacefully, every single one of you.
Until we meet again my twin flame…
