I know that I am just as close to this energy I call God when I am going through my biggest, strongest changes. Those long nights (and days) of the soul when I surrender to the feelings from the past which have been ignored and held in my body for years. They have been blocking my body and, therefore, all areas of my life. They imprisoned The Real Me and prevent me from fully realising my true potential. I know I am just as close to spirit when I feel alone and vulnerable than when I am feeling lovely,airy and confident! I am never alone. I used to view these painful emotions as bad. Then, one day, I realised that I choose to review them. Only me. No one makes me. I want to do it on some level of me. I revisit these emotions and pain to make myself more me. I face the parts of me I have hidden and by doing so release all fear and become the truth of me. I lose the cracked veneer of the outer, personality self which I came to believe was the real me.

Why did I view these feelings as bad or wrong or difficult? Sad is not bad, anger is not wrong, fear is part of being a human being, so why did I condemn these feelings? Why did I go into denial rather than expose and face them? I am closer in these moments to contacting the real me. The mere fact that I am choosing to help myself in this way, no matter how painful it is, shows how great the love is that I feel for myself.

I love me enough to clear out the old painful memories of the past. I will not flinch from looking at every millimetre of my inner self and by facing the secrets hidden there will release them for once and for all. Not with a quick fix of healing but by following that feeling through to it’s end. By staying with it I find my convoluted way through to the real stuff. Love. That’s The Real me.
It is also The Real You.

I haven’t eaten for weeks. I must get my lifeless, tired alcohol-drenched body from the bedroom to the kitchen. Even the floor feels threatening and dangerous. I can barely grip the carpet. I am nearly at the end. I know that now. Weeks of two bottles of scotch a day, plus mixers like beer and wine, make my skin reek and my breath smell like a dirty cowshed. I hurt for lack of light and food. Everything in my body hurts and yet I am strangely numb. Dead from years of constant booze.

Since Steven left me, I have just got from day to day, from bottle to bottle, from drinking to throwing up to drinking again. The relationship has been so destructive with booze and confusion dominating most of the seven years that I can’t find my way out of the trap now. If I don’t drink I can’t face life. If I do drink I will have no life to face.

My guts ache. I must eat something. I pull myself up to the kitchen counter which is covered with packets and cartons, and stinks of old food and old sick. Sometimes I can’t keep it down and I can’t clean it up. Everywhere stinks in the flat as I can’t quite reach the loo when I need to, and newspapers which keep me, in a way, in touch with the world, act as a convenient blotter for stale urine. I stink. The place stinks so much it must permeate to all the rest of the seventy flats. There is some rank old bacon which looks a bit strange and one slice of old bread. I put them in a frying pan still dirty from its last use. On Sunday. Six days ago. I hope I can hold onto it when I eat it.

What time is it? I stagger, falling from door jamb to cupboard from door jamb to sofa. I grab the phone and dial 123. It is 7 a.m. and I must have drunk through to about 5 a.m. The bacon and bread are spatting on the cooker, but I can’t summon up the energy to pull myself out of the sofa to fall back into the kitchen. I am so dizzy and can barely focus. What’s that piece of paper? I must have put it there during the night. I can’t remember doing that. Why?

I summoned all my energy to lean forward and pick it up. My stomach screams with pain as I contort my body to pick it up. I reach………I can barely recognise my handwriting. When did I write this? How did I manage it? I had stopped writing cheques weeks ago and had resorted to stealing booze rather than people see my hand shaking. It took monumental focus to connect with my brain and form the letters.

CHANGE OR DEATH - WHAT DO YOU WANT?

I went icy as I had never before. I stared at the words. I was transfixed with fear and self loathing. I shrank into the sofa as if to hide even from myself. The food is burning in the next room but I am petrified. Literally. I stare at the words. Amazed I had written them and amazed they were legible. ………Where had they come from?

CHANGE OR DEATH WHAT DO YOU WANT.

I went to an AA meeting as soon as I could walk well enough. I could not speak. I could barely see. I just shook. I faced real feelings for the first time in years and felt better just by not drinking….at all. I dared not drink but I did not know how to deal with my feelings. Suddenly in an AA meeting I erupted like a dam of anger bursting. I belched anger, left the room and ran all the way home. Some half an hour journey at 9 p.m. in summer broad daylight. Screeching and crying and not caring what anyone thought. I ran and I screamed all the way home. My chainsaw sobs pushed me up the hill and home. I stood in my bedroom not knowing what to do. I shouted and screamed and then finally…..I fell back on the bed and gave in. I slept and sobbed for the whole night. I actually slept. I accepted the lack of alcohol in my body. I knew I had turned the biggest corner in my life. I let go.

LIFE HAD TO CHANGE.

That was a few years ago. I had faced the alcoholic in me and then I had to find and face me. Something outside of me had helped me to stop drinking so I needed help to start life. I set about, like Christopher Columbus, to discover the disunited state of me. I found a way, with patience, to peel away the layers of the mess of a person I thought I was. It has been the most important thing I have ever done for me. I know I am worth it. Loving myself gets deeper. I am now about to launch myself on an unsuspecting world. I am glad to have been an alcoholic. If I hadn’t followed the liquid path of Lethe I could not now face this honest reality road. It helped me to be the real me.

In this past seventeen years I have risen.......from the bottom of the bottle to the top of my world.

In the last few years of my mother’s life, she was bedridden and rarely lucid as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease claimed her more and more. I had spent hours talking to her about the two things she needed help with, Death and Anger. Her anger -and the associated fear- diminished to a certain extent but not enough. It became increasingly difficult to find things to talk about, and I sat there and wondered why the hell I was there. Particularly with the fact it took me eight hours to travel and visit!

One day I giggled at myself feeling useless. She went quickly into lucidity, laughed and came out of withdrawal. Yippee! I’d reached her. A fluke action created a breakthrough. We talked for a while and then I lost her again. I decided to repeat the trick with a fabricated giggle, and she once again returned to earth through my laugh. I told her all sorts of funny things and also talked of forgiveness and the past. I giggled easily because I could see the effect it had on her. I have since learnt that my giggles and laughs sound just like hers. She must have recognised it. Her laugh is my rich legacy.

Even on days I didn’t really feel like it I found it came easily if I did it for her. She put down her anger and her fear. Her face looked younger and calmer. Her body gained strength from within. I watched her skin and face go through waves of emotion, and the stored hurts were expelled with a laugh. What a lesson. Giggle your way to health and sanity. A simple healing available to all!

In that moment I chose to be happy and I have retained it ever since. Life is happy if we chose it to be. Don’t get me wrong, sadness is also there in balance. We need one to be able to recognise the other. Choosing happiness is great, but sadness, too, needs to be faced and befriended. There is a danger that people think positive thinking means grimly ignoring all negatives and unpleasantness. Not so! That’s denial. Face the sad, bad and negative, and then transform it into happy, good and positive. It’s magical how it works. Let love in and the change begins. The darker side underpins the lighter side of life. It is our strength.

I have been reclaiming my innocence, joy and simplicity for a long time now. I love it. Playing for part of each day is essential for me. I love watching my dogs’ antics and they wait for me to laugh. They stare at my eyes for evidence of laughter and then wait for the mouth to join in joyfully. Then finally as the laugh bursts forth, they jump and wag and run into the woods. All three have faces that look like they are laughing anyway. I giggle at my goats that are as stubborn and naughty as me.

I love and enjoy people, finding fun in the twistings and turnings of their interaction. I find so much to enjoy and laugh with friends and acquaintances. I don’t mind looking silly sometimes. Let go and laugh. Being serious and heavy is not being a grown-up. It’s just being serious and heavy. We (so-called) grown-ups need to play, have fun and stop responsibility becoming a chore or a bore. Choosing to be responsible for ourselves can be an endless, joyful game. For a deeper connection with your real self and God……….LAUGH!