Consider this...

Life is good, and kind, and busy, and what got me sober now keeps me away from the rooms and people I need desperately to stay alive and well. An academic's schedule, and one meeting a week, and thoughts swirl around, creep in, speak to me.

Happy hour, Friday night. Delicious.

Music mixes with flighty moods, and for some reason, R.E.M. plays a loop, rarely interrupted. So, in succumbing and downloading and listening and dancing, I sing and recognize the truth.

Right before I got sober, in an unmanageable time of a hellish life, I was struck then by R.E.M., "Losing My Religion", and found what was slipping through my fingers. I found myself in the corner or in the spotlight, grasping at sanity, dishonest with myself and life about what I was really up to. I didn't intend to ever post words here that aren't mine, but these saved me.

Life is bigger than you, and you are not me. The lengths that I will go to, the distance in your eyes. Oh no I've said too much, I've set it up. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. I'm losing my religion, trying to keep up with you, and I don't know if I can do it.
I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing. I think I thought I saw you try. Every whisper, every waking hour I'm choosing my confessions, trying to keep an eye on you like a hurt lost and blind fool.

I think I thought I saw you try. Vodka gave me those visions, made it all look so fine. But that was just a dream. I woke up screaming one night, I really did. I knew that to get out, I had to stop drinking, and I hated it all, me, him, life, love, false identity in all of it. Most of what was me was gone, drunk away, you hold the bottle upside down praying for a drop and nothing is there, I'm all gone, baby.

Shaking the bottle, shaking my head, shaking my fist, shaking.

When happy hour whispers, so does My Religion. A gentle, loving reminder of where I was, and how it was, and to never ever go back to that life again. A dishonest room full of dishonest people, me in the corner/in the spotlight, hurtlostblind. I set it all up to get out of there, I left that room and walked into another, and my rooms became my castle, and this is my confession, all of it. My blame, my responsibilities, my dreams, my sobriety, my songs, my life.

Few of us in sobriety thought we could face the truths and still be happy; we needed others to show us the way. Now, I'm no longer dreaming, I'm living, and so are those around me, in a life that is bigger than all of us, and just the right size.