Saturday nights many, many years ago were once nights filled with whooping it up, drinking and boozing until the wee hours of the morning or until I passed out. When those days passed on by and I found sobriety as a new way of living, Saturday nights were ones filled with clubbing and chasing after the “potential options” that were out there. Or maybe, they were spent online from nine at night until three in the morning chatting to people I knew I never was going to meet, and having conversations with people that usually happens after dating for awhile. I call all those Saturday nights, my addiction years.
From the age of 17 until 39 I occupied my Saturday nights with one intention and one intention only, to get high on something or someone. And it wasn’t a good Saturday night unless that happened. It’s amazing how many years passed doing the same behaviors over and over again and never changing it. Sure, the situations changed, the locale changed, the people changed, but I never did. I was always on the prowl for “my fix”.
So here I sit in front of my computer at just before 7pm on a Saturday night and have no plans. My roommate/landlord on the other hand just left to go out to a dinner party and said he most likely won’t be back until tomorrow morning. I remember those days. I remember them well. I remember the blackouts. I remember waking up next to people that I asked myself “Why?” I remember feeling disgusting, dirty, shameful, remorseful, negative, and sometimes even fearful. And I lived that way on just about every Saturday night for 22 years. 22 YEARS! Wow, to even say that aloud, well in words that is, seems surreal.
1,144. That’s the number of Saturday nights that I spent achieving this sole task.
Nine months ago, I made a decision to clean my whole life up. In my recovery, the pivotal nature was the 3rd step. I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him. During those 22 years, I lived in my own will more than not. God was always someone to rescue me when I was in trouble. I called God my 911 God. Nine months ago that changed. It was then that I added two words to the third step.
I made a decision to turn my ENTIRE will and my ENTIRE life over to the care of God as I understood him.
What I came to understand was that if I wanted to life fulfilled within solely by the love of God, I need to let everything go and let God put the things in my life that truly mattered to achieve that. The result? I have gone through a complete housecleaning.
All the things that were toxic, all the things that I thought were making me happy, all the places I went to that made me feel good, I parted ways with each of them. Every facet of my life was encompassed prior to this action with some level of self seeking motive. I lived a life of placing things and people in my life and going to those places that I would get what I wanted.
Zoom forward to now. I am sitting at a desk typing this and sharing my heart to no one in particular. I got a salad from the salad bar at Whole Foods and plan on eating that and watching a show or two on the television. I’ve been reading the Beautiful Creatures book series and am towards the end of the 2nd book and will probably find myself in the throngs of it before the night is over.
There is a part of me that is lonely. I’ll be honest with you. There was no one that made a phone call to me and said they would really like to see me tonight and hang out. In the same aspect, I’m ok with that today too. Why? Because I’ve learned to be ok with being alone. My loneliness is really not about the people who didn’t call me and ask me to hang out. It’s not about missing all those people that are still out in the bars who might have found me attractive. It’s not about the vast numbers of individuals who are still online in the chat rooms conversing and looking for “a special friend for the night”. It never was about any of this.
In the amount of time I’ve spent alone these past nine months, I discovered that the loneliness was about missing my best friend, God. It’s my belief that inherently my soul comes to the Earth and occupies a vessel for a lifetime. Why I would leave God’s side and incarnate into a vessel with there is most likely a ton of love and warmth with God I don’t know. Is it to continue to learn lessons? Is it required? Is it to evolve? I don’t know the answers to this. What I do know is that most people come to the Earth like I did, and get lost. They lose their focus because they are born into lives with people that were already lost.
I’m not talking about being lost directionally. I’m talking about being lost spiritually. In my life, I got lost rather early, and I spent most of my life seeking to numb that feeling of loneliness with alcohol, drugs, smoking, sex, gambling, caffeine, and well the list goes on. Now I’m facing that loneliness head on, on a Saturday night no less.
While I feel lonely, I actually am enjoying spending it alone. Tomorrow I will wake up and will not be next to someone who I’m kicking myself that I just did what I did. I will wake up having another day of sobriety. I will wake up free from hangovers, guilt, and frustration about where my life has taken me. Instead, I will wake up and ask God to be in charge of my life for the day. I will ask God to guide me in all my thoughts, actions, and words for that day. And I will wait patiently upon God to find more meaning, purpose, and direction in my life doing what I’ve been doing day in and day out for the past nine months.
I believe I have a purpose, a spiritual purpose, for God. I believe that my self will prevented this from every materializing. I’ve been detoxing on some level and energetically shifting on many levels these past nine months. All those years of doing what I did had a cost. It may have felt good doing what I did when I did it, but it sure doesn’t feel good on the way out of me as I purge my system of all of it.
The bottom line is this. I’m truly grateful that I can sit here on a Saturday night and feel lonely because I really do miss God, but I’m ok with being alone and having a night with just me.
After all, the best relationship next to mine with God is one spent with me.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson