What do I do now?

I’m out of rehab, but not done with it. I will never be completely whole. Nobody will or ever was, but now that I’ve physically had the experience of being on the outside looking in (that outside being rehab, the inside being the real world) I’ve come to terms with that. I’ve had a sense of it for a while. Life is a chase. We’re all chasing things to make us whole, the key in my eyes is knowing that you will never catch them. The point of the chase is the way it makes you stronger. If you resist, get frustrated, and stop chasing you’re missing the point.

Rehab at times felt like a vacation. A getaway from the inner turmoil that excessive amounts of alcohol brought out in me. I was surrounded by interesting and creative people, (whether they knew it or not) and I learned more from them than I did from the therapists and psychiatrists. I was reminded how fragile people are. How you never know what people are going through, and how easy it is to take that simple fact for granted. I was reminded that I am not alone, no matter how strongly I feel that I am.

I checked myself in, so despite how awful I felt I wasn’t going to waste my time there. On my second day I decided I felt stable enough to contribute to group discussions, and try to absorb as best I could. It was going great, empowering even, what I was learning from the people around me in a matter of a half hour. Then a sparrow flew into the window directly behind me sending a wave of abrupt awareness of the outside world through the room. I heard the noise but was so into the conversation it didn’t register at first. Until most of my fellow patients were at the window checking on the bird’s condition. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to catch it doing the death twitch before it closed its eyes for the last time. That stupid bird latched itself to my mind for the next couple days. I was paranoid that it was an omen. As if to say: “If you leave this place you will end up like this bird.” I checked on it every single day until I discharged. Each day observing its slow decay. Now that I’m out there’s a lot of truth to the paranoid omen I felt. That is life. If you decide to embrace it like you should there’s always the risk of falling. Or in that birds case slamming into a window and breaking your tiny neck.

I won’t let that stop me anymore. If I do fall I’m at least going to fall trying. No matter how down I feel at times I’m going to keep reminding myself of that. I wrote a lot the week I was in rehab of what I was absorbing. To me they’re guidelines and reminders so that I don’t end up in that internal grave I had dug myself ever again. So what do I do now? Keep chasing.