The holidays are often a tough time for addicts and alcoholics; whether using, or in early recovery. Or sometimes, not-so-early recovery. It can be a tough time of year to have to hear about giving gifts to loved ones when one has lost or damaged the relationships with those who should be closest to them, or maybe is having a hard time paying the mortgage.
Every December, my last Christmas that I used on comes to mind, as I expect it does for a number of people.
I was twenty years old, living with my mom. Having such a full and vibrant social life (in other words, spending every cent I had on drugs), keeping my car running had temporarily eluded me. A lot of thing seemed to be eluding me at that point.
Unfortunately, I'd made such an asshole of myself that I couldn't spend the night at home. I was going to have to figure out alternate accomodations. So, I decided to spend the night in the office I worked at. While this plan may not seem so bad on the surface, there were several points that made it memorable.
First off, there was the issue of getting to the office. My car wasn't running, and neither were the buses that evening; I'd have to walk the four miles. Which wouldn't have been an epic journey, but it was made unpleasant by the fact that replacing my shoes with ones that didn't have holes in the bottoms was on the list of things which had temporarily eluded me. Unfortunately, I wasn't as good at eluding the snow and slush on the ground.
This made for a very contemplative walk.
When I got to the shop, I pulled a bunch of chairs into two rows with the seats facing each other to form a makeshift bed.
That was Christmas 1987. I've never had to spend any holiday so profoundly unhappy since. In fact, on the average, they've been pretty good.
-M
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