What's Only Possible in the Now
/During my many years in the throes of my addiction I had many times where I contemplated making a confession. I was terrified of the exposure and consequence that would come with that, but there was always a part that knew the only way out of this darkness was to shine a light on it. Eventually I shifted from saying “I’ll never confess,” to, “I will confess…later.”
That compromise soothed me and kept me in denial for many more years. Even after I knew it was a lie, I kept telling it to myself. “Today just isn’t a good day to come clean, but maybe tomorrow will be.” I would look forward to each next milestone in my life and tell myself that if I hadn’t solved things on my own by that point, then I would make my confession. Well, let me tell you, one milestone after another passed, a thousand broken promises at the feet of each one. “If I’m still doing this when I get into college…certainly when I graduate…just as soon as I’m engaged…before the wedding…after my son’s first birthday….”
You know what I finally realized? A decision to change in the future is really only a decision to not change today. And if I choose not to change today, then I’ll still be the same, old me when I do get to tomorrow, so I’ll still procrastinate then, too! I will decide then to wait for another tomorrow, and then another, and then another.
None of us have a tomorrow to work with. None of us can guarantee any promise in the future. None of us can count on being someone different later on. We only have the now available to us. Any person that has ever transformed his or her life has only ever done so by making that choice in the “here and now.”
I think back to all the milestones I thought would herald the new me. Like I said, none of them ever did. There was absolutely nothing special about the day I decided to finally, actually tell the truth. It wasn’t an anniversary, or a new year, or an accomplishment made, or a tragedy suffered. It was just a run-of-the-mill morning when I finally said, “I’m sick of this now. I’m done with this here. I’m doing something today.”
I’m glad it worked out that way. I think that if I had managed to choose a date to begin recovery and then kept that promise it would have meant I was still holding something back. When I said, “I’ll give my disclosure after I’m married,” what I really meant was “getting better is not more important to me than getting a woman to marry me.” And then, if I had managed to follow through with that plan, that same twisted set of priorities would have still been alive in me. There would have been a level of humility that I still hadn’t reached. My failure to do things according to plan had the unexpected blessing of bringing me to a place of full surrender. In my broken fear of the future I found the healing that was possible in the now.
Indeed, it was only ever possible in the now.
By Abe, Writing Team