Looking Back at the Cycle

Today was a really lovely day.  I did yoga, got a massage and caught up on some paperwork.  Today was technically not a day for me to "see clients" but I still went to the office and got a lot done.  When I had enough of wresting with the papers on my desk, I decided to tackle some electronic decluttering.  I went back to my oldest emails that hadn't been deleted and started going through them.  Some are from many years ago.  There are various reasons why they were never deleted.  Some are great recipes that I never put in a safe place other than in my email and others are important attachements that I want handy by searching my inbox.  There are also great links to places I want to travel, projects I want to take on, and assignments from self help things I subscribe to.  Basically, anything that is years old but not deleted is either something I continually go back to or something that is unfinished business that I never took on or completed.  There were a lot of emails in there that are in the area of unfinished business with getting sober or making up my mind to get sober. There were some emails that I came across that were really sad and eye opening.  I have many in there from years ago when I was working with a life coach.  I know why I never deleted them and why I still didn't delete them to this day.  There were there to remind me of how bad it was sometimes. There are several of them that describe in detail the level of shame, regret, fear and depression after a bad incident with drinking.  They are all the same story of being extremely upset after getting unexpectedly sloppy drunk after a night that started out with an anticipation of moderate drinking.  In one email from a few years ago, I wrote about how I could moderate 99 percent of the time but it only takes that horrible thing that occurs in the 1 percent of the time that could kill me or ruin my life.  I talked about wanting to stop drinking altogether because I was so incredibly scared of what could happen if I didn't.  Of course then in later emails I would talk about feeling empowered and making healthy choices.  This has been a cycle that has been going on since my college days 20 years ago.  As my mind gets clearer and clearer, so many memories of bad times drinking are coming up.  Looking back at them now, it is unbelievable to me that I didn't stop sooner.  Still, I know why I didn't.  I am so incredibly stubborn and tenacious.  I was bound and determined to prove to myself that I could fix myself so that I was able to moderate my drinking.  I understand that I had to come to the conclusion in my own time about being so much better off and happier without alcohol in my life.  Still, it is so incredibly sad to me to read my words of desperation and sadness and see that I felt the exact same way so many times again and again in the past yet I was not ready to do what needed to be done to move forward in life.  It seems like so much wasted time and so much unnecessary sadness.  It is also sad for me to read the emails during times of doing well with moderation.  I sound so confident and happy.  I sound certain that I have found the way to live a fulfilled life.  As I was reading the words, it made me feel so sorry for that woman, that girl, who is oblivious to the fact that something horrible will happen again, and again, and again.  I want to reach into the computer and tell her, "You have no idea how many times you will lose complete control and injure and humiliate yourself. You will try your friends patience.  You will spend many mornings so depressed that you don't know if can face the world again because you feel like such a failure in letting the drunkedness come again.  Just stop.  Stop right now.  All of this effort in moderating is misdirected.  Put the alcohol down and put the effort into building an authentic life free from obsessing about moderating your alcohol.  You can stop worrying and trying so hard to have the life that you want if you just make a decision to give up the alcohol."  It is too bad that I had to go through that cycle so many times before I could have clarity on making a firm decision.  I guess I have to know that all of the repeated cycles served a purpose if only to take me to the point of finally being ready.  As they say, when you need to learn a lesson in life or make a change, the situation will present itself over and over and over and over again.  It will present itself as long as it needs to present itself until you see what you need to see and do what you need to do.  Deep down I know, everything is unfolding exactly as it should.