"I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and--I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.

--Lorraine Hansberry

I posted a quote from this woman yesterday when I was half-way watching Raisin in the Sun and a different quote moved me. I researched this writer and realized that I wanted to read more of her work. When I read the quote above, I thought about how different I feel about "life". When I was drinking so very much and had reached the point where I thought there was nothing about living which impressed me. I was so depressed and living my life in the bottle all the time and could not see the beauty in anything anymore even though it surrounded me. All I could "see" was how messed up everything was. I did not have the mental capacity to separate the good from the bad because everything was bad. Because that is the way I felt it became who I was in my mind and I didn't like who I was so I wanted to die. I felt desperate and alone. The only "friend" I had for so long was my alcohol and even that had betrayed me, as I felt so many of my friends and family had done when they could no longer deal with me, and the few that were left in my life I didn't want or need anymore because I isolated. I would sit with my beer, wine and sometimes mixed drinks and plot how I could end my life. I thought about taking a knife and stabbing myself. I thought about taking a bunch of pills. I must have had a small amount of empathy or compassion for others, because I thought about my bf finding me and having to contact my family. I thought how hard it would be on him to find me and deal with that image for the rest of his life. I thought about my ex and my child. My ex didn't want our relationship to end. I left him. This would be a real double whammy on him to find out that I killed myself. The grief he expressed to me after I left, via emails, phone messages and the few phone conversations was bad enough and he told me he felt like I died when I left him. My daughter would have to live the rest of her life knowing her mom was not only an alcoholic who was never able to get sober, but that her alcoholic mother killed herself. I thought about my mom who had lost her husband to alcoholism. They never said goodbye as my dad died suddenly and the last word he said was when he called out her name right before he died. If I killed myself then it would be her child, who she never had the chance to say goodbye to, who died as a result of alcoholism. My siblings, an older brother and sister, who I have not seen in years would certainly be affected by me killing myself as well. So, with all that going through in what little was left of my mind, I didn't do it. It is not that I really didn't want to die because I did. I just could not see any way out of the pain and misery inside me except by dying. I knew that I would have my death wish and all I had to do was just to keep drinking the way I did and eventually I would die and I thought that is what I really wanted and deserved because I was a "worthless drunk".

This is what alcohol does to our minds. It starts out enticing us and eventually ends up destroying so many of us. It almost had me convinced that I am worthless and life is meaningless. As I approach almost a year of sobriety, I am so very extremely grateful that somehow something in me clicked and knew that my thinking had been poisoned by the alcohol and there was a way out of the pain and misery which I was experiencing. It is Alcoholics Anonymous. It has saved my life and now I want God to use me in any way He can to help other suffering alcoholics and I echo the quote above because this is the way my thinking is now......"I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful, and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and--I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations and generations.

So if you are currently drinking and you are having any of the same kinds of thoughts I used to have, please please know that your life does have a purpose and you are not worthless and all alone. There is help for you and you can be happy and want to live, too! You are loved, you are special and you deserve so much better a life than what you are living now and here it is...

AA Meetings:    http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=28

you, this very grateful recovering alcoholic,

BTY (Grace)