Page 32 of Blue Umbrella Sky
He gave himself a break, grinning at what he’d just observed about himself—he had a very busy mind.
Stop it now. You need to meditate, calm that crazy head down.
You know what they say in meetings, in the books you read. Praying is asking God questions. Meditation is when you get your answers. But you have to be still. You have to allow yourself, and Spirit, the silence to answer, to move. You need to shut up and listen.
Billy took a deep breath, trying to absorb these thoughts deep within himself, not just as logical thinking, but heart thinking, emotive-in-your-gut truth-telling.
He set the timer on his phone and positioned himself so his back was against the headboard. He crossed his legs in a manner he called (despite it being politically incorrect) Indian-style, then opened his hands, placing them palms up on his lap.
He closed his eyes and drew in several very deep, slow breaths.
For a few moments, there was only the soft white noise of whatever machinery chugged inside his head. He could feel as much as hear his heart beat.
The thoughts came, though, much as he knew, on a conscious level, he was attempting to keep them at bay.
You can get through to him. You just need to do it in a way that’s gentle, like approaching a wild animal that spooks easily. Just speak softly, hold out your hand, and let him know you have no agenda (even though you do).
“Quiet,” Billy whispered. “Quiet.” The word was his own little mantra. He spoke it, returned to his breathing, and tried to focus on an open mind.
And… thoughts like you just had are nothing more than you attempting to control the situation. Remember what you talked about last night at the meeting? The butterfly? Surrender? Not forcing things?
“Quiet,” Billy whispered. “Quiet.”
Just let go. What will be, will be. Que sera, sera, Doris.
“Quiet,” Billy whispered. “Quiet.”
And Billy did manage to slip under for a few minutes, leaving his mind open and willing to receive. Willingness was a big part of recovery for him, maybe the biggest.
He leaned back and felt so at ease that, by the time his phone’s timer chimed, he’d almost fallen asleep.
He opened his eyes to a new world, sun-washed, clouded only by a memory.
BILLY THOUGHTof all the jargon that was part of “the program.”
Referring to Alcoholics Anonymous as “the program” was just one such example. Others were: “one day at a time,” “easy does it,” “keep coming back,” “let go and let God,” “expect miracles,” and “we are only as sick as our secrets.” There were many more, built up over the years with one purpose in mind—to keep the alcoholic or addict in a state of active recovery, rather than a state of active disease.
The one Billy was thinking about as he slid back into the world from the relaxed state his meditation induced was an acronym. SLIP. It stood for “sobriety loses its priority” and referred to fucking up. You drank again. You used again. You let sobriety take a back seat to other concerns.
Some people in the program regarded any falling off the wagon as a relapse. Others called it a “slip,” hence the acronym. A slip didn’t seem as bad as a relapse. A relapse seemed more full-blown—more epic in terms of failure. A relapse was going on a drinking binge that lasted for weeks, months, even years. A slip was having a beer at the company softball game. Not so bad, right? A little white lie.
But Billy’s first sponsor, his guardian angel, Jon, who took him to his very first AA meeting, had told him there were no degrees of severity when it came to relapse. Jon used another phrase they were fond of in meetings, “one is too many and a thousand is never enough.”
Drinking again, whether a little or a lot, was a fail. No matter how much or how little one had, drinking again put you right back into the active disease of alcoholism.
Billy had slipped, relapsed, let sobriety lose its priority, only once. And for that hewasgrateful. In his years of going to meetings, he’d seen way too many “chronic relapsers” and knew how much easier a slip could become once you allowed yourself one, then two, then three, until it seemed you were back on the merry-go-round that was anything but merry.
Yet for some reason, this sunny morning, the memory of his fall, that singular fail, was with him, strong and stinging, like a shot of Patron agave tequila.
The ironic thing was, he’d gotten his one-year chip only the week before. He recalled the meeting where Nick, the “chip monk,” had awarded Billy the little round plastic memento of sobriety. There had been tears of joy on Billy’s part and applause and cake for the rest of the assembled. They’d sung “Happy Birthday” to him, off-key, but no song had ever sounded more beautiful.
Everyone was happy for him because they all knew what it took for him to get there.
Billy had walked out from that meeting on a pink cloud, feeling he was safe. He would never touch a drink again. He wascured. He simply didn’t want a drink—ever. He could picture beer mugs, shot glasses, champagne flutes, and more in his head, and they were nothing more than permutations of that semisolid known as glass. The liquid in them? Ah, he could take it or leave it. He chose to leave it, and it was no skin off his nose.
He drank again four days later.
The funny thing about that slip, Billy thought, was that it ambushed him, taking him by surprise.
