Permutation/Maturation
I can honestly say I am happy for the first time in years. Forty-six days clean, and I feel like an unstoppable temperance machine!!!! This statements is declarative and deserves excessive exclamatory punctuation. I suppose there were times I thought I was happy, but, in reality, had long since forgotten what that emotion felt like. Misery, for me, was more palpable, though only relative to happiness. Misery: I drowned, I burnt, I tucked away, neatly folded into the lobes of my brain, with hollow promises to tend to its cries later. My emotions now are raw and dripping, thick with meaning, with purpose. Everyday I say the serenity prayer of AA: "God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." What a beautiful message. It took three years of self-deification to realize that not only did I not have control over other people, places, and things, but that I barely had control over myself. Now I can turn it over to a higher power as I understand him/her/it. For me, I only need look as far as the natural world around me, then peer inside to the swelling of a chest with air that allows this blood blossom to bloom, over and over and over again.