What is important in sobriety, money ramble……

What is important? Do you want money or do you want meaning? That is what I struggle with, I want money, not because I think it will make me feel better but because I know what I could do with it, I have tons of things I want to do, achieve, share and experience. Money will make it easier for me. I also know that whilst I want money, I don’t want to get by doing something that I do not find meaningful. At least, not long term.

Over the last week, I have felt pretty good a few times. I have paid special attention to what I have been doing that has made me feel so good and every time it has been a situation where I have felt connected to someone in some way. Here is just one example of a good time this week. I was having a phone conversation with a friend who I have known for years. We haven’t seen each other in about 6 years now but it didn’t feel that way on the phone. So much has changed in both our lives, I often feel so very different now to who I was back then but when we chatted and started reminiscing about some good old times, we laughed alot and it felt really good. When we ended the conversation, I thought about all the good and bad times that we had shared since we have known each other (I have to say many of them inebriated!) and I was filled with a nostalgic, somewhat sad but truly happy special feeling that I can’t quite explain.  It was a really good feeling though, one that I wanted to hold onto, one that I knew was a real feeling of I guess, love. A love of a friendship, of times shared, of knowing that someone truly knows me and I truly know them, an unspoken understanding. Now there have been times through this journey of sobriety when I thought that I just could not be friends with that friend anymore. I felt that I was just too different now, that my friend and other friends wouldn’t like the new boring sober me, that because nothing was ever going to be the same again that it was basically over. I really did go through a phase of thinking that. Thank goodness I came out of it because obviously it was ridiculous to think that just because I stopped drinking alcohol, my friends wouldn’t like me. A true friend will be there until the end. On the other side of this, I did have one friend who told me “You are a shadow of your former self”, at the time I had not quit drinking forever, I was pregnant so I was sober, but for me, alcohol used to really change my personality, I was so much more outgoing, had a huge amount of energy and I could handle social situations around the clock, I also had a different attitude, I was more wild and less concerned with outcomes, I would also anger really easily and become someone who right now is very unrecognizable to me.  Anyway, I dropped that friend, and she was a friend of a very very long time. I don’t really have regrets but I do feel a little sad about it now and again. But basically, I realize that we all change over time, even if you are not an alcoholic, but for an alcoholic it is such an extreme change that some friends may have to go. Either because they don’t like you anymore or you don’t like them anymore, but the ones that are meant to stay will, and when you have a chat with them like I did and you feel that feeling, you know what is important in life and money will never be able to buy it.

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Tags: Sobriety and money