Another year sober, People.
Twenty-six years. It’s nuts. As I get older the years seem to go by faster but then I have a sober anniversary it always hits me as astounding. I’ve been sober for a long time.
I didn’t even post it on social media because I realized it’s mine. I realized that so much of what I post if it’s not just promotional, which isn’t much anymore, is for validation or support. I don’t need that with this day. I need to feel it and own it and reflect myself. It’s mine.
The reflecting is interesting. What to reflect on. Other than the feat of getting that much time.
I think gratitude is important but I don’t engage it much and I should. I think there is some part of me that is afraid to be grateful, afraid of joy, afraid of happiness, afraid of peace because I assume it will all be crushed or taken away. I can’t do it in a general sense so the exercise to me is identifying what those things could be attached to. What can’t be taken away. Because by stifling them I take them away from myself.
I choose to focus on my flaws and use them as a scourge as opposed to accepting them.
I can attach gratitude to how I was, to how I am and how I got here. Much of that is rooted in sobriety. I would not be where I am now, or possibly even alive, without committing to it. My journey has always been to find myself and live in that. To do that I’ve had to remove a lot of obstacles through hardship or choice to allow that to happen. I’m not fully there yet but I am close.
Accepting the constructive insanity that is early sobriety as opposed to the destructive insanity that is living in the disease of active addiction began the process. It unfolds in many ways on many fronts.
I am grateful for the life I have and much of me can’t believe fully that I am living it. Getting sober opened the door of possibilities and choices.
I did it the old school way through that secret society and rooms. It is not the only way, but the one thing that I know is that you really can't do it alone. I let myself be brainwashed by the program because, honestly, it needed washing. I needed to learn how to live as a whole person and see the parameters of my illness of heart, mind and spirit in all of its nuance. The program enables that. It also enables a way to take responsibility for the damage you have done to yourself and others. That damage can happen in sobriety as well (and will) but you are onto yourself and hopefully you can engage the tools to live in a certain kind of truth.
That said, however you do it is whatever you need to do.
On another note, I don’t really see myself as a courageous person. It is not an incentive to me. I speak my mind but it’s because I get to a point within me where I see no choice but to do so. There’s a lot of me out there saying what I believe, specifically about comedy in relation to the culture we live in. I did it because it had to be said.
The pushback from the fascists posing as believers in democracy is always that we don’t make room for other points of view that aren’t ours. This is in bad faith because their ‘point of view’ is generally a dozen ways to get us to shut up. So, it's not a point of view, it's just straight suppression and oppression and it is scary but…
Speak up.
Today I talk to Bowen Yang and it’s quite a lovely talk. On Thursday I talk to singer songwriter and author Neko Case about her life.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
