March 24, 2003 - Corpus Christi

After pulling up the random page I posted yesterday I began to read before and after that date in the journal I selected. I guess this is the purpose of this page, to revisit and explore what I've already felt... Below is an entry from 3-24-03, eleven years before I got sober. Eleven more years of "suffering" happened before I stopped drinking and smoking... Note, however, I still have this lack of love of life... even now without smoking and drinking... something to ponder. I wrote this in poetry form but for space and ease I'm writing it out here as prose-ish.

I'm aware, suddenly, of how much - really - I want to escape this life. 
I don't love this life. I don't love myself, truly.
I charge off into adventure because my heart calls, not because I love life, opportunity or adventure but because I must.

I find myself here in Corpus, just the same as in Venice. I've followed myself, as I knew I would. I wasn't running away -
just hoping, somehow a change of scenery would nudge transformation, shift perspective.
I'm slack and smoke and drink too much.
Too early, too long, I wake with circles deep under my eyes. I'm tired of this life.
I'm tired of being me. Adventure is not solution.
It simply doesn't work any longer, this habitual day of coffee, smoking, working, drinking...

How can I build trust again within me?
How can I allow myself the space to be strong, stronger, strongest?
More than before - the rally waits in the wings, beyond and behind the 
deepest darkness that proceeds the dawn.

It is helpful to know that I'm making progress the daily habits have shifted. Still there is that which is "missing"... something worth living for. I guess what there is to continue to learn what it's not. I'm creating it doesn't take 11 years to get from the darkness to the dawn. I  create and hope this quote from Ernest Holmes is true...