When the Fire Calls You
A message for addicts and other fire-breathing humans
A message to addicts and other fire-breathing humans…
My life moves with gentleness these days. It is one of the gifts of recovery. Mornings arrive with an ease to them, lifted by good coffee and the time to enjoy it. An emotional stillness makes space for me to observe the little things: birds arriving at the feeder, young bunnies cautiously moving through the grassy hill out back, and the deep sigh of the dog in my lap. My days roll on sometimes with the clicking of keys as life inks its way onto the page, or, as is often the case, with the soft step of hiking boots on the trail. Life is steady. It isn’t that I don’t have moments of urgency or challenges anymore, but those come settling into something larger, a hammock of tested strength, holding the weight of change.
This wasn’t always the case. Mornings used to come with starkness, pushing me into life with an unsettling mix of fear and craving, body and mind bending away from center, seeking something more to quicken life, keep me driving forward. I don’t miss the wreckage that life brought. I don’t miss the lies, the deceit, nor the broken faces of the people who loved me. But, if I am honest, if I allow myself to speak from a deeper courage, there was a particular voltage to that life that left its shape behind. Life was louder then.
I’m still leaning into this change, this shift from inferno to warmth. Some days, I still miss the blaze, the illusion of being the man who burned bright and fast. But I have come to see that brightness and endurance are rarely the same thing.
What I lost when I became healthier was the drama of the edge.
What I gained was the chance to live long enough to discover a deeper fire, one that does not dance with ruin to prove it is real. The arch is still there, but it lingers beneath, like embers banked in ash.
If you, too, have stepped out of the blaze and into something steadier, you may know this ache. You may recognize the quiet question that follows healing. Is this it?
I know, the edge is not the only place where life happens. Sometimes it waits at the kitchen table, on the trail at dusk, in the long, unremarkable Tuesday that asks nothing of you but your presence. That’s where I’ll be. I hope to see you there.
Beautifully put. This is life, after all.
Wise!