[yukonm]

November 12

~ Hitting Bottom ~

My life closed twice before its close.

Emily Dickinson



Doesn't every addict, sooner or later, face some kind of incomprehensible end to something they hold dear, all because of their addiction?

I certainly did. In my late thirties, in the plum Ivy League job that was the envy of all those I'd gone to graduate school with, I was fired. The fact was, though I'd tried to put a good face on it, I was up to my eyebrows in my disease of compulsive overeating and was consequently seriously depressed. Or was I seriously depressed and consequently...?

No matter. I had been in a hole the width and depth of which I could not overcome. Day after day I would sit in my office with the door closed, work piled on my desk, unable to make headway. I had done this for over a year. Then the ax fell, and there I was, a depressed, overweight workaholic without work.

Fortunately for me, by this time I had already found program, and although I was a newcomer of only six months, I knew enough that I was lucky to have lost my job. Although I would never have quit it, it would have eventually led to the loss of my health and sanity, what was left of them. I was in that important and prestigious job for all the wrong reasons, but mainly as a balm to my tiny and broken self-esteem.

The fact was, the healing for my self-loathing wasn't in a fancy title or professional honors. It was in the spiritual life and the recovery of mind, body, heart, and spirit that I found in program.

I learned for myself that hitting bottom is not the end. I let my Higher Power into my life, and it was the beginning of a more honest and worthy way of living.

One day at a time... . . .
I turn my life over to my Higher Power to make of it what She will. It makes every day a good day.


~ Roberta ~