Love the One You’re With
I once heard in a meeting that the reason people suggest staying out of intimate relationships for the first year of sobriety is that most don’t dare to tell you five! Sure, once grounded as a regular meeting-goer, avoiding people, places, and things that trigger you becomes second nature. When you lose the desire to use, seeking stimulation outside of yourself can feel like a treasure hunt. However, pay close attention to the fools around you—they will teach the open-minded how psychotic one can become when lending their heart out too early. It’s a hard lesson to learn for a newcomer whose dark side continuously echoes, “I want, I need, I demand, I deserve!”
Recovery is like a jigsaw puzzle. You begin to rebuild your life by first getting sober and using meetings and a sponsor to sort through the thousands of tiny pieces scattered everywhere. Putting it all together requires patience, tolerance, serenity, and concentration. However, somewhere during this process, you realize that the pieces of this puzzle are just patterns of self-centered fear. Through a lengthy, painful, but spiritual evolution, the puzzle that once appeared as just a thousand scattered pieces now forms the edges of endless possibilities.
When we first get sober, the unmanageability of learning how to be with ourselves is unbearable. When the fear and rage eventually subside, we become willing enough to write a fourth step. Shortly after, we engage in a fifth step and begin to witness, for the first time, the patterns that would continue destroying any new assembly within us if we didn’t keep the focus on ourselves. What seemed at one time just a dream is soon fulfilled by a meaningful relationship with a Higher Power as we understand Him. Only then are we able to continue constructing the puzzle.
After years of turning our will and lives over to a power greater than ourselves, and somewhere in between patience, service, and working with others, it becomes difficult not to acknowledge the miracles we witness. Somewhere in the thousands of tiny pieces that were once poured out in front of us, a beautiful picture of who we are today miraculously appears. Therefore, the message to all newcomers is simply this: Don’t love the one you think you want. Place your trust in a power greater than yourself and learn to love the one you’re with.
