I’m thankful that I got over the flu very quickly.

There’s been a bug going around the school for the last couple weeks and yesterday my whole body decided to reject all things good and lovely, so I whined until my admin sent me home and crawled into bed.

But I wasn’t alone.

See, I am a total TV junkie.  There are shows that I will watch 6 and 7 times, even when I know all the lines and how/where/when every plot point either elates or frustrates me.  There are fictional characters that to me are real living breathing people.  (Now in all fairness to my crazy, I am the same way with books and movies as well.)  But a funny thing happened when I started getting sober.  I couldn’t watch TV.  The shows that I truly loved and had followed for years were too overwhelming, too serious, and in many cases, were part of a very serious pattern of wine consumption.  (I mean for reals, did anyone make it through Season 6 of Supernatural not completely hammered?)  So, when the booze became a part of my life only in the past tense, I kind of thought I would just gorge on all my small screen favorites while clinging to “I WILL NOT DRINK TODAY!” but instead I could occasionally watch a few episodes of some entirely new show that for the most part didn’t turn out to be very good.

But starting about a month ago I really missed my old shows.  Not the I miss-my-old-life type thing, but more a are-there-things-I-can-take-from-old-life-into-new-one type thing.  I caught up on Fringe and How I Met Your Mother.  I’m working on back episodes of White Collar and investigating which venue I will use to mainline some Dexter.  My friend KP has been gently reminding me that I’m almost two whole season behind on Sons of Anarchy, an amazing show that KP and I both love to a sort of unhinged level.  On Monday night she posted the cover shot for an article about SoA on my Facebook page, and when my stomach rebelled against me it occurred to me that the universe might be telling me that the time had come for me to return to Charming.

And just like I remember, SoA is complicated, terrifying, and heartbreaking.  And while I cried my eyes out, hid under my pillow, bit my nails, and laughed every so often, and obnoxiously texted KP, all while trying not to throw up (that’s the flu not the show) I was able to appreciate a bit that the old and the new aren’t incompatible, that I may even be able to bring them into harmony.  (I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.)  This is one of the fundamental tensions SoA explores, and in a much less dire way (you know, because I’m not a member of a gun-running biker gang) I saw many reflections of my own struggles played out on Jax and Opie’s faces, in Tara’s silences and screams, in Gemma’s desperate need to control.  But a reflection is not the thing itself, and I am a free creature rather than a fictional one, born a actual person with free will, not a character dependent on her creator for words.

My freedom has felt oppressive lately.  As I work to rid myself of slavery to sin, to invite grace into my life, the allure of easy comfort and quick gratification is even shinier, and therefor my anger at myself those times I give in is greater, because I know just how actively I am working against my own well being.  The extra time and energy I have being single and without children looks lonely and taxing, because I convince myself that I cannot say no to any question put to me, since after all, it’s not like I’m accountable to a husband who needs my love and support.  In my mind, now unrestrained by a need to drink as much as I can as often as I can, I fall into a trap of thinking that no choice is good enough, no action high enough, that I have been given a singular and un-repayable gift which I am not making the most of and maybe never will.

What if I am just as mediocre sober as I was drunk?

You see, freedom is not the same as simplicity.  But also, doubt is not despair.  I’m allowed to doubt in myself.  That is natural, and I have quite a talent for it.  But despair leads straight back to the bottle.  So, in the words of St. Francis, “where there is doubt let me sow faith.”  I cannot lack faith when I realize that I was given a chance to turn my life around.  I cannot lack faith when I think that tomorrow friends are opening their home to me, inviting me to spend Thanksgiving with them in exchange for making the mashed potatoes.  (Um, yeah, say a little extra prayer for that one!)  I cannot lack faith when I know that my mother goes to sleep unburdened by undue worry over me, her prayers for my safety answered after many years.  I cannot lack faith when I look now at the ability to doubt without despairing.  I didn’t have that for years.  Maybe I’ve never had that before.

And so I am thankful.  Thankful to be on the recovering side of alcoholism.  Thankful for faith.  Thankful for doubt.  And thankful that after tomorrow I can watch the greatest Christmas movie of all time and I won’t be “starting the season too early.”

Yes, that movie is Die Hard.

(1 Year, 2 Months, and 1 Day Sober)