I quit drinking alcohol when I was 26 years old. I went over my top. Those stories are for another time. It wasn't a long, titrated process to quit. I didn't go to AA meetings. I didn't have to avoid being around it. I just quit. I was lucky that my body let me do that. Grace. I get that.

I was, I came to realize, self medicating in a major way. Continuing therapy and monitored prescription medication were some of the ways I was able to move forward and still, barely, function in life.

Years later, countless hours of therapeutic support and process, crawling on my hands and knees through glass and grit, building community, facing my demons with courage, etc etc...I stand here today. Some days are rougher than others. Some things knock me flat on my face. Some things still defy any courage I can muster; they best me and I am still learning to be okay with that.

This week has grabbed my ankles and pulled me down hard and fast. I've been swallowing water at the floor of the sea. The sky seems so very far away. The light is difficult to perceive. The sounds above me are muffled and undecipherable. I'm reaching into my pockets, fumbling for stones, emptying what I can. Grasping a small pebble, feeling it's smooth and soft roundness, wrangling it from my tangled clothes, and letting it fall from my fingertips is a small victory. It is the realization that I am not at the bottom of gravity. I have made some progress on my way back up to the surface. Then a wall of water leans into me and I go limp again, submitting, hands up, surrendered. My heart feels crushed by the weight of grief. I bargain for a sip of breath; just enough to get me through the moment.

I craved a margarita on the rocks yesterday. Today the craving persisted. I managed myself out of the house today and went to the Nature Park. I walked as if the entirety of the ocean filled my clothes; wet and heavy and slow. I had to sit. I lay down on a bench. I stared at ants, caterpillars, wasps. I pressed my hand into the damp earth. I smelled the day after rain stream. The birds sang and talked to teach other. The squirrels chattered at each other. People walked by with their dogs. Most of the dogs wanted to investigate me; me, this dark swirl of sadness. Their people pulled at their leashes and they were distracted to other curiosities.

I read from Francis Weller's "the Wild Edge of Sorrow", said "yes, this", "yes, this", and "yes, this" while I dragged a line of pencil under his words. Rumi's "birdwings". Yes, this. The journey of sorrow is a constant movement between expanding and contracting. The bird's wings opening and closing. And here I am,  the hinges of my wings fixed in sadness. My wings are tethered to my spine, immovable, unbudgeable.....having had enough of the cost of loving. My muscles and sinew are roiling in pain. I cannot move my arm. My scalenes hold fast; not allowing breath to move through my neck, my shoulder, my lungs, my ribs. My heart gasps for air. 

I laughed with Linda on the phone. I told her I watched "I think you should leave" and it was medicine. The ridiculousness was a balm. 

I craved a margarita on the rocks. "But, I don't drink," I thought. Then I thought, but I can drink. There's nothing that says I can't. So, instead of being a sad sap and sitting alone at the bar of a Mexican restaurant at three in the afternoon sipping on a margarita, (Though, footnote: as a "middle aged woman" it's a true story to say that it wouldn't matter if I did. A middle aged woman drowning her sorrow in a margarita at a bar of a mexican restaurant in a shopping plaza next to IHOP is not something that anyone would notice, let alone judge. Middle aged women, in this society, have the super hero power of invisibility and, if registered, we are generally regarded with a casual indifference at best. I could wear bunny slippers, cheeto stained sweat pants, and go braless in an oversized T shirt with my oily hair pulled into a top knot and I promise you, no one would bat an eye)....I called my mom and asked her to be my DD so I could have a margarita on the rocks in the middle of the afternoon at the shopping plaza Mexican restaurant next to IHOP and Urgent Care. I mean, what's pathetic about that?

It's anticlimactic. I got a little buzz, but mostly I got tired. After eating a portion of my Veracruz platter, some chips and salsa, and some churros....I came home and crawled into bed.

But, it's good to have a little veneer of numbness for now. To not be so water logged. To not be so aware that my wings are pinned to my side. To not, for a half a second, be so consumed with the emptiness of life without my Ursa.