The closest thing to this pandemic weirdness I’ve experienced is my early sobriety.
More than 30 years ago when I decided to step away from alcohol and drugs, I didn’t think about my abstinence as something that was moving forward or something that increased in value as time went on. I don’t think I ever formed much in the way of a happy thought along the lines of: “In two weeks I’ll have been clean for six months!”
Yet I could imagine that someday I would look back at success. I did have a vision of the sober, successful me looking in the rear-view mirror at decades spent free from the drugs that would otherwise have killed me.
I feel the same way about life under the dark clouds of COVID-19. I am not counting the days spent sheltering at home, but I am imagining how it will feel to look back over these days and be grateful that I made it.
I am much better at reflecting on those things that I survive, rather than dreaming of how I will succeed. I suspect a lot of other recovering folks share this trait.
–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett