Something happened today..
A memory from September of last year, celebrating three months of sobriety, graced my iPhone feed. I felt overcome with a sudden rush of sadness. Sad because I remember some few short days later, I’d “fallen” again. I remember the guy from that post. He spoke of victory over what’d kept him shackled on and off for years. But, in truth, he wasn’t free. He was creating the very facade that he fought so hard to separate himself from the company of. He was sober, but he was broken. Broken because the friendships and life and surroundings he’d created over so many years were nothing more than a haphazardly crafted image of normalcy, pieced together from popular culture and symptoms of societal subjugation.
September 2021 Marcus didn’t know what April 2022 Marcus knows. September Me had only placed a bandaid on a 3rd degree burn. I now know that we’re only as good as our surroundings. A concept simple in delivery and complex in practice. It’s never an over the top shadowy figure, wreaking of whiskey, promising you the time of your life. No; instead, It’s the subtle sliding of a cold beverage in your direction amidst engaging conversation or discourse. It’s never a verbalized “you should”, it’s an unspoken “why wouldn’t you?”
I post this not to discourage progress, but to encourage vigilance. Our fight is not with the Devil we know, my friends. Our fight is with the Demon we can’t see.
Luckily, he is one, and together, we are many.
