12/23/2010
It is Christmas Eve eve and once again I am on my way to finish my Christmas shopping, the relief that they paid us a day early greatly outweighing any dread I have about having to fight the masses. In fact, I am so thankful that I am able to go shopping at all really and set out with that in mind…
Just be thankful.
As I drove up 35, the Christmas music just loud enough to provide my mind with some nice background music, I allowed myself to journey back a few years to another Christmas Eve eve in 2007. Now, that was some year. That was the year that I’d been promoted to editor and was making nearly 20 dollars an hour. That was a big year for Santa. I had the best time that year, going down my list and checking things off. I remember that it was late, probably close to 11 p.m. by the time I’d finished picking just the right snowman wrapping paper with just the right ribbon and walked out into the cold and windy night. I rushed to the van and loaded my bounty in the back, got in and pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.
I don’t know that in my life I’d ever experienced such a feeling of elation. That was also the year that I began to feel like that saying “money can’t buy happiness” wasn’t necessarily true, since it was the first year that I’d had any amount of it and I was plenty happy. I remember actually saying out loud
Thank you for this, God. Thank you a lot.
And no sooner had I said those words, as if someone literally was sitting in the backseat saying them to me, I heard these words:
You better enjoy this year, it might be your last.
It really was one of the freakiest moments of my life, and one of the most memorable, as it was the first time that the dark place had a voice…
So, this year, as I drove along, letting my mind wander around a bit, and thinking, too, how I needed to write about this, I wasn’t only thankful that I’d gotten paid a day early so I didn’t have to be one of those Christmas Eve shoppers at the Walgreen’s…I was thankful that the dark place no longer speaks to me…it doesn’t come to me in the middle of the night and taunt me with what ifs.
It stopped on November 28, 2008, which was the day that I stopped doing the only two things that actually could kill me.
This year I celebrated my 2nd alcohol- and tobacco- free Christmas and enter my 3rd year free of addictions.
other than Mad Men and Friday Night Lights.
and Girl Scout Cookies.
What-A-Mother 