Always Grateful

For Roxy, getting sober hadn’t been easy. It had taken about six months of relapsing, changing her number, and altering her entire lifestyle in order to get to a place where she could put together any time that really felt legit. Nearly six months was the longest she’d ever been sober since she started the journey a year ago in November, when her family found out the truth about how she was coping with life. It had been a blur when everything first came to light, but it all happened because of her brother. He had a surgery and she just couldn’t help herself from stealing some of his pain pills for herself; after all hydrocodone was her first love that she discovered when she was eighteen. Then when her brother found out, the accusations started flying, horrible things were said, and threats were made, but despite her best efforts soon everyone knew that Roxy was nothing more than an addict and an alcoholic. It was then that Roxy’s dad gave her an ultimatum to either get clean or be kicked out of the family until she could get clean. That’s when her journey started.

She went to her first meeting of AA and almost every word that anyone shared resonated with her. At the end of the meeting she was surrounded by a hoard of women, all of whom wanted her to “keep coming back” and share their numbers with her so she had the support she needed to stay sober until the next meeting. She met the woman who would become her first sponsor at this meeting, and several women who provided regular support for her throughout her months of relapsing and struggles to stay clean and sober. Those first 6 months of trying to get sober were the hardest because of the amount of sheer physical pain she was in all the time. That was often what lead her to relapse, the notion to stop the pain, if only for a little while. But every relapse brought on more shame and guilt, especially having to tell her dad that her time was resetting and that she had failed him again. Even though he never told her that she was a failure, she felt an intrinsic remorse for putting him through another relapse every time it happened. Roxy knew it made him worry because her struggles reminded him of his brother who he lost to alcoholism at a young age. She didn’t realize it yet, but every relapse was teaching her a little bit more about herself, and every time she got a little bit more time under her belt.

Finally, the last time she relapsed she went with her sponsor to her dealer’s house and told him that she was deleting his number from her phone and asked that he do the same with hers. What had been happening was that he would text her when he had anything of interest to sell, even if she hadn’t been looking and that was near impossible for her to say no to. Plus, she finally had a steady job & regular paycheck & often had disposable income when he texted. Roxy watched him delete her number with her sponsor overseeing the whole interaction and said goodbye and thanked him for supporting her sobriety. He wished her good luck in getting sober. She left his house with a new resolve, feeling more confident that this time it would be different. This time she would stay sober.

Nearly six months later, it was the lead up to Christmas and she had been working hard. She went to meetings regularly: every day when she wasn’t working. She had been going through the steps with her sponsor, little by slowly, and was making progress that was starting to make a difference in her everyday life. Her presence was brighter and her attitude was much more pleasant to be around. She still experienced pain, but she was starting to recognize the difference between real pain and phantom pain, which was when her brain would try to trick her into thinking she was in pain so she would take a substance to ease it. She had cut the toxic people out of her life. She had started a new job that had the potential to turn into a career and was learning to exist in her own skin. And when her sister texted her to ask her what she wanted for Christmas, she knew that her family was noticing the differences in her too.

Roxy would have been chuffed with just being invited to Christmas and given the opportunity to give her family gifts, but the fact that her family wanted to give her gifts as well was an overwhelming feeling. She swallowed the feelings down and focused on getting everyone the best gifts she could afford and planned to show up and be grateful for whatever she received. The days leading up to Christmas she couldn’t think about anything but seeing everyone’s faces when they opened her gifts, which was in all honesty, her favorite part of the holiday. Yeah, of course, it was great receiving gifts, but giving gifts just filled her with a different level of satisfaction that nothing else really did.

At last it was the day the family had decided to get together to exchange gifts, and Roxy hauled her presents for everyone over to her sister’s house and placed them neatly under the tree. She sat quietly and took a backrow seat to all the commotion of the day, hardly getting up to eat the food that her sister had made; after all she didn’t want to be a bother or be in anyone’s way. Once everyone arrived, ate some snacks, and settled in, it was time for presents. Everyone took their turn opening a present, youngest to oldest, and each present that Roxy opened was perfect. She couldn’t believe everything she got, even the socks seemed like too much of a bother for her parents to have gotten her. She couldn’t help feeling like an imposter and like she didn’t deserve any nice things after all of the horrible things she had done to them while she was still using.

She used to steal money from her parents, money and pills from her brother, watched her nephew while under the influence, yelled and screamed at her sisters for absolutely no reason, stole pills from her parents, and drove under the influence all the time. All of this damage she’d caused raced through her mind while she stared at the pile of gifts on the floor in front of her when suddenly her vision started to blur, and she realized she had begun to cry. The tears started falling faster and her sister asked if she was okay, but she was too awestruck to speak. Roxy’s sister got up and motioned for her to follow and lead her back to her bedroom. She talked her through some deep breathing exercises until Roxy was able to calm down. She asked her what was wrong again and Roxy blurted, “I just feel like it’s all too much and I don’t deserve all of these things that everyone got me. I’ve done so much shit to all of you and it’s not fair!”

“Roxy. You don’t get to decide whether we show you how much we love you. We know how hard you’ve worked and we want to give you gifts because we see how far you’ve come. Don’t sell yourself short. Yeah, there’s a lot of shit you’ve done but we’ve all done shit. Your shit was just more recent. But you’re doing something about it and that’s what matters, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Roxy sniffled.

“Alright, now. Can we go back out there and have a good Christmas?”

“Yeah,” Roxy said laughing. She gave her sister a hug and tried not to be so overcome with gratitude that she cried again. They walked back out to the living room where everyone was talking and they all cheered when they came back into the room, asking if Roxy was okay. “I’m good, now whose turn is it to open next?”

Roxy never forgot this first Christmas after getting sober, and even though she still finds joy in giving gifts to her family, she never forgets that receiving gifts gives her family the opportunity to show her their love for her, and that is something she can be grateful for always.