Darkness.and.Dawn.

One of my two best friends from rehab killed herself a few weeks ago.  But for our alcoholism, our lives would have been parallel lines that never met.  Instead, the trajectory forms an X; life lines meeting briefly in the middle.  Such disparate beginnings, such opposite ends, stumbling into each other in our drunkenness, gliding away from each other with promises and high hopes.  I cannot decide if our paths were preordained, an effort of will, or simply random float.  I cannot comprehend how one of us ended there, and the other, here.  Why mine became sobriety and hope, while hers remained misery and darkness I continually ask.  It is easy to claim that the wings of some sort of spiritual grace have flown me here; it is easy to denounce the existence of that grace in the face of her continued wretchedness.

I lay aside the constant question, for I cannot find an answer.  Instead I ask for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  I cannot change her pain, her loneliness, her struggle, and I cannot change her death.  I can somehow find my own serenity in the middle of it all, though sleepless nights are more inclined to contemplation than serenity.  It is easy for me to recognize that we collided in pain, that the string of melancholy running through and underneath and slipping to the surface of both of our lives is what bonds us together.  But perhaps I can begin find our connection in joy.  I wrote the other day that I was so grateful for the darkness before the dawn, because the dawn is so beautiful right now.  I didn’t even realize as I wrote it that perhaps it was my answer – my friend’s name is Dawn.  So once again, I let go, I surrender into her darkness, knowing that it helped to bring about my dawn.