Today, I am 17 years sober. Seventeen years…it’s a lot but it feels like just yesterday when I came to my first meeting, brought to my first meeting is the truth. You see, I came into the Rooms by way of a failed suicide attempt. I wanted out so I took measures; in the end, a moment of fear was all it took to steer my hands and wrist away from the darkness. When I talk about that night, I say, “All that my disease took from me was my will to live.” That’s all.

This past year has been a journey of discoveries and affirmations as I’ve continued to appreciate the life I have. Seventeen years ago, I couldn’t even think of being grateful for life. All I could see was failure: failure to stop drinking, failure to keep a relationship,  failure to keep wanting to live, failure to end it. By the time I took my seat in that meeting in that small room on the second story of the LGBT Center, I was an empty shell, my spirit slash-and-burned, the earth salted. “I don’t want this,” I kept thinking, “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

All I remember from that meeting was the floor, heavy as my head was, weighed down with supposed failure. Little did I know that that first meeting would plant a seed beneath the wreckage and waste.

Seventeen years later, I still go to meetings, I’m still sober…I’m still living.

In that time, I’ve accomplished a lot but the greatest accomplishment I can claim is the precarious one of sobriety. Precarious because this gift can just as easily be taken, “a rock built on sand” is how I characterize it.

In recovery, I’ve sought treatment for mental health issues, obtained a degree, led a Veterans organization, found good work, and found Love. All this made possible through a simple admission, “I am an alcoholic.”; simple yet powerful and loaded with possibility if one does the work and recovery is work, for sure, not the easy kind either. To get here, I had to remove the wreckage and cultivate the salted earth beneath, removing each grain over time so that the seed could sprout.

Seventeen years later, I’m still growing and grateful for all that Life has become, a Garden of riches nourished with Love, Care & the hard work of reharnessing the Willingness to go on.

If you’re 24 hours, 24 months, or 24 years-plus into your Recovery, keep going. I can’t promise it’ll be easy or joyful or sexy all the time though what I can promise you is that it’s worth it. Whether you’re barely hanging on by a thread or securely strapped in with a rope, keep reaching or reach out because you could be the helping hand someone needs. Someone like the guy sitting in the first row, his head hung low, tears streaming as he reluctantly reached for that lifeline seventeen years ago today.

Yours In Leather,
Sir Aaron Wolf