Amazing Days…

I had one yesterday. It just flowed. The whole day. One thing just flowed into the next without effort or worry. I hung out with some really cool people, saw whales breaching (again), swam with turtles (again), enjoyed a beach volleyball BBQ with my new friends here on Maui, saw the most amazing sunset, went to dinner with my new friends, spent the day with my daughter and her friend with everyone vibing and landed in bed before 10 pm tired from a day well spent.

It will be hard to get another day like yesterday, or anyone of the days out of the whole week I have been here. It will be a challenge for sure. But I do not doubt life anymore. I know that there will be more epic days because that is just life today. Life living the miracle of sobriety one day at a time.

And just so that I honor the all important balance in life; I know the hard days are coming too. And that is ok. That is fine with me. Because I no longer seek pleasure and avoid pain, (well most of the time). Today I can see that with every blessing there is a curse and with every curse a blessing. That all the effort I put in for literal decades trying to lodge myself firmly in this place where I am happy all the time was necessary to get me to this place today where I see that I am here, living this life, painful as it may be at times, loving every minute that I can because missing any of it would cheat me out of a great fucking life.

I am so grateful for this trip. For this time with my daughter as she rounds out into full blown teen. That she wanted to come with me and was willing to hang out with me. That I got to do exactly what I wanted for a few days with little to no responsibility. That I can return home to the life that I love, that is riddled with issues and concerns and problems right now, and to feel ready to deal with them. Show up for my life and do what is necessary and required, not because I have to, but because I want to.

And that is the added bonus reward to days that shock the system with all their amazingness: I no longer only seek the amazing ones. That I am fine with the hard, painful ones too. It is all good, really. I am comfortable with my life and how it is unfolding and I am so relieved that I am not in charge of any of it, my part is simple to show up and see where I can be of service, stay sober, help someone else do that also. And for that effort, I am way overpaid on a daily basis.

I didn’t know that twenty-seven years ago that this would or even could be my life. That I will feel the most comfortable in my own skin that I have ever felt. That I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. That I would be happy, joyous and free most of the damn time and that I would not feel victimized when life takes a hard turn and I hit the asphalt. I no longer feel like I am sentenced to life without anesthesia, instead it has changed into life without filters, and while sometimes the pain is immense, so it the mother fucking joy.

I get to do this. All of it. And yesterday as I stood on Black Rock Beach in Maui, I got to see whales breaching in the not so far off distance, watching the sun say aloha for the day, and watch the sky turn a color I have never seen before. It was an amazing day and I get to keep it forever in my mind. Relive it as often as I would like over and over again until I the next time I am lucky enough to plant my toes in the sand and behold this magical place called Hawaii.

They can’t all be amazing days…but I can be amazed every day. And that is something from someone like me, who when I joined life at twenty five, I was not amazed by anything except how much life sucked, repeatedly. What a change. What a difference! Today, even the bad, hard days are magical. And I am so very, very grateful. Mahalo.