Anyone that tells you they have no regrets more than likely lacks the ability to truly learn from their past, to shape any type of future where they will be able to see their mistakes and missteps before they manifest in the sentient world.
Along the same lines, people that actively believe in redemption are those that continually operate inside an obsolete construct where the past is deleted like some poorly written paper for your English Composition class.
But revision, revision is real, and it is what destroys the addict and those around them - especially the ones they love the most.
When faced with the reality of the absence of redemption, we are faced with the question of whether or not damnation is removed from the equation by default. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
We are all damned to become those things we hate - even if for only a brief while. Sons become fathers that are quarantined in apartments no larger than 2 rooms. Daughters become the physically and mentally unstable mirrors of their mothers. Husbands become ex-husbands and wives turn on every "cherished value" they once claimed to hold in order to "feel" something new. We all become the demons that we spend our entire childhoods running from.
That shadow over by the closet, the faint breathing under the bed, the creaking inside the walls, that's not the boogeyman - that's you just biding it's time until it can come out.
Do I regret anything that I have done that brought me to where I am right now? Why should I? While some will claim that our lives are "pre-destined" - a concept that I have flirted with on more than one occasion - I tend to embrace more of the theory that we all have free will that dovetails with a pre-determined set of variables that will, hopefully, bring us to where we are most comfortable.
Call it the cynic in me, but no one is truly happy with the end station in life. But more on that later.
Back to this outdated and archaic notion of redemption.
In theological circles - most specifically the Judeo-Christian subset - this idea of redemption means that you are "washed clean" of all your misgivings and "sins". This old version of you now replaced with a new, updated, operating system that - while pure in the eyes of a select few - is still gifted with the ability, and possibly even the desire, to fall back into the same trappings that ensnared you before. You are, in essence, free to sin again, and again, and again. And each time, redemption is still an option. You can still end up writing that same shitty prose that you call your life.
The one aspect of addiction recovery that is most difficult to deal with - and something mentioned her before - is revision. In many ways, damnation and revision are one in the same. As addicts, we do our best to "revise" our lives in order to regain what we had lost, to attain what we dream for, and the remove what has poisoned us. But do we change so much that we are unrecognizable to ourselves, to our loved ones, to go through a metamorphosis so complete that we end up destroying rather than creating? The later is most likely seen in those the addict once had a close relationship with. A mother, a father, wife, child, brother, or sister.
Why does this revision occur?
I've recently become acquainted with the concept of "Liminal Time". In theory, this is where time slows to such a exponential degree that people, if able to manipulate it properly, can remove themselves from their particular station in life or placement on a given timeline and become someone else, even an earlier or later version of themselves.
What I have postulated is that in addiction recovery, their is a strain of "Liminal Time" where those around us subconsciously manipulate reality in order to validate their own actions, their own latent desires they dared not admit before, their new way of speaking. And in parallel, these twistings of the fabric of reality can and will invariably be used to maintain a set hierarchy - the addict will be viewed as the monster and those closest to him/her will be able to manipulate a whole host of systems in order to prevent those in recovery from advancing.
This is done because people in the modern world have lost the ability to communicate. We act out in ways that run contrary to the better angels of our nature in the name of vengeance, retribution, or some canted sense of honor and entitlement without concern for the outcome.
Spouses turn on one another with such ferocity and unchecked hatred that they lack the ability to see the systemic risk, the collateral damage. If one were to, say, believe in karma, this is the point at which the scales tip away from your favor without you even being able to see it.
People react in this way because they don't talk to one another. And that's precisely what it is, a reaction to a visceral emotion. People don't take the time to pause and see how what they are doing, what they are becoming, whom it affects, and how it will ultimately be their own undoing.
In the end, without the ability to truly see how addiction recovery can have such a visicitudinal effect on all parties involved, we will come to realize that there is no true happy ending to anything. We only have the ability to be comfortable with our own skin and those we want around us. Make no mistake, I'm not speaking of settling for one person, one job, one home, one town - I'm talking about making the choices that are going to prevent us from screwing up too much.
People are going to grow tired of one another eventually if we can't mend our ability to communicate. If we can talk about how radically changing our own lives will have a direct impact on those around us. If we can't take an honest look at our past and learn from it. If we can't grasp the very real concept that removing something from our field of vision doesn't make it disappear - that we are just refusing to acknowledge that it's there. If we can't do these very basic things, then husbands will grow tired of wives, wives will grow tired of new lovers, and children will grow tired of their parents.
So until that day where we finally wake up to what needs to be done, the only things any of us will be able to do is enjoy the silence..........
