A few short years ago, the month of August would have been like every other month. I would have woken in a tangle of sheets, maybe bloody (certainly besmirched) with nausea rising in my throat and no memory of how I got the abrasions on my knees.
Read it and weep…
I’d reach over to the bedside table and drink the last dregs in the wineglass from the night before like a tonic. The curtains would be billowing, a sharp breeze off the Exuma Sound. And as I started another day in Paradise, I wouldn’t bother to look out of the window…
As patches of the previous evening came back, I’d get snippets of memory. It felt like the sickening strobe light – OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON – at the Happy People Bar in the village. A face here, a piece of a room there, swapped with a matt-black nothingness…
My past came up in the office yesterday. Jess said she could not imagine me in my active addiction. She said it made her sad to think of it. Weirdly, I can’t imagine it either. That time in my life, at the tail end of the maelstrom that was my late-stage alcoholism, feels like it happened to someone else.
Falling off a bar stool should hurt, right?
When I think about that crazy blonde who wore a wineglass like a wedding ring and drove a golf cart like a drunken banshee, I don’t even like her. And think about what it does to your body to fall, dead weight, from the summit of a barstool. And what it must feel like to have a baker’s dozen of the local guys try to hoist you from a filthy cement floor.
It’s no wonder my Pucci kitten heals didn’t survive. It’s a wonder I did.
There were good times living in The Bahamas. Such good times in fact, I cannot muster the nerve to return. Another island perhaps, but not Staniel Cay… not yet…
Although the Galliot Bank remains my favorite place on earth…
This summer I have been working…
Living in Michigan, is like living in Opposite World from The Bahamas. In fact, people work during the summer here and travel to warm climes in the winter. Speaking of working, I’ve been doing a lot of it.
And because I am proud of my accomplishments, and happy to be working at something I love to do, I wanted to share with you the new website I created (along with Jess, Monica, Kevin and Mindutopia) for Sanford House Addiction Treatment Centers.
We have gone from being a gender specific treatment facility for women, to adding treatment for men to the mix. It was necessary to rewrite the entire website before the opening (in the next two weeks in a series of events) of our newest restored historic mansion – Sanford House at John Street for Men. The website has been a long time coming. I began writing it in February, in a cabin in the Up North woods.
Walden Pond and all that…
When you think about it from the marketing perspective, a profound change in an organization makes for a host of problems, challenges, exigencies and opportunities. One must bow to the Gods of Google SEO… And what a fun brain teaser it is.
Now, I’m not saying that launching a new website and opening a 20 bed treatment facility is as relaxing as passing out on the deck of a boat on the Exuma Sound. And I am not sporting a tan this summer. But the confidence, pride and community I have developed during this process is so satisfying, I can honestly say I’d rather be doing this than sitting on a beach.
But I am thinking of taking one of those Michigan, fall vacays or booking a trip to Florida for the holidays now… All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl.
Today I’m not drinking because, I’m planning a sober vacation!
How come you’re not drinking?
E2E – We are thinking of you every day…
