Dramatic Change

Personal self-induced dramatic change (say, from the cessation of using alcohol), is probably a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I wish it wasn't, naturally.  This doesn't preclude change, it just means that we don't become entirely new people just because we put down the bottle.

In fact, we alcoholics are probably so self-centered that we think the change that occurs from not drinking is equivalent to something more than it is, simply because it happened to us.

I'm not trying to take away the somewhat amazing accomplishment of sobriety from anyone who has achieved it.  That's not my aim at all.  I'm just saying, in short, that being sober is a necessary condition for certain people to live relatively normal and non-horrible catastrophic lives, but it is not a sufficient condition, alone, for those same people to excel.

It is nice, but it is not everything, see?  A foundation of sorts.  If we don't wear clothes (and often times specific clothes), we can't go to work.  See, but if we don't wear any clothes, we can't really go to work (and be allowed to keep going).  Simple as that.  Wearing clothes by itself isn't special, but it is for us, people who have a problem conforming, perhaps, to the "uniform" of whatever it is that normal consists of, or to carry the analogy off the deep end, people who just love to be naked no matter the costs.

We, the naked ones, who pretend so hard to be vulnerable, exposed, groomed, and otherwise mature, and yet, can't manage to just keep our clothes on!

I'll tell you this much, and I won't tell you no more.  Not today.