Good or bad? Right or wrong? Malleable or cut in stone? Thought through, or made impulsively? Just a few of the questions I struggled with in early sobriety? Making choices was completely foreign to me early on. It scared me to death. Escaping into the nether world of omission every time a decision or a choice was demanded, was all I knew how to do. It was my panacea for everything.
Not only did alcohol obliterate my ability to choose during my using, but it outright lied to me by not alerting me to the fact that hiding from, and refusing to make decisions, was indeed a choice. And believe me, I repeatedly exercised that choice.
The sins of omission are as grave as the sins of commission. Their effect carries just as much weight. For instance: Because I had so little self-confidence and was terrified of change, when I was offered an opportunity to apply for a different job that had awesome benefits, an increase in salary, and a pension plan, I wrestled with it over too many glasses of wine and chose to relegate it to the land of coveted daydreams. That was a choice.
Lucky for me, years later that same opportunity presented itself again. And, with 10 years of sobriety under my belt, I made a conscious choice to act on it. Today I have over 25 happy, productive years in a job that allowed me to be independent and to feel valued. Yes, the delay did cost me a smaller pension due to the wasted years of indecision, but I choose not to cry over spilled milk, and am grateful for having been given a second chance.
The financial repercussions were insignificant compared to the effect that my choice to simply ignore the daily toll my marriage from hell was taking on me and my children. That choice, to do nothing; to take no action to try to remedy my situation, or to simply seek help, sentenced me and my children to years of unnecessary grief and stagnation. Escaping into the bottle after a verbal attack on my son, a head banging or choke hold that left no telltale marks, or three days of dead silence was my constant go-to. I was always assuming that the next day it would get better. It couldn’t possibly get any worse! I had taken my kids hostage. Imprisoned us all because I didn’t believe I had a choice.
Today, after many years of continuous sobriety in my jelly-bean jar, I recognize that making a choice is one of the magical gifts of recovery. Are there risks, of course. But not only can I think them through and weigh them, but if they are wrong and don’t work out, I get to choose again. How neat is that? Learning that all decisions aren’t cast in stone relieves me of those embedded fears that once crippled me. Making choices no longer restricts me. It allows me to be accountable and move on, remembering that no decision is indeed a choice.
Author Dallas H 