Aimless Discontent

I've been in recovery for seventeen and a half years and I can say that it is like nothing I ever imaged.  Looking back I'm not sure I ever thought about what it would look like in the first place.  In the early days of therapy and then being in the rooms I just did what I was told.  I showed up each week, occupied my seat, whether that was on my therapists couch or elsewhere.  It wasn't until well into it that things started to change, and not for the better.  No one tells you during those first months that physical and/or emotional sobriety strips away the protective coatings that one has adapted to survive.  Mine where honed when I was a young child; expertly so.  Simply put, during my childhood it was develop the skills or die.  The insanity was that real.  There's a saying in the rooms, one peels away the layers like an onion working towards finding the core, those hidden things that drive us into creating our own adult insanity.  My insanity predisposed me to drink, to muck into other peoples lives, sex addiction, and having an obsession with myself.  There were a lot of layers, still are.  Within my experience of recovery there has never been an end point, just a continual journey towards health and light.  I suspect I will be on this road until I take my last breath and beyond into my next life and the one after that as I laughingly like to say.  My baggage is that potent.
When I was nearing the end of my time in therapy in 2015 I started experiencing feelings of aimless discontent.  I said that to my therapist one day, that I didn't see what good was coming of me occupying my seat each week.  He looked upon that as a good thing.  I did not.  Aimless discontent can be an uncomfortable place to be.  One looks around for inspiration or just for having a purpose to move from one day to the next and finds none.  I didn't realize at the time that in actuality aimless discontent is, as my therapist had said, a good thing.  Within it there is peace.  For too many years I lived with anxiety driven angst that colored every moment of my existence.  That is no longer the case.  Within the discontent there is clarity.  Within it there is love.  Love of oneself; and respect, particularly for the demons that once drove me to near insanity.  I told a friend recently that before recovery and for some time after I was the guy clinging, sometimes just by my fingertips, to the roof rack of an out of control bus careening on and off road.  At any given moment I did not know whether I was going to be thrown or not.  It was that bizarre.  Only I didn't even know the bus existed.  It was, simply put , my everyday reality, one borne out of my childhood experiences and the skill sets that I had honed in order to survive.
You hear in the rooms that we use the steps to re-parent ourselves.  This is true in my case.  I have done this and continue to because in many ways the adults that were charged with my care as a child were children themselves, only ones in adult sized bodies.  This is not to say that all things were insane.  They were not.  We had the essentials, a well kept home, clean clothes, good food.  We had some moral guidance albeit borne out of a fundamentalist background.  The window dressings were all there, the substance was not.  Those things like meaningful expressions of love, emotional support, a sense of real safety, the kind that allows children to explore the world knowing that the adults in the rooms have their back.  That they can take risks, step outside the box, because they have been instilled with an sense of self and genuine authenticity.  It takes real skill to provide a home where these qualities exists, where the child can explore the wonders of the world around them and still feel safe.  This is what the core of my recovery has become as I peel away the layers; providing for my inner children what they never had when we were all young.
Being a man of a certain age also drives my aimless discontent.  I am looking at retiring and what my life will look like.  Work has never been my calling.  I enjoy it.  It can be challenging though, and frustrating, wildly so at times; but for me, work has always been just a means to an end, the vehicle to which I use to fund my real life.  Gardening has always been my calling.  More recently writing too.
I am looking forward to not having the constraints of time spent at work.  There are so many things I would love to do with my friends that I can not due to my work schedule.  Equally though, I would be perfectly content with puttering in the garden each day then relaxing in the evening with a cup of tea and a good book.   Or continuing the process of finishing my novel, well a trilogy as it now exists.  I am an Old Soul, An Old Soul in the City, and Within the Sunrise have been creating themselves within me for ten years and I'm looking forward to the day when they become fully themselves. There are other novels waiting to be written, The Gripman's Daughter and another about Harriet Beecher Stowe's son Freddie who disappeared after coming to San Francisco to escape his battle scarred demons borne of his Civil War experiences.  Retirement is an exciting prospect.
A friend asked me recently if I was happy.  I said no.  I told him I have many joyous moments but I am not happy.  I am content though.  Maybe the aimless discontent is, as I said earlier. me living with the absence of the drama and angst that drove me like a bullwhip for so much of my life.  Maybe aimless discontent is me existing with some degree of a sense of self and authenticity borne of love, peace, and of clarity.  Maybe I will name it Aimless Content instead, a Content that is the result of feeling relatively free of ones demons.  Whatever this is, it is my reality at the moment and I'm grateful for it and for the breath it provides.