From the outside, she looks hip, even fun in her colorful clothes on her pink motorbike as her rock music plays to the world. You might even say to yourself, “I want to be like her.” But I know her, I’ve been her, she is the other side of me…
She is not happy, fun or even hip for that matter, she lives in the darkness and can’t remember the light and she only feels remorse, alone and desperately lost in the spiral of her disease. She is just trying to trudge through one more of a long line of smeared days that run one into another. Hoping for nothing but the pain to stop, hiding from the impending doom that looms over her every sober moment of her life until she does the only thing that she knows will stop the madness. She takes another drink, she uses another drug, either will work or did once upon a time, long ago.
Now the alcohol and drugs have stopped working, she wants to give them up, as she can no longer live with them or without them. Some days she says; “I won’t drink today,” usually as she is pouring her poison. When she awakes from her black-out, she has to use to open her eyes, stop the shaking and the memories of the terrible things she did, the day, the week, and even the year before. The precious, bright shining star that she once was is only a distant memory now if she can recall that girl at all. “Was that me, or someone else I once knew?”
I know her well, she is me, the other side of me. She is the drunk for my sober, the despair for my joy, the dark side of my light that shines so bright, and she is the evil side of my grace.
But for the Grace of God, I am her, she is the other side of me.