Island Perspectives

It’s now been 13 days since I’ve last used. I’m starting to think that I should wear a name tag that says, “Hello, my name is Desomniac and I’m emotionally dysfunctional.” I’m not sure it would help though.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time over the past two weeks on Vashon Island. I decided to first go out there in the middle of last week, partly to go to a meeting, but mainly to get away from the city. Today will be my 6^th trip in 8 days.

While I’m on the island I don’t have the overwhelming sense of dysfunction that I carry with me throughout Seattle. Instead of a chaotic tempest of emotions, cycling far too quickly to even attempt to identify them, there is a calmness within that I have not felt since leaving Oahu.

I’ve been told before that I’m all fire and air, which is something that I could very much identify in the past. I avoided the grounding effects of earth at all costs and only went in search of water when I could only communicate in waves. I allowed raw emotion and intangible thought to control my life.

I’ve come to find that the moments in which I feel most grounded is when I’m surrounded by water. Looking out across a fluid expanse, incapable of supporting even the softest of steps, instills a greater appreciation for the earth beneath my feet.

It would be no surprise to anyone that I lack balance in my life. Given my obsessive tendencies to hand over my willpower to the phases of the moon, you could easily argue I’m the definition of a lunatic, but I’m trying to be better.

I’m regularly attending meetings at this point. I’ve fought adamantly against them in the past. Every time I would go I’d sit and listen to what everyone had to say and focus only on the differences between us. It became a futile effort and made me hate the idea of them even more. Since the first meeting I attended on the island I found myself seeing only the similarities and it’s kept me coming back.

I’ve never done step work, or at least I never realized that I was doing it. The more that I read about the program and hear other people share I’m starting to think that this blog in many ways has been my fourth, eighth and ninth steps. It lacks one essential element though, social interaction and the experience offered from others who have suffered the same as I have. There is a value in that I didn’t understand in the past.

I’m not okay, but I can honestly say that I am getting better. I just need to remember each time I look up at the moon, as beautiful as it is, to look down and appreciate the ground for giving me the perspective to even consider something else.