35 YEARS OF CONTINOUS SOBRIETY: ¨Thirty five years of God helping me encounter reality and the authentic in me¨ Leonardo Ricardo´s Christmas Story

My active alcoholism was lifted on December 13, 1978

I just celebrated my 35th year of continous sobriety. I didn't know how to not drink when I got sober at age 35. My life changed. It took a year for me to see better...I hated being sober but I was trapped, I was at the falling off place. I thought I knew I would be better but I didn't know how to live in/with reality. Strangers helped me. Strangers became friends, they were like me. Climbing down from the smoky balcony and sitting in the front row of my own life has been breathtaking and startling to me...I liked spotlights or dark better. At first I just held on, tried to be quiet (never easy for me), knowing that there was something inside of me that I could almost touch...some nights I would touch that place and think it my Soul. It's deep inside...it isn't available always for me to touch with my head or heart as I get busy insisting or demanding life be different than it really is. My Soul likes life as it really is, it likes me touching life (and sometimes even making love to life)...not easy sometimes for a sober, real human being, who I discovered was the real me.

35 Years of clairty:

Fun/not, shy/bold, young/old, love/lust, found/lost, fear/fearless, hate/happy, healthy/ill, buff/fat, rich/not, popular/avoided, talented/restrained, traveled/reclusive, admired/scorned, trusted/maybe...reality just takes some getting used to. 

I still am growing toward Gods will for me but I think God just wants me to be the authentic me and go with it. Go with life. My Soul knows who I am better than me. 

I send you love and I send you my best/sparkly/glittery holiday friendship to family, friends, loved/beloved ones and to all of you I don't even know. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all from the foot of the Fuego Volcano  (and kisses to those whom I love but have gone on before me)

At the foot of the Fuego volcano

Leonardo Ricardo
Sacatepequez, Guatemala, Central America
Christmas Eve, 2013