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It took me too long to learn that the present is where our futures are decided
One of the most telling signs of addiction — and it was certainly true of the over thirty years I spent chasing the alchohol buzz — is the inability to live in the present. I spent my life regretting the past or dreaming of a better future. Better? Different, at least.
The upshot was that, although I had ambitions — and they had stayed the same since I was about eight years old — I never found the moment in which to try to realise them. Every year as an adult I felt I was already too old, that life was slipping me by. And at the same time — in the paradox known to the addicted — I felt that I would soon make the necessary changes that would bring about success.
I was reminded of this today. On the back of a Brianpickings article about Gide’s Journals, I picked up my own Penguin Lives & Letters edition and flicked through it. First up was the title page, in which I had inscribed the year I bought it and first started reading it: 1984. I know that, even in 1984, I felt I had let too much time slip by. Thirty-four years ago. If I think of the things I could have done in those thirty-four years to move forward, I might drive myself mad.
At least I got sober. Eventually. And now I live in the present, as best I can after so long with a different habit — as it were.
