Blackout

The other day I woke up - again.  I don't mean the - I am finished sleeping and now it's time to open my eyes.  I mean I woke up in the middle of my life and discovered I had been absent for a little while.  There is a book that I read that refers to these moments as strange mental blank spots.  Some people refer to them as spiritual awakenings.  In that gorgeous song it says ...I was blind and now I see.  I call these moments sober blackouts.


Back in the old days when I woke up naked on a friends couch with a small damp towel covering my not-so-private parts wondering where I was, how I had gotten there and why was my ankle swollen after a night on the town with my stranger drunken friends - that was the kind of blackout I had come to know and dread.  Waking from those blackouts was horrifying and embarrassing and temporarily sobering.  But with all of my might, I was unable to answer those questions; unable to piece together the hazy memories of the night before.  But I haven't had a drink in quite some time so waking up in the middle of my life, as if I was in a blackout, is a strange experience.


The good news is that I was fully clothed when I woke up.  My body parts were in tact.  My house was in order.  My children were playing Pokemon on the living room floor.  I get so busy in the day-to-dayness of my life that I forget to look up every once in a while and take note.  I walk the dog and fix breakfast for the boys and dig out clean clothes from the dryer to wear and drop them off at school and drive to work and listen to spiritual teachings and work at work and eat the same salad from Trader Joe's for lunch and drive home and talk to my mom or sister or friend and pick up the boys and fix dinner and coach football and cheer on soccer and walk the dog - and did I feed the dog - and do more laundry and sit for a minute and get ready for bed and read and write a little and check on the boys one last time and sleep.  Day after day after day after day with a little variation like bake a cake for the cake walk (I won 3rd place) or pay a bill or go to church or volunteer hours of time helping others but mostly day after day after day is the same routine.  Until one day I wake up.


And what I see today is - I have a good life.  Whew!  I never know what I am going to see when I wake up from one of these moments.  One time I woke up spiritually dead in my studio apartment in Chicago - wait, where did my 20's go?  Years later I woke up in the middle of a long-term lesbian relationship - wait, where did the men go?  Another time I woke up dating an ex-con who lived with another woman - wait, where did my integrity go?  So I was thrilled to look around my lovely neighborhood, with my sweet boys, playing with little Tag and all of us having a good, quiet, drama free time.  Each awakening reveals some startling fact about me that I am supposed to address.  This time, I am learning to accept and trust that life is good - really good.
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