Ch Ch Ch Changes

As of tomorrow, we officially have one week left in D's probation. Part of me is thrilled. We have survived this mess not only intact, but stronger, both individually and together thanks to the recovery it sparked over the past year. D has almost a year's sobriety. We will finally be able to travel where we want, when we want, without asking permission weeks in advance. We will be more financially stable, not having to spend significant money each week for his mandatory counseling classes and the gas it takes to get there (as to the PO meetings). I no longer have to stress over D's requirement to turn down the occasional glass of wine at a dinner party or family gathering. We won't have to worry about him losing his job because of his need to leave work early once a week, and we won't have to spend the significant amount of time in the car each week worrying about arriving everywhere on time.

And yet. We won't have to take so much time out of our week to drive--but we won't get that awesome few hours in the car alone together to just talk. We won't have to pay for counseling, but we won't have the impetus to have open, honest conversation about our progress in recovery and any issues we're having. We have made a lot of amazing progress in the past year, and now...what happens next? This feels like such a huge turning point, such a wonderful occasion, and yet I feel some trepidation as I wait for the next week to pass.

I know that next Friday will most likely come without fanfare, and that life will probably continue just fine. But there comes with this new, exciting, progress-laden change just that--change. I feel like I have become comfortable with the status quo over the past 2 1/2 years. 2 years, spent dealing with the probation requirements and the counseling and the homework and the driving. It feels odd that it will just...end. And with that strange new sense that comes with change, comes just a little bit of fear. It's not fear because something bad might happen--it's just fear that this will be new again. I have always hated change. Change has usually been very, very bad in my life.

And so as we head into this last, frightening, exciting, wonderful/terrible week, here's hoping that this change--as seems very probable--will be a good one. That we will ride off into the proverbial sunset, if not to a world free of addiction and its ravages, at least to one where we (and especially I) can take each day as it comes, accept what I cannot change, and continue every day to work on the bettering of me.

Or maybe the world will just explode next Friday. You never know. :-)