Stepping Out of the Cave (and Into the Light)

Stepping Out of the Cave (and Into the Light)

I spent almost six hours on New Year’s Day watching the first two installments of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a nice start to a new year.
 
First of all, I woke up without a hangover, which was pretty magical and didn’t even require a wizard. I started the day at a 7 am sobriety support meeting, which a year ago you could never have convinced me that's how I’d kick off 2021 (but wasn’t 2020 in itself a lesson in first-times-for-everything?). 

As I drove to the meeting I saw the sunrise break through the dark off to the east as I climbed a bridge over the Shrewsbury River, the sky stretching open to let the light of the new day come through. It’s a sight that reminds me why I like getting out of bed so early in the morning to make that trip. Nothing makes me more hopeful than seeing how each day offers the start of something new. One more chance to get your shit together.
 
When I got home, my teenager suggested his sister and I join him for a Lord of the Rings movie marathon, as we’d just finished watching the entire Harry Potter canon two nights before. We donned sweats, climbed under cozy blankets on the couch, turned on close captioning (since I’m hearing-impaired and could not understand a word the actors were saying) and began our journey through Middle Earth.
 
I told my oldest son the next day about our deep dive into the realms of Tolkien’s fantasy world and he said he kept trying to get his girlfriend to do the same. Every time they were considering what movie to watch, he said he’d throw out LOTR as an option. “She just doesn’t seem that interested,” he said, confused that someone wouldn’t think that watching dwarves and talking trees for over nine hours was an awesome idea.
 
I told him that, although I didn’t raise him as such, some people found orcs and hobbits weird and boring. The idea of dedicating half a day to watching them traipse through the woods, slog through swamps and do battle (lots and lots of battle) might seem strange to those who don’t embrace dragons and dwarves – and who also don’t find them a little sexy. Damn, that Legolas is one hot elf and Aragon is also fine, despite a sweaty hairdo that always looks like it could use a good washing.
 
But the character to whom I could most relate was anything but sexy. We meet Gollum – a reptilian looking creature with bulging eyes and jagged teeth – at the very beginning of the first LOTR movie, “The Fellowship of the Ring,” where he’s deep in the dark tunnels of the Misty Mountains cradling his “precious” ring. He’s hunched atop a rock admiring and crooning to the gold band and it’s clear that his relationship was obsessive at best. That ring was his everything.
 
The book “The Hobbit,” tells the story of how Gollum came to own the ring and eventually loses it and in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, he tries to get it back. While Gollum is the first of many characters we meet in the LOTR movie trilogy, it’s not until the beginning of the third installment that we learn that the creep – who hops around in a loincloth with wispy strands of hair and a penchant for biting into raw fish – was once a hobbit himself.
 
But the ring was forged with crazy evil energy that infused it with the power to overwhelm whoever came into contact with it and force them to desire it, under any circumstance, and the dark promises of power it held. Gollum, nee Smeagol the Hobbit, murders a fellow hobbit to gain possession of the golden band and then slinks off into the dark and dripping tunnels to guard it for centuries, slowly deteriorating physically into something bordering on amphibian. But never does his obsession with the ring diminish.
 
Not for the first time I was reminded on New Year’s Day how I had been devolving into a Gollum-like creature myself (with better hair) in my devotion to booze. Even though I have an excellent therapist who very gently has suggested over the years I give up drinking alcohol – along with a very sensible voice in my head – I remained clinging to my bottle of wine in an emotional cave for years, hissing at anyone who dared try to take it away from me. As with the former hobbit, I, too, was starting to see the physical effects of spending so much time with my own precious. My skin looked like crap. My face was bloated and my nose was starting to look red a lot.
 
Maybe in the end that’s what saved me: my vanity. But I also didn’t like being so preoccupied with alcohol. I hated how much space it took up in my brain. I’d even incorporated booze into my home décor, creating shrines to it in two different rooms with pretty bottles atop fancy trays and coupe glasses nearby to add a dash of sophistication to my imbibing along with the requisite bitters.
 
Even though I’d stopped drinking in mid-October, it wasn’t until after the holidays that I realized I was ready to dismantle my home bars. When my oldest two went back to their respective homes I sent each with all the pretty bottles of tequila, bourbon and aperitifs (I’d already drank all the vodka). I even gave my son the electric wine opener that stood valiantly on my kitchen bar for years, opening bottle after bottle of Italian reds and whose whirr I’d often try to muffle lest the children hear me uncorking just one more.
 
As the credits began to roll when the second movie came to an end, the kids and I agreed we’d had our fill of good vs. evil for the day. We’d watch the final one the next day to see who won (spoiler alert: the hobbits). We stood and stretched and brushed the popcorn we’d been nibbling on during the movies off our sweatshirts and shuffled off to our rooms. I wrote in my gratitude journal that I was thankful to live with other weirdos who liked watching the same kind of stuff as me and read a little before turning out the lights and falling asleep.
 
When I drove over that bridge this morning towards the meeting, the sky was really working overtime to put on a show. The dawn brought a mix of bright purples and orange to the early morning sky just above the horizon and I slowed the car down to take it all in. The sight always makes me smile and while I’m still not sure about God and faith and any of those things, sometimes I think there’s got to be something bigger than me who’s got a hand in things. Filling the morning sky with light and dragging me out of my cave. Whatever’s at work, it feels good to be in the light.