Trippin in BC……

Last week my husband and I went to see our daughter in BC for a 5 km trail run. It was great, not just the trip but to share a great memory with my husband and his youngest daughter. 

I can not tell you if you have never been to BC how beautiful it is and I now see why people migrate there and never return. It is breath taking and a return visit is already being planned.

We did some tours, spent a couple days at the beach and walked around the city.

Umugst the 360 panoramic mountain views and beaches, there is another side that is very disturbing to witness.

Its a swarm of lost souls there that is a devastating site to witness and imagine your life as such or what could of become of our disease.

We saw the homeless, prostitutes and the addicted, the struggles of people that have lost their way in the world. 

To see someone in broad daylight behind a building on a step putting a needle in her arm?! Why has she chosen this life? Was there no one or nothing that meant enough to her for her to stop? Or the young man asleep at noon on a park bench with all of his belongings beside him. Seeing grown intoxicated, high, men getting arrested yelling, “its my 3rd assault charge so whats the big deal for another!” The old men, some sitting drinking or lost in their buzz or passed out on the ground til they awake to get to lost again in their next drunk or high.  What has gone so wrong in their life to be and stay at this point?

I have heard that once your on the street some actually like it, prefer it to where they came from. Is it the drug that has been infused into their system so deep that they believe that to be true?

It was hard for me to see that as I have come so far to get to 8 years of sobriety and would never go back. Is it money, family, not knowing where and how to get out? Why,  is all I kept asking myself. 
I’ve lived a sheltered life it seems because I don’t just walk by like its another day at the park, I walk by and it stops me in my tracks and fills me with sorrow and a yearning to save them. To show them….to help them see through a crystal ball the life they could have….if only I could. 

If I had more time I would have liked to stop by their corner and talk to one of them to listen to their stories and share mine and show them that it would be such a better life if they could get and stay clean. Maybe they have been told so many times before and have been abandoned now by their family and friends because they’ve chosen the high or drunk instead of love.  But maybe, just maybe someone will come along and say something to them that shines the light and helps them see.

If only I could.

This is, Being Me Sober.