When I came into recovery, many years ago now, my home group had old wooden school desks for chairs. They had been painted and repainted through the years. You could see the timeline from the odd discounted paint colors, the battleship gray era, the pea green years, the ill conceived off-white phase, all peeking through in places.

As you can imagine, they had been defaced with all kinds of graffiti, most of which I will not relate here. My favorite was a desk that had a single word scratched onto its surface…STAY. When the desks were finally replaced, the old ones were sold as an anniversary fundraiser. They went in no time, and I have my very own cherished desk of many colors. (I don’t know who ended up with “STAY”, but I have a low key resentment towards them.)

Fast forward, to the other night, and my younger self wandered into a meeting and sat down beside me. She was so very young, so very skinny, eyes darting around everywhere, trembling so bad that the court paper in her hand rattled. I introduced myself and got from her in a whisper that her name was Cameron. I could almost see the spines come out as she turned away and made herself as small as possible.

After the meeting I helped her get her paper signed and said

“It was nice to meet you Cameron.”

She turned and left without a backwards glance.

And suddenly I thought of that old desk, and I wanted to say to her STAY.

I know you think it’s bad now, but it could get worse in ways you can’t even imagine. But it could also get better in ways you can’t even imagine. You could do this one day at a time and stay sober for the rest of your life. You could mend your relationships, maybe have some new ones, maybe bring some new people into the world. You could do good work, help others, watch miracles happen, and sometimes play a part in them. You could know what it feels like to be so so full of gratitude your heart can hardly hold it, to be in the Presence of such power that every hair stands on end.

You could lead a life of quiet purpose and leave this world with love and service rippling out in your wake for generations.

You don’t have to ride the train to the last stop. You don’t have to do more damage, get more damage, try to crawl back.

You could just stay. STAY.

In loving memory of C.M., who did in fact STAY, and who left for “the Big Meeting” this week, leaving beautiful ripples in her wake.