The Ceremony Of Innocence Is Drowned

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.

I can't quite validate why these words from "The Second Coming" resonate so much tonight. But they do.

The ceremony of innocence--I wonder what Yeats was thinking of. I bet he wasn't thinking of a young wife's struggle to trust her heroin-addicted husband.

Before I went out of town, I did feel like I was developing something like trust--perhaps it felt more like blind faith--like taking a leap of faith--than genuine trust, but I felt like things were going well. And since things were going well, I should trust him. It felt like a CEREMONY, or a dance...each time a situation arose where I could choose to trust him or not, I would look inside myself and find the benevolence to allow myself to trust.

Or I shouldn't say each time, because it wasn't every time. I still wasn't trusting him with the car or with money...but I also wasn't calling him every 15 minutes if he went out, and I wasn't hounding him about meetings, and I wasn't going through his coat pockets or checking to see if he'd called his dealer online.

And each day, I chose these things in a manner that felt like a sacrament, like a ritual. It felt good.

The parts of the poem about the best lacking all conviction and the worst being full of passionate intensity--the best lacking conviction reminded me of this little moment of rage I had at my Thursday night meeting. I was in this room filled with these beautiful, smart women, good women who work hard and do things the right way--and everyone just seemed so broken up. I've met such amazing, strong, centered women in the program, and sometimes it is disheartening to see them get off balance.

It is disheartening to see myself get off balance. I hate it that someone else's passionate intensity is throwing me for such a loop...