I want to just own alcohol. But I know that I am addicted to all those other alcohol friends. It is just that by some grace, I never tried them. That is the only reason I am not a heroin addict currently. I just was lucky that I never tried it.
I have been addicted to pretty much everything else: men, shopping, food, exercise, people, places, things. And for a long time there, it seemed as though I could not stop the cycle...I just kept filling the void with new things.
But I know now something that it has taken me almost 30 years to figure out...it was never the one thing...I was addicted to filling a void within myself with anything other than my own love for me.
I was always trying to get somewhere else. To be someone other than who I am. I wanted a thinner, shinier, prettier, hotter, better dressed self. I wanted better hair and nails and skin and teeth. I wanted to be me and have that be ok, but at the very same time I walked around all day every day wishing I was someone else. I will tell you that is a hard existence, that requires frequent and unremitting numbing.
Through a series of events which can only be described as Divine guidance, I had to really come to terms with myself in my current state. Not in a year when I am thinner or whatever the fuck I thought I could morph into. It started with heartbreak seven years ago, and has continued ever since. I had to find something within myself that was lovable. And it was a hard moment for sure. But I found it. And ever since I did, I have been doing my best to grow that feeling and evolve into the version of me that God might want or need me to be.
Today, I really work on loving me. In all my greatness and in all my fuckedupness. I work on filling the voids in my life with self love and care and respect and fun. And I have been rewarded with feeling pretty ok every day. Sure, life still does its thing, but I seem to be improving on the whole, “I don’t mind what happens...” And that has been a very stable basis upon which to move forward in life.
I still want people’s approval and love and intimacy and friendship and desire and all the things. I am just a lot less willing than I have ever been before to alter my life around your wishes, desires and wants. Instead, I feel like I am living my own. Filling my own void with care, concern, love and respect for myself.
I am a very loving person and it is pretty insane that I spent the bulk of my life not loving me when I can see now that I quite desperately needed someone to pour the love in. I spent my life trying to get you to do it in the way that I wanted and needed and demanded. And to a large degree, there were very mixed results.
Today, I spend my time and energy less foolishly. Today, I attempt to fill my own cups with the love and support I feel when I align my will with universal will. I am supported and loved because of the work I do every day to maintain the contact with something greater than myself. I do my best to pour my own love into my life and then share that with everyone else I come into contact with...also with varied results.
The strangest thing is that the more I do it, the less self involved I feel like I become and the more available to others I feel I can be. It is a weird paradox. But, hey, that is recovery! So many things are completely and totally paradoxical. Surrender to win. Give up self to get more comfortable with self. Don’t know why it is this way and don’t really care anymore. I have found immense amounts of comfort in my life right there in the middle of two completely incongruent things.
I am always going to be an addict. And I think, when pressed, I am going to attempt to feel better by adding things outside myself to make me feel something other than what I am currently feeling. This is addiction at its core. Something outside me will change the way I feel about me so that I can tolerate living another day. This is the life of an addict.
I am grateful to keep evolving and that I see with some semblance of truth that nothing outside me will ever fix me. It is an inside job and always has been.
Again...still.
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