This is gonna be kind of a mish mash of things. I have a couple things to talk about today. So here we go…
10 months!
I am celebrating 10 months (on the 3rd) sober since my relapse. For quite awhile I was constantly feeding quarters to the ass kicking machine – I couldn’t stop beating myself up over how I relapsed 1 month and 6 days before my two year sobriety anniversary. Recently, I’ve been ok with it. Really ok with it. As in I’ve finally let it go. I’ve ran out of quarters and can’t feed that machine anymore.
And it feels good! For so long I kept saying at meetings “I’ve accepted that my relapse is part of my journey.” But I hadn’t really truly accepted that fact. It just sounded good to say or at least I thought it sounded good and that’s what others around me wanted to hear (or again, I thought it’s what they wanted to hear).
I can’t pinpoint when my thinking changed. It wasn’t like some huge flash in the sky obvious sort of thing. I believe it’s just been a gradual thing as I work more on my recovery/working my steps and the program.
That leads us into the next thing I want to mention…
Emotional Sobriety
It’s funny to look back through some of my previous blog posts…crazy how one day my emotions are good/I’m feeling good and then another day I’m complaining about how hard things are. And from the last time I posted (back in November!), things have definitely changed. I’m a different person.
I know. That sounds so cliche. But it’s true – I’m in such a different mental and emotional place since October. I’ve been putting in a ton of work on my program and I finally, finally – after putting it off those first few years in the program – have done a 4th step. It sucked. It wasn’t pleasant writing all that shit down. And even worse was having to look at what I had to do in all those resentments, etc.
But you know what?
It felt good! It felt good getting it out. It felt good sharing some of it with my sponsor (we haven’t completed the 5th step yet, just part of it but will be doing so in a few days) – it literally felt like bricks had been removed from my chest. It felt like I could breathe a sigh of relief from having the weight of the world lifted off me…just from sharing a little piece of my 4th step!
Since doing my 4th step…I’m sure that has a lot to do with my emotional sobriety (emotions/feelings) changing. I’m smiling and laughing a lot more these days. I have a sense/feeling of peace that I haven’t felt in a really long time. Yes, I still have shit storms that come along but I’ve got a peace and know that those will, as one of my favorite AA sayings says: this too shall pass. I’m also working on my relationship with my higher power (God) and that helps the emotional stuff too.
So…yeah, things are going really good!
Until next time…
One day at a time & keep coming back!