Finding your Happy

As I sit here and write this, I am totally and utterly content. This is one of those beautiful moments in sobriety where the axis of “What I Want” vs “What I Have” cross at the perfect point of acceptance.

I’ve had a few fleeting desires for wine recently, but when I think how clear headed I am these days, and what even 1 glass would do to me, I let the craving roll over me like the breaking of a wave. Weirdly, as my sobriety has matured, I quite like the feeling of craving as it is something I have, over time, learnt to conquer. I feel proud when that wave hits the shore and dissipates into gentle foam. When I look back to 3 years ago when I couldn’t handle more than a second of a craving, that feels like real progress.

The past month has been full of emotional extremes: I have gained something beyond my wildest dreams, and lost someone very dear to me. Everything is at once exactly as it should be, and painfully wrong. But sobriety has taught me: this is life. This is being a grown up. Perfection is fleeting and discomfort or pain is only a blink of the eye away. So now I cherish the perfect and challenge myself to sit with the pain.

The uncomfortable feelings of grief and loss, of emotional and physical hurt reminded me of how easily I would reach for the bottle to change how I felt. To avoid discomfort at any cost and ironically, bring on even more pain and discomfort as the booze brought me down. I remember once being the most ill I have ever been, and drinking the best part of a bottle of wine to take the pain away. Now, I have to hold tight and trust that one day soon, I will feel better.

For me, sobriety has become about finding my own happy, not looking for a chemical high. Today I’m unexplicably happy and enjoying the simple things: the daffodils peaking at me from outside my kitchen window, the bitter tang of my morning coffee, the beautiful smell of freshly washed sheets.

Early sobriety is one of the most difficult things anybody can put themselves through, in my opinion. But for me,  the struggle lasted around 90 days and then I moved into the next phase: Learning to Live. And although it’s a roller coaster, I have never been happier.

Happy Easter and a special hug to all those in their early days- it gets easier, promise x

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