Have you ever had the feeling that everything people used to say about you, was right?
This feeling came very slow for me. It came creeping up, day by day, night by night, until one day it was staring at me in the mirror like the ghost from my past that I thought I'd exorcised years ago.
Suddenly, I heard all of those familiar words circling in my head like whispers in the wind.
Junkie.
Addict.
Loser.
Tweaker.
Drunk.
These insults which I used to laugh off with impunity, which used to make me feel some dirty sense of infamy and pride, were all present. The rolled-up dollar bill I had in my hand fell to the floor.
What. The fuck. Happened.
How did I end up here? I cried. Hard. For the first time in a long time, I saw my reflection in the mirror, and I saw all of those things. I saw the things that people had warned me I'd become if I didn't stop. I saw the raw emotion of a girl that I once knew, now trembling, head-spinning, asking herself the same questions she'd asked a thousand times before.
How did I end up here? Why can't I stop doing this? What happened to my will, to my resolve to never be this girl again?
I wasn't a girl anymore, truthfully. I was a woman, young at 24 years, and yet I felt like an aged oak tree with rings that were so far tattered and torn that half of the history had been erased.
I laid on the bathroom floor and I sobbed. The shame I felt was overwhelming. Everyone was going to be so disappointed. Everyone was going to hate me. Everyone was going to judge me.
My worst fears were coming true. I was right back to square one. All I'd learned over the years about myself suddenly didn't matter. All I could feel, all I could think about, was that it was time, now. I was tired of fearing my own habits. I was tired of leaving my morals and values at the door when I entered the estate of my drug addicted brain.
This was it. The hopelessness was enough. I couldn't bear the thought of living this way anymore. It became too much. I was ready to die.
At this point, I wasn't aware that there was another option besides dying. Little did I know, there would be an entire life waiting for me on the other side of this brick wall that I had hit. And I had no idea how easy it would be for me to find it.
As a young person living sober, I faced many challenges in early sobriety that I thought would dissipate with little time. Some of them have only gotten harder. I was told by someone much more experienced than myself, when I was very brand new and still trembling with withdrawal and fear, that "sobriety isn't for pussies." That's the truth. It takes a lot of hard work and perseverance. But many of the early challenges I faced have now become a cast; a mold for me to shape who I have become and am still becoming, a scorching flame to forge a blade from what was once just shards of unworkable metal. The hopeless, the despair, the fear, it goes away. The thought of death as my only escape is now a fleeting one, only to return in rare moments where my guard is let down. It gets better.
A new life was easy to find, but it isn't always easy to hold. Days are battles in this endless war against myself, but the knowledge I have behind me now carries me through those battles like a well-armed solider in an endless crusade.
Here's the point: it gets better. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow or next week or next month. But, over time, those forlorn thoughts will turn to pride, the desperate reflection will turn to self-love, and the fear that you thought would never expire will turn to an undying passion for yourself, on your journey to a state of true and complete happiness.
You are not alone. You are not crazy. You are not weak.
You've got this.
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