Hello my friends!
Welcome to another week of Growing Pains: Sober Girls Edition :)
Listen to this week’s edition or read it here: Growing Pains: Sober Girls Edition 9.14.22:
So last week I had promised you guys a lighter post and I had been thinking about what I wanted to write. I was thinking of talking about how important the little things that make you smile are and give you an update on my second Fourth Step experience.
And then honestly, shit hit the fan and today as I write this I am just so exhausted. My emotions are drained, I can’t hear my Higher Power or maybe I’m just not listening. I am involved in two conflicts at the same time and it’s truly just too much for me to handle.
I’m sorry that’s not as light as I had promised, but I always want to be real with you and to feed you some shit about how pumpkin donuts from Dunkin are the little thing that’s making me smile right now, just wouldn’t be right. Because the pumpkin isn’t cutting it right now.
The reality is, I listened to Fall on Me by Andrea Bocelli and Matteo Bocelli and just sat on my bedroom floor and sobbed. My grandfather is my Higher Power (my mom’s father) and I frequently say I just wish I could talk to him (he had 23 years sober before he passed in October of 2020). My mom had sent me that song one day and had said that if my peepa could talk to me, that song is what he would say.
And today I really needed him. So I listened and I cried. And then I was walking to the subway go to work and was so full of rage that I almost turned around and went home.
I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t want to see anyone, I don’t want to share with my sponsor, I want to curl up into a ball and not come out until I either a) feel better or b) when September ends (little shoutout to Green Day here, folks…).
But what is surprising me is that I have no desire whatsoever to drink. I thought about it, but I know that won’t make anything better.
What is making me feel better is writing this right now. Because maybe someone else wants to crawl into a hole until they feel better, and maybe we can do that and not drink or drug together. So at least we both (or all of us) won’t be alone and will be sober.
My second Fourth Step experience, by the way, was fine. Enlightening even and much less earth-shattering than the first. I even got a little bit of that free feeling so here’s to doing the work.
In terms of little things that make me smile, it’s pumpkin and sage and when my friends remember small things about me, and when the birds are out in the morning and when the subway is just getting to the platform as I’m getting there. The list goes on and on and I’m so grateful for those little things.
Because even when the pumpkin isn’t cutting it, it’s still making me a tiny bit happier—-even when I’m feeling so sad.
And so I’ll go to a meeting tonight because I know if I don’t, I’m one step closer to a drink. And I’ll share with my Sponsor even though I’m embarrassed or it’s too painful to talk about right now. And I’ll keep writing here because the thought of helping even just one person who reads this keeps me going.
I want the point of today’s edition to be that we are not alone.
We’re not alone in our happiness and we’re not alone in our struggles. Even when you think you’re the only person who has ever felt this way for whatever specific reason, I assure you you’re not. There is someone who has been through it, someone who can relate, someone who can help you. Sometimes you just have to open your ears, your eyes and your heart to see, hear and feel them.
And in the end, we will always be okay because we have each other.
I hope everyone enjoys 💛 always here to chat if anyone ever needs !
Hang in there jane! The first year of recovery is a Bick. But it sounds like you realize that time alone will not magically lead to pink clouds rainbows and unicorns.
That is going to take the eff word. There is nothing magic about it. You have to do the work and you have to make the effort but avoiding the work and hiding out in a bottle or a pipe will just take you back to where you were when you wanted to quit so obviously that's not a useful choice. But it isn't like your choices are limited to sinking into misery or going back to using. You were using when you decided that enough is enough and too much is b******* and quit so obviously that's not the solution. You mentioned some of your other choices in your post and going to AA is most likely the best one to get you out of your own head which is such a dangerous place to be and focused on some other people's problems.
There is a big difference between thinking about using and a desire to use but if you think about it too long your resolve tends to weaken and you forget where you came from and you run for that chemical cave that used to be so comforting, but now it's turned into a den full of rattlesnakes.
There is an old saying that the more you sweat in peacetime the less you bleed in wartime.
This war will last for our entire lifetime but if you stand up and fight the battles in the early days of recovery, your days of struggling will get less frequent and less intense.