So alone (as who would understand how I felt?) I googled various combinations problem drinking, wanting to stop alcohol, how to tell loved ones you want to stop drinking, I read - I watched videos and somehow I found myself at Lucy's blog, which in turn led me to Soberistas.
I started reading peoples life stories. I started picking up traits of myself in these people. Similar stories, the same pain. I started to understand that I wasn't the only person that felt as I did. I found hope.
Out there were people like me, people who for whatever reason needed to change.
We are all similar, yet profoundly individual. Each journey we have been on - the reasons why we made the choices we have made remain our own. Writing about this has been very therapeutic for me. I have learned so much about myself. I think the biggest lesson I have learnt is to give myself a break. I am person who has had a life, this life I know now is unique in its own way. This life is blessed by incredible friends and family and a lot of love, but this life has also suffered pain, this life also sometimes feels sad and that is a sadness I cannot control. This life is my own, but it deserves to be lived and I deserve to be looked after.
Through reading and sharing my thoughts over this year. It has helped me to reanalyze the person I am and the priorities I have.
Before my life resembled this - in order of importance:
•Escapism/ Self medication - Drinking, Pleasing others/friends - approval from others
•Work
•The children/chores/My husband
•Me
The first therapist I ever saw told me I needed to find 3 hours for myself a week, not only did I laugh in her face. I felt slightly offended how dare I look for time for myself? I didn't deserve that or feel that a mother should...
Now this is the model I am working to:
•The kids/Healthy living
•Me/My husband
•Friends/Family
•Work
I can't say that the balance is always perfect and it's very hard to always find time, but I am really trying. What I have learnt over this year is that I was looking for gratification in the wrong areas, I always have been - but however many times someone tells you that, its something you have to learn. Through other people and through work I believed that I would be 'approved of/and or loved' but where I knew the happiness should have been and would be is through me and my life.Life throws some pretty hard bombs at us (why does it do that??) And I was beaten I had used all that I had left to try to please others, but I was the one that needed looking after.
I tried to numb the past and the present at the bottom of a bottle, but I needed to fix me.
I am now at the point of trying to unravel where depression starts and dependency ended, where the 'what happened' and the who I am link.
It's a fine tightrope and I have days when I wish I could just be 'normal' and wonder if this AF part of my life is another extreme incarnation of myself. Days where I feel I am looking in on my life and not living it. But this year and being part of Soberistas and now doing my own blog, really help me to understand the process and progress which I am making for myself.
I have learnt to believe that life should be a progression, with different stages and times you complete. You look back on your childhood, but you don't live your childhood now - you look back on youth but that is not the life of a parent. If there is no progression then you're not learning and if you are not learning - then how can you be expected to teach....
I was stuck in a half life between the past and life now, I do truly feel like now I am starting to live again.
Did I mention I'm gonna quit my job and we're going to go and live by the sea? ;-)
I hope that anyone starting out on this site, will benefit as much as I have from reading, interacting and writing x
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