04.05.26
I didn’t write last weekend, and I felt a little guilty about it, but I needed a reset. Life has just been…lifey. Not bad, not falling apart, just shifting. Moving. Changing. Change used to wreck me. I’d go straight to worst-case scenario, let anxiety take over, convince myself everything was about to fall apart. That was my default. Still is, if I’m being honest, but it doesn’t run the whole show anymore.
Recovery gave me something different. A relationship with a Higher Power. A sponsor who tells me the truth even when I don’t want to hear it. Friends who get me without needing an explanation. And a set of tools I’m learning to reach for. Now when things start to shift, I can at least pause long enough to remember that I don’t have to spiral. I’ve got options. I’ve got people. I’ve got something bigger than me holding it all together when I feel like I can’t.
A friend came by yesterday with coffee. We’ve both been in the middle of a lot lately and hadn’t had time to just be normal together. She looked at me and said, “Chaos. Want to go outside?” That was it. That simple. And somehow exactly what I needed. She could see I was getting stuck in my head again, starting to loop, drifting into that old space and instead of letting me sit there alone, she pulled me out of it. That kind of friendship is a gift. The kind where you don’t have to explain the noise in your head, they already recognize it.
I didn’t want to escape it the old way. I didn’t want to numb out or shut it down or pretend it wasn’t happening. That urge just wasn’t there. That’s progress! Especially this time of year. Easter is here, and whether you look at it spiritually or just symbolically, it feels different in recovery. The idea that something had to be sacrificed so something else could live. That kind of transformation doesn’t come easy. There’s a cost to change. A letting go of old patterns, old ways of coping, old versions of yourself that felt safer even when they were hurting you. You don’t just drop that stuff, you lay it down.
And somehow, that’s a gift too. Not always a comfortable one. Not always something I’m grateful for in the moment. But a gift in the sense that I’m not stuck where I used to be. I’m not reacting the same way. I’m not reaching for the same things. I’m learning how to sit in it. To walk through it. To trust that something good can come out the other side, even if I can’t see it yet.
I’m learning what to let go of, and what’s actually worth holding onto.
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