One Year of Freedom
1 year of sobriety. What a gift. What a blessing. I’m grateful. I’m transformed and transforming. I’m closer to God than I’ve ever been. I’m present in my life. I show up for others, including myself. I’m honest.
I don’t say all that to brag on myself. I say that as a reminder of how far God has brought me. I had gotten to a place in my life where I didn’t like myself. I had given up on myself. I didn’t know what to do, so I drank and slept and cried and withdrew from everyone and everything.
It seems like it happened so fast and yet the signs were there all along. All the pretending I was okay when I wasn’t. All the performing to feel validated and accepted. All the quiet insecurities that I desperately tried to escape through men, weed, alcohol, and even good habits with poor motivations like (over) working, fitness training, and spending time with friends.
I faced nothing, and when I did I crumbled, then ran to the next venture to fill the voids in me.
I will have to write a book to detail all the ways that I came to such a dark place – where the people pleasing, validation seeking, escapism, insecurities, avoidance, and other destructive habits started. I had no clue that I had so much deeply rooted fear that created chaotic and unfulfilling patterns in my life.
It is by the perfect grace of God that I’m still alive, happy, joyous, and free. God’s grace has shown up in a lot of beautiful ways – my supportive family, my courageous and loving friends, my powerhouse of a church, both at home and in Greensboro, and in my recovery journey.
Addiction is a very real and present problem. It is “cunning, baffling, and powerful”…and deadly. When I first went to rehab, I had reached a place of despair. While I drank a few short months after being released from rehab, it began my journey in recovery. I was introduced to the 12 steps of recovery. Eventually, after a brave intervention with some of my closest friends, and a move back to NC, I was desperate and willing enough to give recovery a chance.
I’m eternally grateful for the men and women that have walked beside me, ahead me, and behind me on this journey of freedom.
Life isn’t so heavy anymore. Hope stays with me. God is my favorite person to talk to. Love is all around and within me. I don’t want to run from myself or my life. I’m vulnerable and imperfect. I’m joy-full and at peace.
And so I raise a non-alcoholic toast to one year of “trudging the road of happy destiny.”
xoxoxo,
DASH
