sober year..
From as early as I can remember, I’ve never been able to handle the state of feeling discomfort without a crutch. Without alcohol, without sugar, without something … I wonder if all those early years of drinking so much has led my body to reach a certain tipping point. In this last year I’ve grown to see that my physical body just doesn’t want it anymore. It’s a mental need. My conscious sobriety fills me with relief. I am so thankful that I don’t have to wake up in pain and that I can wake up clear and welcome the morning without dread or a question of what I took in the night before. I’ve made a contract with myself — to see if I can allow myself to fully feel my emotions, to sit with discomfort. I am terrified of feeling all my feelings, especially my insecurities, resentments, my small-mindedness, my rage. I am afraid of all of these feelings not being muted by alcohol.
Courage requires that I honor my feelings, that I allow them to reveal themselves to me and to others and that I not live in the shadows of a half-life.
My journey is inward. I want to find her. The one who is brash inside. The one who says things she wouldn’t say if she was sober. The one who has the bravura, the balls, the magnificence to be herself. She who is me. I need to find out who I am without all the trappings. Which voice do I listen to and is the loudest one the healthiest or the most lethal in self-destructive ways? It’s why I have loved alcohol so…because it mutes my inner critic. The one who tells me that I am not enough — not funny enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not young enough — not enough.
So, it is This is my year of conscious sobriety
20 MONTHS LATER SOBER Today I’m going to revel in this moment because I did it. I’m still doing it. The “IT” isn’t finished. My reel is still playing. The difference is that I can watch it now with compassion. And that is real progress.
- Jennifer Cowie King -
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker