hi, me again. just thought it might be nice to do another little update, since its been four years since my last one. i still think about this blog, and by extension this part of my life, sometimes. i guess it would be kind of hard not to.
anyway uhh i moved to a different country? i have a job and im in the process of getting my masters degree. i also rent my own apartment, in a city that i love and allows me to explore an inner peace ive never felt beforehand.
also clean and sober. its coming up on my four year anniversary for most of it. i did slip up a couple of months after my last update but it was managed. covid also wasnt entirely easy, and i think i share this sentiment with a lot of addicts when i say that quarantining came with a lot of triggers. i relapsed on alcohol for a while but thats also under control.
im not going to pretend its all easy and amazing. the older i get, the more i realise how truly fucked up it all was. i feel a lot of guilt for the things i did, and anger towards the people in my life for how they treated me. i look at people now, who are the same age as i was when i was going though what i went through, and i honestly have no idea how i did it. i think moving away burst the bubble i was living in since i began recovering, because before where i would have felt proud of myself for getting through it, now i just feel sad that i even had to. i also think the new life im building has a part to play in that, because the more i share with people, the more my experiences are put into perspective through the eyes of people who are not desensitised. a few months ago was the first time someone took the time to hold me and tell me i did not deserve it.
in that same vein, i am learning how to open myself up to people again. i am no longer interested in being the mysterious enigma that never gets close to people, the person that everyone wonders about. i am also learning how to let all the love in my life in. something that was said to me almost ten years ago now has haunted me and followed me. someone once told me that he was convinced i was incapable of love unless i was high, and no one would ever love me if i wasnt. since he said that, i have unknowingly carried those words with me. i really honestly truly believed i was soulless and unloveable, and had this belief confirmed by others who took my vulnerability and used it against me. because of that, i see now that i have allowed myself to become an entirely fearful pessimist, believing i was doing a kindness to the world by not letting anyone love me, and by not loving in return. but thats no way to live a life, and that realisation takes years to build up, a second to recognise, and even more years to undo. i am on the undoing side of it, but it is definitely not easy. sometimes it feels like a really sincere apology from the people who fucked me over would go a long way, but i have had to make my peace that that will never happen, and instead take up that role as the apologiser to myself.
im trying to think about how to sign this out, because im afraid that this update is a lot less upbeat than my last one, but honestly i dont know how many people are going to even see this. i check every so often and my art still gets notes, maybe 20 or so a month, but my follower list is a ghost town which i do think is a positive thing.
even though this might be less upbeat, i still think it is important to share, because yes recovery is not linear. if i had written this post another day, it could have been sunshine and rainbows because sometimes it is. but the reality is you are going to be mad sometimes. you are going to want to hold your younger self and cry it out together. life is going to feel harsh and cold and mean. but it isnt always. the bad times get further away, and good times fill your present more. you learn to forgive yourself, and you learn that there are new people out there who would never do what the old people did. and as time goes on, the tally of days you wake up and think "everything is going to be okay" gets larger and larger.