14 year old me choosing recovery for the first time: “if a tree falls in a forest and no-one can hear it happen, does it really matter? if i have all of these urges to relapse but i don’t act on them, were the thoughts ever really there? did it matter that i stayed clean? did it matter that i chose recovery if there’s no-one there to say “well done”. if there’s no-one to validate that i struggled, was i really sick?”
20 year old me: “yes it matters. im not there but i KNOW what you went through. i know it was hard. i know what it took for you to survive. you don’t need scars, you don’t need blood tests, you don’t need to be malnourished, anemic, diagnosed. you don’t need to prove anything to anyone. what you went through was real and i remember every single time you chose not to relapse as well as every time that you relapsed. all of it mattered.
