July 26 - 2021 - 1 Year 26 Days Alcohol Free
Do you ever get one of those revelations that just smacks you so hard, and you suddenly look at a situation from a completely different perspective? Kind of like looking at things from underneath a glass table?
I have been alcohol free for a ‘complete trip around the sun’. I have improved my relationships with my husband, daughters and mom. I experienced the death and funerals of 2 dear friends without the added mess of a wine-soaked blubbering mess in the mix. I have written and written until my heart felt full. I feel like a cloak has lifted and I am lighter, wiser and so much happier.
But I have recently realized I am still the same in many ways. I still deeply want to be approved of and accepted by all people. I still feel left out when I see pics of people gone for hikes or trips to the lake. Now that COVID restrictions are loosened, I don’t know why my phone isn’t ‘binging’ off the hook with invites and girlfriends reaching out. I had such a crazy notion that my life was so rich with dinner and drinks with friends, evening walks and wine with friends. Now there are crickets everywhere.
I’m no longer interested in the excuse to make plans with certain people, and now some of those people know I have rid alcohol from my life, and now, I sit here alone, feeling like I have been abandoned by my ‘friends’.
My realization this morning is that I am actually NOT the victim. I realized, in one huge AHA moment, that I have spent the last 15 years living in this community, CREATING the exact relationships that I don’t want any part of anymore. If I look back on my life as if I am in a dream, I can see times where ‘normies’ tried to reach out and create friendships that I simply rejected because those people seemed too boring, too straight, too sober. I also have to accept that there were many parts of the drinking me that was too loud, too boisterous, and oftentimes too cutting, that I have quite likely driven some good people away.
So now I am working really hard to cultivate the relationships that deserve to be re-born, and help those friends learn there is a newer, better way to spend time with me. And I am slowly realizing I need to just let go of the relationships that were just an excuse to drink. I have been reaching out beyond my small town, to people that I have connected with on other levels, to deepen those connections that fill my soul. Some of those connections could be long distance as I have moved a few times in the last few years. But you don’t need to always be in person to have a deep connection.
Perhaps my personality will always feel a little FOMO, but I have to embrace that and just let it go. I can’t be all things to all people, and all the people can’t be all things to me.
I suppose this is another reason why I should find an in-person meeting; to search out some folks that could be on a similar journey to me. I will work on that one……..
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