Forms of Freedom
Today I am grateful for my grandmother's holiday cookie recipes and the enjoyment of making them with my family yesterday. I am also grateful for pauses in my day, to be present and pay attention.
I used to think freedom came in a bottle or a can. Escape into alcohol and intoxication. Freedom from my loneliness, fears, limitations, and inhibitions. Freedom from the reality that I existed in but that fell short of what I wanted. Freedom to let go and be more social. Freedom to pursue what my shy self may not have been able to.
I looked forward to this escape, this freedom. But somewhere in there, before I even left high school, it turned on me and enslaved me. The freedom became necessity. The escape became more of a prison. We fought for a few years, alcohol and I. There were times I thought I might have the upper hand, but I was only fooling myself.
With defeat and surrender, with lower lows, I became more teachable, more open to the idea that my drinking was not the answer. It was the problem, the manifestation of what was really going on.
With recovery comes new forms of freedom. There is a new freedom from fear. The fear of never being good enough is more of an acceptance of my perfectly flawed self. The freedom to pursue real dreams, not the grandiose ones born in drunkenness and quickly dashed in sober reality.
This freedom can be summed up this way: Freedom to look in the mirror with more love and less self-loathing. It makes all the difference.
I used to think freedom came in a bottle or a can. Escape into alcohol and intoxication. Freedom from my loneliness, fears, limitations, and inhibitions. Freedom from the reality that I existed in but that fell short of what I wanted. Freedom to let go and be more social. Freedom to pursue what my shy self may not have been able to.
I looked forward to this escape, this freedom. But somewhere in there, before I even left high school, it turned on me and enslaved me. The freedom became necessity. The escape became more of a prison. We fought for a few years, alcohol and I. There were times I thought I might have the upper hand, but I was only fooling myself.
With defeat and surrender, with lower lows, I became more teachable, more open to the idea that my drinking was not the answer. It was the problem, the manifestation of what was really going on.
With recovery comes new forms of freedom. There is a new freedom from fear. The fear of never being good enough is more of an acceptance of my perfectly flawed self. The freedom to pursue real dreams, not the grandiose ones born in drunkenness and quickly dashed in sober reality.
This freedom can be summed up this way: Freedom to look in the mirror with more love and less self-loathing. It makes all the difference.
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