Change is Fucking Hard

I get letters with some frequency from people who want to quit drinking, who quit and then started again. Who have quit and I helped and they send me a letter of kind thanks. Which always delights my soul and amazes me all at once.

Change is fucking hard. I've been mishy mashing around reigning in some bad habits and general constants all winter. Getting the thought from floating in my head to actual bodily practice is so...erratic. From great idea to maybe tomorrow happens every day. Every day. And then I'm comfortable and in the same place I was yesterday. Sigh.

It's like even though I know what will keep growing me I keep on hiding from the rain and the sun. I stretch a little new green leafy arm out towards the light and then get distracted and lazy and there withers my new leafy little arm and there I am- dirt buried and too tired to try again. But just like a little seed I just can't resist the wanting to grow.

This is the hardest part: the wanting to. The knowing, the need. The have to but I don't want to. Someone was explaining to me how our bodies are like pendulums and how they want to be aligned the up and down swing side to side way, but how they can just get used to being off sideways after a while and then sideways is the right way, even though it is really really the wrong way. Then that fucked up way is the comfortable way, but still way in there you know it isn't the right way so you just yearn to get back to where you belong. But fight it the whole time.

Ack.

I have started and stopped so many things this winter: things that have to do with food and sweets and yoga and hikes and writing. I have started, but I have not. Sometimes I use quitting drinking as an excuse to not push myself harder because SHIT. I already did that one hard thing, right? Can't I just go with that one? Forever? Lol.

I made a list of the simple things I want to do to feed my soul. I made them things that I know make me feel the most like myself: most like I'm living according to the inner blueprint that just will not shut up. I suppose that voice will nag me until I actually do what it wants me to do.

I thought about how wonderful it was that first year I quit drinking to not have to listen to that never ending voice that constantly begged me to please just stop. I thought about how now I have more room inside for more big stuff, and how because I'm scared I just keep on staying the same- scared to be anything but guilty and miserable- scared to really really live this life for all it's worth. I thought about all the time I waste on Facebook, and playing Two Dots, and checking my email again, or Facebook. Ugh. How all of that shuts up the inner voice during that mind escape and then it just comes back. I thought about how I love to write, but then I don't because I'm afraid it won't be the very best thing I've ever done, or that it will be stupid. I thought about how I love to run, but I don't because I can't even run a mile anymore without it being hard. I don't do yoga because I am not as good at it as I used to be. I just tug on the waist of my jeans, wish for what used to be, and grab a cookie and my phone to forget what I really want to be doing, but I'm just so afraid to be good at life. I'm so used to sucking at it.

This all sounds pretty miserable, and truthfully it really is. I'm exhausted trying to pretend I'm OK when I am not.

The good thing is that I am exhausted but not done. The nagging voice keeps telling me the answer, and I want to listen. I realized that I tell people all the time: do it. Quit drinking: you will not regret it. I realized that I was being a total hypocrite. I can't stop what I've started. Getting sober wasn't the finish, it is only the beginning. And maybe that voice is not a nag, but my biggest fan.