What do I do when I slip back into survival mode instead of living?
I have been recovering from codependency, loving addicts and alcoholics, and my past for the past 18 years. I’m not talking little bits of self care like bubble baths and face masks. I’m talking wake up everyday and do the hard work of recovery. I have been looking at my life and myself with rigorous honesty. I have attended recovery meetings for family and friends of alcoholics weekly. I have turned my will and my life over to a Higher Power that I spent years learning to trust and believe in. I have read books, went on retreats, have seen numerous therapists, journaled and prayed for 18 years.
I have looked back on, examined, relived, and healed many parts of my past that were traumatic. I have learned to say no and I have learned to walk away when something or someone is not good for me anymore. I have loved, grieved, cried, gotten honest and faced and did all of the hard things placed in front of me.
I have crawled through glass to get to a place where I am not surviving, I am living. It was worth every bit of hard work, every cut and scrape. Living is beautiful. Feeling is brutiful (brutal and beautiful). Loving is sacred and a gift. Leaving is honoring the truth.
The past few months I find myself in a backslide into survival. I’m not eating well. I’m not exercising. I’m not keeping up with the house. I am not seeing friends or doing things that I love. I cannot sit down without my eyes crossing and my body drifting to sleep. I don’t have the energy for anything. My weekends and evenings are spent trying to stay on top of household tasks. People ask me for things and I promptly forget to do them. I can’t think critically or creatively and words escape me when I need them.
I’m not going to live this way, it is not in fact living. I’m killing myself for something that would not return the favor. I’m being sucked back into a life I left and a way of living that nearly broke me. Give, give, give. Take it over and over and over again no matter the damage it does to your heart and soul. Believe the promises that it won’t always be this way and keep the hope alive that someday will come before you break. I don’t know what to do just yet but I know I have to choose me. I have to choose health. I cannot tell you how disappointed I feel in myself that I find myself here after all of the work I’ve done. That is life, no one is exempt from it, but you can make choices that put you first.
I cannot remember the last time I felt happy, rested, fulfilled and respected but I know I have. Once you have felt that in your life, you cannot go back to a place where it is absent and be content. I will do what it takes. I will trust my Higher Power to lead my path even though it might take me in a direction that I do not understand yet. Pain is a great motivator. I know when it shows up in my life that I have to pay attention to it because it comes with a lesson. Lessons do not go away, they circle around and around until they are mastered. I only get this one life. I will not just survive it.