There needs to be a moment when you just push through. Understand?
This needs to happen. Or maybe this just “has to” happen so that you can see the fruit from the vine. You can see the benefits from your labor or the purpose from behind the pain.
You can see the horizon ahead, and while not all has been healed or cured, the sun is about to rise. There is an actual way or escape, and therefore, recovery is possible from anywhere.
Truly . . .
This has to happen. We need to come to a point where the crossroads are behind us and yesterday’s indecision are in the past. We need this to happen because how else can we get ahead, or move on, and go forward?
There needs to be a time when all your work and all your effort are combined, and then suddenly, you find yourself in a new position.
Suddenly, fear and overthinking are replaced with the benefit of an action, and then you attack. And I mean “attack” from a healthy perspective.
And then you move.
Then you advance, as if to notice that your functions have improved.
Next, you realize that you can do more than you assumed.
You are better than you gave yourself credit for.
I swear this is a great feeling.
You realize that the combination of your efforts and the tenacity of your work and movement are flowing by nature, and somehow, the gears in your brain have clicked into position.
You notice your improvements are flowing, as if to be in a fluid motion, and then in a surprised realization, you understand what you’ve done.
You realize that “holy shit . . . that was me!’
“I just did that!”
But also, you understand what you would have been like if you did nothing to change, and you recognize that you would be exactly where you were, if you did nothing but sit and wait or blame everyone else for your feelings and do nothing at all.
By the way . . .
This can happen with anything. This can happen with work or with art. This can happen with talents, or with sports, or this can happen with both physical and emotional fitness.
I have to be clear about this. For the record, I understand how this is subjective to me; however, I humbly believe that this is relatable to anyone and in the case of life, life happens to everybody.
Everyone is recovering from something.
We all have a story.
We all have an ache or a pain.
We all have a history.
We all fall.
We all get knocked down from time to time.
Bottom line: No one escapes life without a scrape or scar.
And no one gets out of this place alive.
But . . .
if you told me that I would be talking to you like this, or if you found me when I was at my lowest point and sinking deeper, and if you found me at my worst times, angry and resentful, hurt, and hurtful as ever, or in my darkest hours, which could be both emotional and physical, either or, or if you found me when I was overeating, or self-medicating, unhappy as ever, or when I am (or was) in my selfish mode, or when I was (or am) unenthused with life, or if you grabbed ahold of me when I was too uninspired to move or strive to be better and lastly, if you scrolled back to when I was outright defiant that I could possibly change or overcome and if you asked me would I ever improve, I’d have told you this is “just” me.
Depending upon the asker, I might have spit in their direction and said, “Go fuck yourself!”
Otherwise and internally, I would answer and say that this is the best I could ever be.
If you asked me if I could be smart or if I would be able to stand out as a professional, or if you reached back to me in my youthful stages, or if you caught the young version of me who believed in the labels that I was given, like junkie, emotionally disturbed, depressed, or someone with a defiant disorder or whatever else you’d like to pile on this; and if you asked that young person who stuttered when he’d read out loud, or if you asked me, the learning disabled kid, or if you asked me now when I am not at my best, I would have told you that the teachers and the guidance counselors were all right about me.
I’d be lucky to survive myself. It was told to me that I would be lucky to surpass 19 years-old.
I’m older than that now. I’m rounding the corner and approaching the age of 52, which means it only serves to make sense that I stop myself from living my life according to old and not empowering predictions.
Right?
If asked about my ability or the probability of my success, I would have told you all about my self-fulfilling prophecies. I would have told you all about my doubts. I would have told you that I, as I am, and me at my best are only capable of small minimal successes. I believed this for a long time. In fact, I was “today years-old,” when I admitted to this as openly as now.
If asked, I would have told you that I couldn’t do the work. I would have said that I was too stupid, like I was told, and like as I was told, I was only a loser.
I would have explained how no one would ever have anything nice to say about me. I would have believed in the villain that I was told I am, or that I was told I would always be.
I would have believed that I know nothing about life, or that I would never be capable of being in love, or capable of real love because, at best, I hardly loved or cared for myself—and certainly, I would explained every prediction that I was given, to which none of them empowered me to be better.
I would have said what I was told, and repeated this verbatim, as if the predictions against me were always true. I would have said what so-called loved ones told me in moments of heated arguments, that I was a loser and worthy of every bad thing that will ever happen to me.
I would have believed in this, which I still do at times, which is not self-deprecating by any means. Instead, this is called being honest and giving myself an honest assessment of where thoughts can take me.
I would have told you that all of this is true. That I was a loser. That I am stupid. I am ugly. I am worthless. And yes, I have been told this. Sure, I was told this by people who I saw as the most valuable people in my life—however, after a series of events and due to a change of heart as well as a need to change as a person, I would have believed in every bad word, or every negative comment, or every fight that I lost and every argument that went against me.
I have been asking myself, “What now?” for as long as I can remember. And yes, there are people who know me deeper than the surface level and absolutely, there have been bouts and arguments with people who I loved or who supposedly loved me as well.
This happens.
There have been words that cut and pierced my soul and there have been a series of my “supposedly true” lifelong rejections, to which I naturally assumed that anyone who liked me would eventually hate me. Or as I was told, anyone who wanted me would inevitably see me as I am and realize that I am the sum of every negative prediction. Therefore, I am unworthy, unwanted, incurable, and incapable of recovery or improvement.
I am not.
I am no worse of a person than others and I am not better than anyone. However, I can see how effort makes changes and changes builds distance and distance can repair the cracks of a broken soul.
I see what the word recovery means to me. And I might not heal back to as I was.
First and foremost, I had to learn that there are victims and volunteers. Therefore, I had to stop offering myself up to pains that I no longer wanted to feel.
I had to stop volunteering to be the victim; but more, I had to stop holding other people responsible for my thoughts, feelings, actions and emotions.
No one “made” me feel.
I allowed myself to go deep. I found myself in the emotional equivalent to the sunk cost fallacy which, in a sense, is irredeemable.
To be clear, the sunk cost is the initial investment. However, we are not taking about financial investments. We are talking emotionally.
Emotional investments worry about loss. Emotional investments do not think logically or strategically — instead, all we see is the loss, and in the cases of our inter-emotional ties or when it comes to friendships or relationships, or even when it comes to the most intimate of all; when it comes to love, we tend to focus on the fears of loss and the ego and worries of rejection; whereas, in the cases of logical or strategic investing, we realize things like, “hey, I tried this. It didn’t work. So I stopped investing.”
Emotionally, we don’t want to accept this. So, we keep going back and trying harder which essentially, all this does is dig the hole and put us further in debt and pull us under water, and so, we go deeper.
I understand that this might sound cold, but which is worse, over investing without any emotional return, living with false hopes, or essentially, living in an interconnected life that is unfit for all yet, you keep investing and losing more than you gain. From the other spectrum, is it worse to recognize that this is not a fit for anyone and you stop your investment.
It is a hard fact that life and times and friendships and people are not always meant to fit or be together. It is a hard and excruciating idea to look and realize that love ends, and that care has limitations, and that even unconditional love has conditions to begin with.
Conditionally, we have to understand the ins and outs and the ebbs and flows, good times and bad times, and there are people who can stick this out and there are times which, in the end, yes, “the juice is worth the squeeze.”
However, there are the painful moments when we fall or when we are crushed and heartbroken. There is the truth of the matter that not everyone thinks or feels the same way.
Feelings can change.
Situations change. Life can fall apart.
And so can we.
But there is always a way to improve.
Recovery is always possible—at least from an emotional standpoint.
I am one who hates and detests the word cancer. I have seen what its incurableness can do to the body and the mind. Equally, I have seen how emotional cancers which are invisible or visually undetectable by blood or testing. I have seen how this can literally devour the mind and disintegrate the soul to become lifeless and dead.
I do not envy the physical Chemotherapy nor do I wish this upon anyone, not even an enemy, and nor will I minimize the medications or the radiations and the invasive therapies it takes to kill the cancer. However, there are emotional cancers which can be equally deadly.
I don’t want to die alone, or angry, resentful, or hateful. I don’t care much about who loves me anymore or who doesn’t. I don’t have time to part the seas between myself and my arguments. And no, there is no time to settle the uncontrollable disputes which do not even need my attention to survive—fights and hate are long-living and everlasting cancers which can equally deteriorate the mind, body and soul.
There comes a time when training to live and circling through your endurance comes to a head and you realize that the crossroads are behind you.
All it took was a decision to move ahead.
And as for what now?
I don’t know if the road I have taken is less travelled or if I am going the right way. But I know I’m not where I was. I’m not allowing myself to be swarmed by thoughts or self-defeating ideas that keep me still.
I can move.
I can look to regain my composure.
I can heal.
I can improve.
And yes, I can recover.
By the way,
I earned another stripe on my belt in my Jiu-Jitsu class last night. I performed in a way that I never thought was possible.
And I started thinking about this. I started to wonder if I believed I could get this far, which is not far, but it’s further than I believed.
Yes. I can get better.
I might get hurt.
I might have to “tap out” sometimes.
But I can learn and I can advance and I can pull guard, and essentially, I can learn to escape.
Escape . . .
What a great word this is.
(Truly)
The Written Addiction 