January is proving to be a very self-reflective month for me.

It’s the start of a new year and all, but it feels different than that.

I wrote about how October was such a wild month for me, but thing is, I don’t think I ever properly coped with how everything went down.

I spent roughly two months not crying. Not because I was trying to avoid it, but I couldn’t produce tears no matter what I did. It freaked me out a bit because I’m usually someone who can cry over anything.

 

I stress-cry.

I sad-cry.

I happy-cry.

 

I cry out of frustration or even when nothing feels wrong.

Losing my relationship and job uprooted the life I had been living for the entirety of a year or two. I should’ve been crying my eyes out.

I spent a couple of days sad, but I essentially began blocking my emotions out without even realizing it.

I thought I was processing my break-up when I had hardly scratched the surface.

I told myself I was better off without my job, but the shock really hadn’t gone away.

I didn’t realize at the time the extent I had been numbing myself from feeling how I actually felt.

I was staying late at work hanging out with my co-workers and spending my nights alone drinking.

I distracted myself with those around me and let that take over my life because I didn’t want to feel what it was like to be alone again.

I spent the first three years of my new life in this town as a loner. I’d see my co-workers from my job at the time and the occasional hang-out, but I preferred being by myself. I lived in my own little world and while I was lonely, I was comfortable with it. I grew truly okay with only having myself to depend on.

Once I started making friends and going out, I got caught up in it. It felt wild to not spend all my time in my room anymore and this sense of belonging came over me. I hadn’t felt it in years so once it came back, I clung to it.

From there, I started a nearly two-year relationship and clung to that as well. My boyfriend became my best friend and I hadn’t felt that seen by someone in a long time, if ever.

When we broke up, we were both sad as hell over it, but we knew we were making the right decision. I expected to just focus on work and try to move on the best I could. So, when I lost that job roughly two weeks later, I truly didn’t know how to process it.

I went from having no free time to not having shit to do for days in a row. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

So, I spent an obscene time with co-workers. It’s hard since there’s a pandemic going on and I don’t want to go outside my bubble. I got attached to drinking after work to avoid going home to an empty room with no one to call. It sounds sad as hell, but I didn’t think so at the time.

They brought me good energy when I was feeling down and I needed that escape at the time.

On days I didn’t work, I’d go run little errands that ultimately ended with me drinking at night watching something on Netflix or YouTube.

Sounds innocent, but when you’re drinking day in and out, it’s no wonder you can’t cry anymore.

Night is peak emotional crying hours and when you have yourself numbed out, nothing really gets through to you.

 

You go about your days just looking for the next thing to distract you.

 

I’ve made a conscious effort to drink less in January. After nearly a week, I had one of my first nightly breakdowns in a long, long time.

It started to hit me how different this phase of life was. I actually had to make an effort to be okay alone again rather than stuff my life with social interaction and coping mechanisms.

I had to take a hard look at why I was single again and not just fall back in to old habits. My relationship didn’t end for either of us to be miserable. It ended so we could see what wasn’t working and why we weren’t happy with how life was going.

In cliche terms, we had to find ourselves outside of the relationship.

I’m going to stop speaking for him though because this is my blog and he doesn’t need me creating a narrative that might not be how he actually feels. Sometimes I get too caught up in a story and I let my words go on when they shouldn’t.

So, in my perspective, I’m alone because I need to actually find myself again. I’m not alone to be destructive and not feel my emotions. It took me three months to come to terms with that.

It’s been rough to process though. Being with yourself sober and trying to be authentic to who you want to be feels like imposter syndrome when you’re disappointed in your past choices. It runs back in your mind like a never-ending story.

I know I have to work through these feelings though. Being uncomfortable for a while is worth it if it means you’re actually working through your shit. Avoidance never works because things always manifest back in your life until you actually deal with the root cause.

Another thing they don’t tell you about trying to change your life is the push-back you might get from other people.

You appear as this personality you’ve created to other people and when you don’t continue along with it, it may make them uncomfortable. They know you as one thing that may be totally different than how you feel internally.

 

It’s a hard barrier to merge – the inner and outer.

 

Our external worlds can take over our whole lives if we let them.

We tell ourselves we’re going to be better, do better. We’ll drink less, exercise more, write more, and do all of the little self-care things we go on about in our head.

Until, a trigger comes up in our world. A trigger that brings you right back to your old habits.

I know he doesn’t read these, so I’ll just say it.

I was sad about missing my relationship this past weekend.

I had a great week of focusing on myself and felt good. The weekend came around and some triggers came up in my personal life that just made me sad I didn’t have someone to vent to anymore. I missed the feeling of having a person in my life that just knew me and would listen to every little problem I had. I felt really alone and got super drunk one night before I had to be up early. I was hungover and tired the next day – feeling like I completely diminished all the progress I made just days earlier.

I wanted to numb out again because I felt too sad to actually just let myself feel it out. I didn’t want to. I wanted to feel okay again even though I knew deep down I was drinking for the wrong reasons.

I ended up sleeping a lot the past two days because sleep is the ultimate escape from anything. It takes you out of your world for a second. When you’re struggling to come to terms with your new reality, it’s a no brainer.

I’m feeling better today though. The fact I’m sitting down writing says a lot.

I finished one of my books and meditated for the first time in well over a year too.

You can hit low points, but the willingness to get back up shows us that we can be okay again.

The days go on and the sad times disappear in to our rear views.

It isn’t easy by any means, but we have to do it.

I can’t live each day of my life trying to avoid the inevitable. That’s how most of us end up with addictions and depressed. We tell ourselves things can’t get better, so we let life become a cause and effect of whatever it wants to be. We stop making conscious choices because we figure there’s no point. We’re destined to end up back in our sadness.

It isn’t an overnight thing to decide to change your life. It comes in spurts or lives in our subconscious, but the willingness is always there.

None of us want to be miserable forever.

We want better things for ourselves, but lose the feeling that anything is possible.

 

We use our experiences as evidence that things don’t get better.

 

Thing is, our past experiences aren’t an end-all, be-all of everything to come.

If we make the same decisions and repeat the same habits, yes, we’ll see more of the same, but do you see how the power doesn’t lie in the outside world? How it doesn’t lie in the things we experience, but the choices we make in each moment?

Repeating our destructive behaviors sends us down the path of most resistance.

It amounts our lives to something not worth trying for.

It leads us to escape which makes it harder to ever open yourself to anyone again.

You don’t trust or care for yourself, so you end up letting others treat you that way. You let the world do whatever it wants to you because you can’t see a different outcome.

I’m still in the beginning of all of this, but I’m trying.

I want to do better for myself, by myself.

I want to get to a point where I feel a love for myself that I deserve.

Whenever I write in my journal, I always end my entries with saying ‘I love you’ or that things are going to work themselves out. I realized I stopped believing those things a long time ago. I tell myself they’re true, but I don’t embody them.

I haven’t been making choices that someone that loves themselves would. I haven’t been acting like things are going to work out anytime soon. I say them, but I don’t mean them.

From there, I’m looking to start believing in myself again.

It’s easy to brush past all we’ve accomplished in the midst of our pain, but we can always remind ourselves.

It takes time and the process may hurt, but we owe it to the child in us.

We deserve to live a life we want to embody.

I know my kid self would be proud of how far I’ve come in my short twenty-four years, sad times and all.

I’m not perfect, but I’m trying.

In the end, that’s all we can really ask of ourselves.

Every day is a day full of choices. We can choose to continue living on in our bad habits or look to something better.

The answers won’t all come at once, but as we find each one, we unlock a part of our future we didn’t know was there.

I refuse to believe anymore that things aren’t going to be okay.

It’s a daily commitment to get there, but we have to try.

In every moment, choices are there and we have the power to follow our guts.

Things may not be okay tomorrow, but they’ll be okay again.

That’s a hill I’m willing to die on.