Better, Not Easier

I think there's a common flaw in the thinking of addicts.  Okay, maybe not all addicts.  Maybe I'm the only one who ever thought this way.  But I think most addicts, in the beginning at least, assume that if I get this big huge horrible weight off my chest that has plagued me for as long as I can remember, life will be easy.  It has to be, right?  All this awful garbage I've been carrying around is gone!  Here's the hardest part, which I may never fully understand: sometimes (most of the time) it feels like absolutely nothing in your life has changed, except that now you've taken away the thing that helped you cope with it all.  Don't get me wrong.  I have never once genuinely regretted the commitment I made to get and stay sober.  Not once.  It was the right decision, & my life is so much better for it.  But I also can't pretend that it has been easier.  Not for one stupid second.

I was talking with a friend today about how easy it is to believe that if you just change this one simple thing, all your dreams with come true.  This crazy hot, near perfect man will fall madly in love with you, sweep you off your feet, & run off to the temple with you before someone else has a chance to try to steal you away.  Now, this friend knows that I am an addict but we were talking about weight, not addiction.  I've been working hard, some days & weeks much more than others, to get my health back.  Well, realistically to get my health even better than it was.  This is really hard for me for this exact reason.  I am now within about five pounds of the size I was when Matthew & I were together.  I think I was probably a tiny bit smaller with Jason but I could never say that for sure.  Seriously, I tried to check & the only records I have are from a month after Matthew & I broke up (meaning four months post-Jason).

The point is this: I haven't seriously dated anyone in over two years.  I was in a horrible place in my life, and I had two serious relationships in the span of six months.  The fact that absolutely nothing has materialized the more I get my life pulled together is....disheartening.  Yes, I realize that I have made tremendous progress.  I am doing phenomenal things in school.  I have made wonderful friendships, and I have three clients with whom I am excited to work to improve their lives.  I have a paid internship.  I can go to the House of the Lord virtually anytime I want.  Those are each monumental, life-altering things.  I have no desire to diminish any of them.  Each of these things are indisputably miracles.  I doubted that any of them, let alone all of them, could happen.

But I truly believed then that if I got my act together, started acing school (if I went back at all), started seeing clients, got sober (let alone stayed that way for almost 28 months!), and became endowed, marriage and a family would quickly materialize.  If I was dreaming of the impossible, might as well really dream big.  I was fairly certain when I hugged Matthew goodbye that it would be the last time I saw him.  In rehab many concerns were expressed, & the night I got out before flying home we had a really hard conversation which ended in me crying, a lot.  I was pretty certain then, though it didn't end for a couple more weeks.  The saddest part is how resigned & almost indifferent I felt at the end.  It was a text, just an agreement that we weren't supposed to be together, but I didn't want to be a quitter so I waited until he was ready to say it.  I knew if he really wanted me, he could commit to making hard changes too.  The process wouldn't have been easy but I knew it was possible if we were both committed.  We weren't.

The saddest part is realizing that someone I was once fairly certain I would marry walked away without me even shedding a tear.  I feel a little sick remembering that moment, remembering how little I cared that it was over and even feeling relieved, but I believed with all my heart in that moment, only a few weeks into my sobriety, that someone so much better for me lay ahead.  I still know that to be true.  I just don't know when, & I'm tired of waiting.  My rehab roomie is now married with a baby on the way and I am sooooooo excited for her.  But there's jealousy too.  I would never take it from her, but I want that.  And I wish it would come soon.

This post sounds really negative, & I apologize for that.  I realized today how strange it is that I feel more pain thinking that the person in whom I have interest now might never look at me that way, than I did in ending a relationship with someone I once thought I would marry.  I keep wondering when it will happen.  I keep thinking "so....now would be good".  I was really anxious to make it through the first half of my program with no marriage, because the downhill slope felt doable.  I trusted myself to finish if I got that far.  Now I'm less than 15 months away from graduation, & that is unfathomable.  Ugh, going somewhere dark again.  I give up.  This one's just not going to be happy.  Sorry guys.  Bottom line, I want to be married, & I want to be moving forward in the way which is most important to me.  The other ways are amazing.  But I guess for now they're just not everything I'd hoped.