12:25 pm
You are not sick.
You are not crazy.
You are not “overthinking” it.
You are not obsessive.
You are not mean, or manipulative, or a bitch.
You are not diseased, or disordered.
You are not lazy, or inept, or incapable.
And, most definitely, you are not the label you call yourself.
You are a person, with a miraculous tenacity to fight the urge to drink, or use–which drinking or using is the opposite of loving yourself. One day, you will come to realize that there is this big ocean of calm called self-love, that can combat all the negativity, self-doubt, and external “un-love” factors that present themselves on a daily basis. To those attempting to mess with that ocean? Go ahead and try; it ain’t gonna work on me this time. THAT is self-love (and a little bit of self-righteousness, but hey, we need that now and then).
Love yourself, and everything else will follow. Love yourself with treats, and flowers, and solitude. Why? Because you can. Because you want to–above all the self-sabotaging, you see that you really want to help yourself by loving yourself. Because that is the “natural order” of things. Look around–do you see birds and plants not loving themselves, not putting their needs first, trying to break themselves down?
You are seeing through the ways in which you didn’t love yourself before–most of them you learned, or they became habit. You never stopped to say, I deserve to be loved. It’s OK, we all do it. We’re human. We have this brain, and it is a complicated little mess of electricity. Beyond this brain, however, is a bigger body–the holy ground. This Body with a capital “b” is the holy ground. This Body is our connection to self, to relationships, to “god,” as it were. And this Body needs care, and calm. This Body doesn’t need to be beaten down, or examined, or “dealt with.” This Body just needs love.
You can be proud of yourself no matter what you “did” or “didn’t do” while drinking or using. You really can. You can be proud of yourself today, for not drinking, or for starting over, or for reaching your 100 days, 300 days, 3,000 years of sobriety. And, if no one else loves you today, love yourself. At the end of the day, that is the ONLY thing that matters. Everything else will follow.