I’m reading a book and if I read to you from the book
And I substitute the word ‘sober’ where he’s talking about something else
This will make as much sense to you as it did to me when I was reading it
And it goes like this
The worst part of this whole situation is that starting being sober and not continuing
Makes you feel terrible
These are not his words
This is me changing it because as soon as I read it I thought OK
I have to share this because this is genius
Because when you make a goal to be sober
You make a promise to yourself
The moment you create that goal
You’ve made a silent promise
And then when you don’t do it, you’ve broken that promise
And you’ve lied to the person you spend the most time with
Which is you
And if you break enough promises
You start to doubt yourself
That’s not surprising
If someone told you a dozen different times
That they’d meet you for coffee and then they never showed up
You wouldn’t trust them
If a parent promised to pick you up at soccer practice
And didn’t
You’d lose faith in them
If a boss promised you a promotion
And then didn’t deliver month after month
You’d quit believing her
When you break enough promises you start to doubt yourself
This is not surprising
I thought when I read that:
This is exactly what early sobriety is about
We don’t know if we can count on ourselves
We don’t know if we’re going to do it
We want to move away from the place of feeling bad
We want to move into a new place of feeling better
How do you do that
How do you quit
You get support from someone external to you
Someone who could repeatedly
In an email
In an audio
In an audio
Whisper in your ear
This is what you want
This is what you’re doing
Doesn’t matter what you’ve done before
It doesn’t matter that you didn’t show up for soccer practice before
What matters is what you’re doing today
Because today is how you write the new story
Of what happens next
~
if alcohol is an elevator that only goes down, you may have to look for an exit. and once you’re off, stay off.
original art thanks to mr.belle who has been painting in the living room of the rental apartment in vermont. including getting navy blue paint on the beige carpet …
this is Exit #509, link > www.artsober.com