Since I first sobered up I stopped running from my pain. Oh not the physical kind. Physical pain can be excruciating but mostly, you understand its purpose and reason.
The kind of pain I’m talking about is the emotional kind. You know. The kind that grinds away at you endlessly…. leaving you feeling somehow less than and anxious. It ‘feels’ like you’ve been kicked in the gut and that you’re bruised, on the inside. It’s the kind of pain no one can see. It’s the kind of pain you don’t want to talk about.
So what do you do when you’re newly sober and no longer running from emotional pain?
You feel it!
At first it feels like you’re gonna die.
Really!
But then, the more you acknowledge and share what you don’t want to, the lesser it grows.
Eventually something pretty strange starts to happen.
Pain takes you by the hand leading you away from the past.
You stand on a new threshold.
No longer crippled by emotions.
You begin to view pain as growth and embrace it.
Then the day comes…..
You no longer fear it. You welcome it. Just like any other emotion. And you begin to realize, the only true limitations to life…..
Are the ones we put on ourselves.
The kind of pain I’m talking about is the emotional kind. You know. The kind that grinds away at you endlessly…. leaving you feeling somehow less than and anxious. It ‘feels’ like you’ve been kicked in the gut and that you’re bruised, on the inside. It’s the kind of pain no one can see. It’s the kind of pain you don’t want to talk about.
So what do you do when you’re newly sober and no longer running from emotional pain?
You feel it!
At first it feels like you’re gonna die.
Really!
But then, the more you acknowledge and share what you don’t want to, the lesser it grows.
Eventually something pretty strange starts to happen.
Pain takes you by the hand leading you away from the past.
You stand on a new threshold.
No longer crippled by emotions.
You begin to view pain as growth and embrace it.
Then the day comes…..
You no longer fear it. You welcome it. Just like any other emotion. And you begin to realize, the only true limitations to life…..
Are the ones we put on ourselves.
