Surrender: How I Overcame Alcoholism and Depression
I used to wonder if I lived in the nighttime or if the dark lived in me. Was I like
I used to wonder if I lived in the dark or if the dark lived in me. Was I like one of those cartoons in the depression commercials walking around with a grayness cloud over my caput or was I a manufacturer of gray clouds?
Growing up, I e'er thought at that place was something inherently wrong with me yet I couldn't reconcile my cocky-image with my external reality. My upbringing was non abnormal or traumatic. I was the only child of 2 loving parents who are still married today simply the way I felt on the inside didn't align with my outside circumstances.
My parents go along pictures in a photograph anthology of my birthdays, Christmases, vacations nosotros took. I look happy in those pictures, simply I don't recollect feeling happy. Information technology's as if I'yard looking at pictures of someone else. I wish I could recall the joy I must have felt when kick up piles of fall leaves in the front m or soaring downward the Slip 'n Slide in the summer. The but thing that seems familiar to me is the disconnect I had with other people, myself and God.
If I think back long and difficult plenty, my earliest memories are non of specific events but rather emotions-anger, emptiness, and inadequacy. I constantly compared myself to others which simply became worse as time went on.
I kept looking for answers equally to why I felt the mode I did. I searched in men, money, alcohol, drugs, food, churches and nightclubs but I ever ended up in the same place-the bookstore. My fingers would aimlessly comb through books in the Psychology/Cocky-Aid section: Bipolar I & Two, Depression, Anxiety, Adult Add together, Borderline Personality Disorder.
Where was I in all of this? I fit the criteria for many of these disorders, but the solutions didn't fit me. I tried everything from medication to meditation with petty improvement. All I wanted was to find myself in a volume that would identify exactly what was wrong with me and how to ready information technology.
These days I ofttimes think maybe I'thousand supposed to write that book so that someone else who comes behind me tin can find information technology later. I couldn't write well-nigh the solution dorsum then because my entire life I'd been living in the problem. It wasn't until I later that I came to understand and live the principles of acceptance and give up.
Bad Luck vs. Grace
In my drinking, I lost many things-homes, jobs, money-but not just material things. I also lost relationships, integrity, and nobility but not because these things were taken from me. I willingly gave them upwards in substitution for the brief opportunity to not be present for a life I never wanted.
I drew many lines in the sand and vowed I would never cross over any of them. I vowed that the next drink would be my terminal , that I would never try hard drugs, that I would never call you that proper noun. Just all of these things were conditional-contingent on my happiness, sadness, anger, boredom, job security, personal insecurity, relationship status, financial independence, emotional co-dependence-everything and null. Each time I crossed a line, I would draw another until, finally, I plant myself in the ocean where there were no more lines because they had been swept abroad by water. It was at that point that I realized I had lost everything . Some people refer to loss every bit bad luck. I don't believe it had anything to do with luck. Information technology was grace .
Give up vs.Giving Up
Losing everything was the best thing that could've happened to me because there was nothing left to fear. I no longer feared that I would drown from getting pulled down by the current. So I opened my arms out to the universe and tilted my head back-I was now floating . I was floating on peak of all the murk-the lost nobility, the emptiness, the inadequacy.
When you're floating, the but way to look is upward -where there is light, the heavens that are promised to usa and a vastness that holds godly opportunities we small humans could never have imagined ourselves. Giving up meant making two whole-hearted attempts in 2010 and 2013 at stopping my heart forever. Today, I don't give up-I surrender-and those are two very unlike things. When I surrender, I let go of the notion that I have all the answers or that my ideas are the right ones or the only ones. Life meanders. Sometimes it has precipitous and narrow turns or crude terrain, and you have no idea what's ahead. Other times the road is articulate, wide and smooth and we're able to cruise. When I surrender, I'm no longer choosing a specific path but I'm assuasive myself to have any path the universe opens up for me, even if it'due south scary, untraveled and unknown.
From Pain to Joy
When I was in my 20s, I had three symbols from the Runic alphabet tattooed on my wrist called Laguz, Thurisaz, and Algiz. Laguz means "water" and represents fluidity. Thurisaz means "thorn" and represents protection, merely it besides symbolizes chaos and hardship. Algiz means "elk" and represents divinity or connectedness to the Gods.
The first time I attempted suicide, I crossed over a line in my life as I had done many times earlier in the sand. Except this line was permanently etched on my wrist instead of drawn in the globe. When that happened, I forever contradistinct the significant of the rune Thurisaz by changing its concrete form. By eliminating the vertical line at the top of the symbol, I was left with a new rune called Wynn. Wynn means "joy" and represents happiness and life force. In that instance, the most agonizing moment of my life, I
In that case, the about disturbing moment of my life, I literally transformed my hurting into joy. And at present joy is bordered by water on ane side and God on the other-the two most essential elements of my life today. Some might refer to this as a fortunate coincidence. I simply call information technology grace.
Source: https://www.goalcast.com/acceptance-surrender-how-overcame-alcoholism-depression/