I am just a person in Recovery.
I manage and control this monster that is now dormant; who is locked in my head.
I have managed to bury it alive and suffocate it with truth, factual information, hobbies, passions, strong people, positive relationships and other things that I value.
I continue to drown and suffocate this monster on a daily basis, juuuust to be safe.
I cannot believe that I was once that other person.
That monster was who I used to be.
I made foolish choices and justified my way all the way to chemical dependency.
I developed a disease in my brain and I got myself stuck in a sickness.
This was a sickness that I recognized all too well.
I watched it devour my mom.
When I got to my bottom I chose to fight.
I also fought like hell to stay alive despite overwhelming feelings of wanting to die.
To give in.
To give up.
To believe the lie that I felt and heard for so long.
I was a wasted person.
I didn’t matter.
I was just a drug addict.
Sometimes I cannot even believe that God’s grace is extended to everyone, even people like me.
I was handed this beautiful thing.
A second chance to start over, as a new person.
It was all mine.
My new chance.
I could do with what I please and I have control over what that looks like.
This choice to live sober affords me a certain type of guaranteed freedom…….
Knowing the God that I have on my side brings me so much hope and courage to keep living this life.
Through His love, I am enabled to feel and experience a type of security in my everyday life
-right now, and tomorrow and for as long as I am willing.
This gives me that instant gratification that I so crave (being free every day)
and satisfies every single desire that I had, and some that I am still learning about.
We might have to spend a significant amount of time fighting with our old selves, and learning to be something, or someone different.
We are allowed to embrace the new and rid ourselves of the old.
We can be excited about this transformation even if change scares us.
We are not what the community has sadly labeled us as a whole.
We are not what people assume or picture in their heads.
We know now that we aren’t just worthy of change, we aren’t just worth fixing,
but God values us so much that we are completely transformed into new people.
My Recovery is a place where I live, it isn’t who I am.
It is my world.
I am just a person named Brittany, who chooses to live in this gifted, surreal world.
I live every day getting more familiar with this place.
Each day I get more acquainted with this new person I am finally seeing in the mirror.
This beautiful journey is about finally finding my true self,
learning to love her, and to get to know her.
Every day I dig a little bit, I heal, I learn, I might struggle for awhile, but ultimately, I am inching closer to who I was meant to be.
This is who I am now.
So.
Society: you can have your labels back.
I have the whole world in front of me.