# Recovery

““The day is to be experienced, not understood!””

— The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have by Mark Nepo

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“The love of [God] who loved us greatly is greatly to be loved,”

Until I gave up my made-up construct for the life I thought I was supposed to be living, I couldn’t begin to live the life that was actually meant for me. Until I let go of everything not meant for me, what was meant for me couldn’t find me.

Regardless of what label we give it—we already know some of the most important things about addiction. We know it can, and often does, kill. We know it hurts the people we love and ourselves. We know it’s a medical condition. And we know it’s possible to recover.

Perhaps a better metaphor would be a spouse facing illness and refusing treatment, the anger that could bring. Even so, I want to believe I did alcoholism to myself. It flatters my independence, no matter how much damage I did.

the monopolistic god of irritable omnipresence , and you have the definition of God that people are usually referring to when they ask whether you believe God exists

my ideal self doesn’t exist.

I have always struggled with emotional regulation. I was subject to runaway feelings, scary racing thoughts, from a pretty early age. Scary things that I was not able to dispatch on my own. Fear was such an overwhelming feeling for me, I was afraid to be afraid, if that makes any sense. My imagination produced incipient catastrophes from relatively... See more

Long-distance relationships were, for me, a perfect balance of commitment and freedom. I loved the emotional roller coaster that comes from longing, reconciling and parting, over and over again. I’ve been through three of them, and in each case I was ambivalent about actually moving to the new town. They allowed me to put my best self forward, beca... See more