# Recovery

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

all the things I had assumed would make me happy in sobriety never panned out the way I thought they would. Many of the dreams I'd had before I got sober simply do not matter anymore. There are no more dreams big enough to replace this wild new reality. My life is much smaller than it used to be, but it's also the biggest it's ever been.

my ideal self doesn’t exist.

I’m ashamed of my neediness of not wanting to be abandoned. I don’t want to be cast off and unloved.

what I value most in a relationship are, in ever-shifting order, humor, empathy, intelligence, understanding and surprise.

I was a shy and anxious kid, consumed by big feelings and perfectionism, neither of which I understood.

Basically I was trying to gather impediments in my mind to pull me back from pushing myself outside my comfort zone.

the challenge for Anders is to reinsert himself in the quotidian flow of life