Tonight was supposed to be a very moving, emotional, hopeful evening, but I didn’t really get that feeling. Maybe I’m in a different place than most or maybe I’m just a bitch. Either way, I’m admitting it and that’s all that counts, right?
Anyway, tonight was about recovery, a subject that I am very passionate about and fought very hard for. It was about hope through grieving, loss, love, and strength. It was about community. It was about a community that I feel I have lost all ties to. A community in which I do not connect to as much as I think I should. A community that screams about acceptance and love, but doesn’t always practice what it preaches.
A lot of what I heard tonight was meant to be hopeful. It was about life after struggling for a long time and finally finding yourself. Loving yourself just the way you are, being imperfect, fighting for what you believe in….any positive message that could be given, was. But you know what was missing? Authenticity. Reality. Validity.
What I never heard anyone say was how hard life in and after recovery is. How things can be going perfectly and then all of a sudden your life gets turned upside down. I don’t believe that recovery fully begins until you can get through those hard times without resulting back to old patterns. Because, let’s be honest, anyone can be in recovery when life is great, but what happens when it isn’t? It takes a much stronger person to get up, face the hard stuff, and move on. And that’s the person I want to be.
Life is not always rainbows and butterflies. Life sucks. People die. Money runs out. Couples split up. Loved ones hurt us. We have to do things we don’t want to do because we have to. Bad things don’t stop happening just because you’re in recovery. But you know what? Without the suckage this wouldn’t be life. None of us would know joy and happiness without these things.
Don’t get me wrong, life is amazing. Great things happen all the time, even to you. But please don’t get the impression that evil takes a holiday, ever. It’s the choices you make when something bad happens in your life that counts. Those are the moments when you decide if you are going to stay in recovery or not. Those are the moments will change your life. So let them.
So, no, I didn’t get a lot out of tonight because I feel like the wrong message was being given. I feel that the hopeful message that I was looking for comes from a different set of people. The ones who can see the sunshine amidst the rain. The ones who let their choices change their lives.
For the better.
