Friday
While it hasn’t been a particularly easy week, I’m wrapping up today feeling especially grateful. Lately, I’ve been feeling a depth of freedom that I haven’t felt…well, in years. Freedom from the compulsion to drink. Freedom from something I knew was harming me, but couldn’t seem to stop doing. Freedom from myself.
I’m headed into a weekend full of family commitments, freelance work, personal projects and hopefully, some exercise and rest. But the desire to drink isn’t there. The idea that somehow this weekend will be lacking without the booze is completely gone. In it’s place is a sense of centeredness.
Life hasn’t changed – it still has it’s moments of stress and angst – but I feel so much more in control. Content with what is, and hopeful for what comes ahead.
And without the willpower needed to moderate, or wait for 5pm, or the weekend or whatever, I’m finding I have more willpower to commit to exercise goals, to stand up to the boys constant battle of wills (and MAN is that tough), to hold my tongue when needed. Turns out research has shown that willpower is an exhaustible resource. I could have told you that after running out of it on a daily basis, around 3pm, due to battling it out with the twins. I’m grateful that I’ve found deeper reserves since quitting.
I remember this time last year, heading into work up three flights of stairs and getting tired 1/2 way through. My thought at the time was, “I hope that in a year, I’ll be bounding up these stairs two at a time, feeling energetic and healthy”. And a year later, it’s happened. And with this physical change has come a mental change that I’m grateful for in spite of the ever-changing craziness around me.
Lighter inside and out.