The Dark and Beautiful Truth About Sobriety
By: Lauren Hess
Tags: Beyourself, Recovery Success, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Sobriety

The Dark and Beautiful Truth About Sobriety

It’s the moment you realize you must stop.

It’s a reality that belongs to you, but isn’t yours.

It’s a complete disemboweling.

It’s carnage.

It’s civil war.

It’s the scornful stranger in the mirror, “What have you done?”

It’s the dismantling of a house of lies.

It’s dangerously laying down your weapons and armor and pretty ideas about who you are and why you are here.

It’s a breathless plea, “I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t make me do this.”

It’s natural and unnatural disaster.

It’s the unleashing of bloodthirsty hounds from the recesses of your mind.

It’s a too-quiet, too-loud, too-dark, blindingly-bright chaos.

It’s a violent, convulsing exorcism.

It’s primal fear at the cellular level.

It’s the slow, pathetic limp of a wounded animal.

It’s the haunted way of living in a body that isn’t inhabited.

It’s a bottomless, black, sedating mourning.

It’s searing regret.

It’s the carnivorous anxiety that watches and grins as you sweat while you sleep.

It’s humiliation, degradation, dishonor, disloyalty.

It’s the acrid stench of smoke leaving the wound as you are restrained and branded.

It’s the ugly, sterile, sickly word itself — “alcoholic.”

It’s an anthology of mistakes. It’s a tattered scrapbook of ghosts.

It’s the crushing weight of a double-life.

It’s dismemberment.

It’s unrelenting shame.

It’s the loneliest phrase you’ve ever heard, “You are not enough.”

It’s devastation. It’s apocalyptic.

It’s the voice of oppression that taunts, “You will fail.”

It’s impossible sadness. It’s unbridled grief.

It’s ache. It’s pain. It’s affliction. It’s heartbreak. It’s soul-break.

It’s a junkyard. It’s a scrapyard. It’s a graveyard.

It is death.

And then…

It is birth.

It’s the Awakening.

It’s the Renaissance.

It’s sight for the blind.

It’s mercy, pardon, acquittal.

It’s embodying vulnerability with earned assurance.

It’s the full-fledged, all-consuming thrill of committing to yourself.

It’s the tender way you greet your inner child, “We have some work to do.”

It’s allowing yourself back into yourself; a welcome gift from an old friend long forgotten.

It’s an egregiously overdue apology. It’s a thousand apologies.

It’s deciding with conviction that “late” is infinitely better than never.

It’s arriving at your own doorstep, weary and sincere, “I’m home. I’m so sorry. I will never leave you again.”

It’s the feeling of forgiveness in your heart, mind, bones, soul — the whole tender, wild animal that is You.

It’s exhilaration and anticipation. It’s the thrill of every first kiss.

It’s feather-light. It’s ethereal. It’s levity.

It’s adventure. It’s a sky-sea of hot air balloons.

It’s integration. It’s integrity.

It’s stripped, bare, clean, untouched.

It’s pregnant with possibility.

It’s the sound of music — every note, octave, score.

It’s the childlike delight of catching your free-spirited reflection as you dance alone in your kitchen.

It’s a new way of crying. It’s purification.

It’s a deep knowing, “I am worthy.”

It’s the startling, defiant, joyful realization that you are learning to love yourself — and it is good, good love.

It’s a conversation between you and God.

It’s a fireworks display of the heart—bursting, juicy, vibrant.

It’s a promise fulfilled.

It’s the divinity that lives within your stunning determination to save your own life.

It’s reverence for your budding union with your Higher Self, “It was worth the wait.”

It’s prayer. It’s poetry.

It’s experiencing everything for the first time, again. It’s the compassion of second chances.

It’s shiny, brand new, immaculate, unadulterated.

It’s the heavy exhale of letting go. It’s a soul in meditation.

It’s relieving, releasing, rejoicing, relinquishing, reclaiming.

It’s revolution — silent and deafening.

It’s taking up space in the world. It’s refusing to apologize for your rightful place here.

It’s regal. It’s baptism.

It’s a promise that you will no longer make room at your table for negotiations with the devil.

It’s every subtle hue of every color in every sunset.

It’s the novel, insistent belief, “It will be okay.”

It’s the grace of a patient Universe, never scolding you for getting so terribly lost and taking so damn long.

It’s the triumphant dismissal of the tired thought that you could ever settle for anything less than everything.

It’s wildly unexpected.

It’s a lighthouse. It’s a beacon.

It’s a brave walk toward a distant glow blanketed by fog.

It’s fresh, pure, uncultivated, boundless.

It’s breaching the surface and seeing clearly for the first time: you’ve been holding your own head under water.

It’s the sudden awareness that you are, in fact, free.

It’s your first breath.

It’s your next breath, and the next one, and the next one…and every perfect and powerful breath that reminds you that you are faithfully, vivaciously alive.

It is the excavation of these words.

It is these beautiful contradictions we call truth.

It is hopeful, heroic sobriety.

Join me on Instagram: laurenbrianarecovers