What Needs to End Before Something Healthier Can Happen?

It always goes like that, you know?  There is always something that needs to come to pass, to be completed, to be finalized or finished before something better can come along.  Something more life affirming, something that supports your growth and change and life.  

For me it was drinking, I had to stop drinking before anything healthy could happen in my life.  My diet would not change, my care of my body, my relationships, my ability to work was all hampered and hindered by my addiction to alcohol.

I can remember there was a guy I bartended with back in the day.  He would see me either barely eat or eat things like fried cheese.  He was horrified at my diet.  I mean I maintained back then that beer was food, so...  He started brining me salads to work.  He would go out of his way to get me food that was not produced in a factory but a farm.  Of course, I didn’t appreciate how nice that was at the time.  I remember being annoyed that now I had to eat that fucking salad that I didn’t ask for or want.  But now, I look back on him and that simple, kind gesture and am reminded, with a great deal of clarity, what an asshole I was back then.  I didn’t appreciate his kindness and caretaking then but I sure as shit do now.

And there have been many such crossroads in my life since I got sober.  If I make it to the 22nd of this month, that decision to change my life, happened 31 years ago!  What the actual fuck?  I can’t believe it has been that long.  That long, that this commitment phobic woman has been dedicated, with unwavering perseverance, to one mission, to not drink or use no matter what.

My thing that needed to end before something healthier could happen was dramatic and life altering.  And there have been many other things that have happened since I took that first step all those years ago.  But it seems to me that we all have that primary addiction to something that blocks our path to a more authentic and wholesome life.  A life where we aren’t hurting ourselves or anyone else.  And once we tackle that one thing: porn addiction, workaholism, food addiction, drug and alcohol addiction, love, sex or relationship addiction, shopping issues, that one giant surrender paves the path forward for an all around healthier lifestyle and living.  We have to put down the thing that will absolutely kill us, then we can begin to add in things that support our growth and change in other, perhaps, smaller ways.

More recently, I have had to end some pretty dysfunctional relationship with people who really didn’t treat me very well.  Some personal, some professional.  I had to admit that I allowed people in my life who showed me, through their behavior, I was not important and just a means to an end for them.  This is not a new behavior for me, not something that I picked up since I got sober, but a long standing pattern of behavior that has been present since I was young.  I just didn’t see it for a very long time.  Then that one relationship happened where I could no longer postpone or evade the crisis that was that person.  And it all had to come crumbling down for me to see that I was the most dysfunctional person in my relationships.  The other person was there at my invitation and tolerance...not the other way around as I maintained for years. Until I could see that, I just kept picking similar versions of the same person over and over and over again!

We have to put down first the things that are blocking our growth, then sit idly in the hallway for that new healthier behavior to gain the stamina to blossom.  It is not an overnight matter in my experience.  And sometimes it takes us decades to be able to end that thing that is blocking everything else in our lives.  We mistake it for salvation when it is actually the thing that is going to kill us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

I think it all begins with surrender.  I have to be willing to offer up something that I am still receiving some benefit from in order to make good forward progress...I have to be willing to give up the thing, that perhaps really isn’t serving me, but I am committed to nonetheless...

What is something you need to end in order to allow something better in your life?  I am kinda dying to know.  What is your process? How hard is it for you?  How successful are you at the surrenders in your life?

And if you are struggling, let me know that too!  We can all use some love and support when we are in the throes of chaos and confusion.

Again, still...