Readiness for change

I finally had therapy last night after a brutal 3 week break. I was nervous and had so much anxiety going into it, but I think it went…okay?

In true me fashion, I spent the first little while rambling awkwardly about my life and about my kids. There has been a lot that’s gone on in the past few weeks, so we talked about that.

Then we started talking about drinking and she read a few of my blog posts that I wrote this week. And we got into a deeper conversation about alcohol and drinking. It was a conversation I’m glad we had, but it left me feeling a little on edge. Like, maybe I’m not doing a good enough job and I need to be doing better.

We started talking about doing DBT for my drinking, and we made a pros and cons list for it alcohol. I tried to make an even amount of pros and cons for drinking so it was balanced, and I think I actually did a decent job at it.

We talked a lot about my readiness for change. And she said that while she does believe I’m doing the best I can, she’s not sure how ready I really am to change. And I don’t disagree.

Getting sober, letting go of alcohol, it’s been a discussion for a while. Sometimes we focus on it more than others, but it’s been a topic of discussion for a long time.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be “ready” to let go of alcohol. To get rid of something that hurts me and helps me so equally so…or so it seems.

The truth is, I think that I’m as “ready” as I can be without hitting bottom again. I’ve hit bottom before. And it really fucking sucked. It’s somewhere I never want to go again. It hurt me, it hurt my husband, it hurt my best friend…it was the worst day of my life. I can pinpoint a specific day as my bottom. I nearly died.

Right now, I’m living in a very false sense of security.

It’s not as bad as it was.

Things are different now. I’m not drinking during the day, so it’s fine.

I can control it this time.

No.

No to all of it.

Just because right now, for this day, at this moment, things are “better” than they were at my bottom? Any day, any one single bad night, and I could be right back there. So the fact that I’m lulled into this bullshit sense of security because for this very moment in time I haven’t overdosed on alcohol? Yeah. It’s wrong.

I’m ready to do the work to get all of this fucking alcohol out of my life. When I’m drinking, which I am when I’m writing this, I’m ready. The version of me that drinks every night and that knows I can’t control it is ready.

It’s the sober me that’s the issue. Sober me forgets. Sober me allows the memories to disappear. To convince myself that things aren’t that bad.

Sober me wants to hit bottom again before we remember how truly shitty things will be.

But that’s not what I want.

I’m ready to change. Drunk me is so fucking ready. Dunk me hates this.

The hard truth is that I don’t think I will be more ready than I am now until things get significantly worse. And I can’t afford to let that happen. I don’t want to go back to that place. I don’t even like where things are now, let alone the idea of it being worse.

So I do understand my therapist questioning my readiness. I question it too.

But I need to let go. I need to try.

I need to allow myself to be ready.