Where We Place Our Love
First week of 300hr training in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
The beginning of my sober journey. And I think I kind of always knew it would be. But it wasn’t until I got on the plane that I knew there was no way I was ever touching another drop of alcohol again. I went through my own grieving process with it lol. I drank even the day I was getting on the plane. A last farewell to a bad, toxic friend that had once been so what I needed. But like everything else in life, I’d outgrew it and in typical me fashion had let it overstay its welcome.
And now, I’m feeling again. The love I have for everything. The shattering of my heart that I’d been feeling for the past few months has repaired.
What I’ve learned in silence and solitude is that the past that I was unwilling to let go of was poisoning my soul. The past life that used to make me happy, the sweet fruit of pleasure-seeking, thrill-chasing, thoughtless words and self-abandoned actions had turned into sand in my mouth. And yet I still chewed, hopelessly hoping that my effort could bring back the same illusion that I had once mistaken for happiness.
I have spent the last six years searching for answers. How is it that we went to school for 13 years and no one taught us how to breathe, or use our emotions in an conducive way? How is that we went to school post secondary and no one taught us how to be better to each other, at communicating in a way that is effective and non-harming? How is that all this education is bought and sold and yet the world is on fire and no one seems to know how to put out the damn fire and heal it? How is it that humans have existed for thousands of years and yet we live in a society with so much misery and suffering? Why is there such a lack of love and community?
And if none of this is taught to us, we turn to the media we consume or the people around us to tell us. To act selfishly, to purchase and consume and perpetuate this cycle of waste and thoughtlessness, to stare at screens that bring us little hits of dopamine when all we have to do is look outside to find endless awe and wonder, to use alcohol and other substances to have fun, to numb this underlying nagging feeling that something isn’t right - these are the things that are sold to us as happiness. As freedom. All the while these are the exact things that bind us even further, making us more and more distant from the truth. We are told again and again that everything we need is outside ourselves, that we have to search, and buy, and plead for what’s always existed inside of us. We are all born with so much love and are told constantly to put it everywhere besides ourselves. So we spend our precious life and energy investing in the wrong things. Love misplaced is just as deadly as any other addiction. Because it doesn’t give back. It takes and takes until we are empty.
Where we place our time is where we place our life. Where we place our life is where we place our love. Our love defines our values. And without the right values, without finding what truly means the most to our hearts, is a life wasted.
Sometimes the only way to see clearly is to remove ourselves from what we’ve always known, the parameters of comfort we’ve so carefully locked ourselves in. A reset button that helps us no longer see everything from old, tired eyes, but a reminder of the vastness of the world, and the infinite possibilities that await us, if we choose to see it, if we choose to make the decision to evolve into something greater than the pain. The pain is there to teach us, not to make us suffer. The suffering is what we cling to because it’s familiar.
I cannot share the the best of myself when I am shackled to alcohol. I cannot share the best of my thoughts when I am in a haze of weed. I cannot share the best of my love when I am not taking care of myself. The love that is projected is broken, pieced like shrapnel for a fortress. The best way to love is to love ourselves first. And the only way to do that is to stop stuffing the void with temporary fixes. In fact, perhaps anything that can be bought is not the thing our heart is craving for at all. And unless we first let go of the things that are making us sick, there cannot be room for healing or growth.
True connection starts with being able to sit with our own thoughts and feelings, however uncomfortable or unpleasant they may be. To recognize that even though they seem so real and inseparable from our sense of self, that it really isn’t us. Most of our thoughts and emotions were put there by someone else, telling us how to think and how to behave and how to live. We are taught behaviours to make us more acceptable, palatable, and within those confines lives something that tastes like self-betrayal. I’m choosing sobriety because that is what my heart is calling me to do. The voice I’ve longed to hear has been telling me all along, but I chose not to listen out of fear. Who would I be without these things that had always offered me comfort, no matter how short-lived? The answer is who I’ve always been, before I was told not to be. And if we are to share the love that we’ve always craved, we have to start with coming back to ourselves. The only home that ever mattered.
