Past the Wave
Made it. The craving has subsided again. If history is any indicator, I'll be fairly okay for another week or two. But one feeling remains:
The feeling that, no matter how far I've come, how many days I've strung together, I'm always roughly five minutes away from relapse.
I've learned to stop imagining the steps that lead to using, because I swear it stirs up the same feelings. It's self-sabotage. That's just an avenue of thought that I have to cut myself off from completely.
I've learned (I hope I've learned this...) that I'm never so free that I can stop being careful. I rail against this some times. I want to just be normal, to just go through life without constantly watching myself to see if I'm backsliding.
But that isn't my lot in life. And really, this isn't actually a huge problem. Many people deal with far larger issues. Ya know, things like war, poverty, abuse, discrimination... I have it easy. I have one little problem that I have to deal with.
So I'm dealing with it. One day at a time, watching my own back for signs of backsliding, cutting myself off from certain things that might draw me back in.
Tomorrow marks eighty days free. That's the longest I've gone in three years, as near as I can tell. Here's hoping for eighty more.
-A