So, I am finding out just how good I am at avoidance. Or at least, I have been. I at least suck moderately less at it now. Starting almost two and a half years ago, I finally learned how to lean into myself. I thought, then, that I had learned an exclusive and unique skill, as if I had already come into it. In reality, I think, all that happened was I finally found some real freedom and control to finally be able to be things I already was. Now, it has been many of those moments strung together.

Marking the timeline at September 11, 2021, a lot has changed for me as a human, and I mean not at all circumstantially… although, boy are there some stories of the circumstances around me and my role in them. As I came out of the fog of my proverbial muddy cistern, I finally could address some things and make some changes.

Every stage of life along the way has then been a lot of day-in and day-out constant review and adjust. It’s not as simple or clean or even as intentional as that, but it’s been a constant theme. The 1% principle of incremental daily change clicked hard for me in rehab. However, every time I changed, for everything that changes, I have to relearn all the things connected to that.

For example: as an alcoholic, vulnerability was not a strong attribute of mine. It wasn’t before, and I knew it. I was drawn to it and was trying for it. But I didn’t realize how co-dependent I was at the time. When I blew everything up by drowning my fear of vulnerability in alcohol, learning how to do relationships as actually me, accepting myself, accepting others and what they may or may not do and think, the mistakes and problems of others, to use my strengths again but without using them to hide, to share my weaknesses as if they really just are weaknesses to me, to trust another human with their flaws and mess of identity, to engage another being without that underlying assumption that I am flawed, wrong, guilty, and will somehow screw this up is not as easily changed as it is to start with. Change scares the shit out of me. It means I have to let go of something I have some feeling of control over and face the uncomfortable and unknown. Who will we be on the other side? What will others think of us? What if we’re wrong? What if they are? What of conflict and the conversations we might have to have or have differently?

Changing implies that we publicly admit we were wrong somehow, that something could have been better. When we try something different, we first have to stop the thing we were doing in its place before. In order to do that, we… I had to address underlying crap that was fueling the behavior. That often requires changing what I think, how I think, what I feel and how I deal with those, and changing the me talking to myself and others. Habits take time to break and start. How much more the habits of how we view ourselves and others?

Change being hard is not a revolutionary thought. I think, in some sense, it is the thought that is the problem. Why is change hard? Why should it be? Change happens. What is not changing right now? Look closely enough at anything in nature, and you will find change. Resisting change and avoiding it is where problems show up. We drag our heels through time and space, plowing up nature as we are dragged along.

Change is not hard. Trying to resist it is. Knowing I could, I should, that I want to do something but haven’t, something that I’m okay with talking about as an idea but not willing to commit to and do, and then resisting that takes energy, and that energy does things I don’t want it to do anymore.

My problem with change is that it takes time. I know we’ve all heard this before and it’s easy to shrug off as cliche, but man is there deep truth in it. Time is a fundamental part of nature – it pays no heed to our ignorance and resistance of it. We are a part of it, not it a part of our lives. I am a creature, a speck, with an immensity of person behind me, but time is not something I should foolishly think I can cheat. Growing is a part of growth – it stretches through time and teaches us more along the way. Every change requires a change around it to allow it to occur.

Writing is one of these things for me. Personally, processing through these deep parts of me, these complicated three-dimensional spaces and how they are interconnected, is important for my sanity and keeping me grounded. And journaling keeps coming up…recently helped someone with one that’s on Amazon now.

Also, somewhere in the mess of all of this, there are ideas, concepts, and challenges I have wanted to shout out into the world. Me holding my voice in, the deep one, hasn’t been good for me. It has meant saying other things or talking around a subject. It has meant feeling alone with these ideas and thoughts. Writing forces me to commit to words and put them together in such a way that others can understand at least what I’m trying to communicate.

Avoidance stacks and leads to more. Putting those things off we know we should do but don’t only plows the responsibility and the consequences of unaddressed further down time, scooping up with any of the damage caused by delusional avoidance. At one point, it felt like that was all my life was: a stack of nothing but the avoided and nothing underneath. My time and energy were spent resisting.

I have to write now. It’s a conviction – I’m doing something wrong if I’m not writing. And I’ve talked about blogging for years. After two and a half years of change, it’s time I just do it. It’s also not the only thing needs changing.