1Year & 9 Months

Today is one year and nine months.

As time passes, I am coming to terms with the fact that my sobriety means something to me, and that may be enough. It is not something everyone else thinks about, remembers, or feels the need to acknowledge. And that's fine. I am okay with this being a personal milestone. It is something I hold myself accountable to, and something I take the time to celebrate in my own way.

Usually, that involves food.

Today, I treated myself to a brisket sandwich. It was awesome. And then there was the banana pudding afterward. Also awesome.

As I think about these milestones, I find myself reflecting on what sobriety has come to mean beyond simply not drinking. I am learning not to take everything so seriously. I am learning not to let unnecessary emotional weight take over my experiences or determine how I feel about myself.

That is something new, and it is rather refreshing.

Some of that unwanted weight has come from trying to maintain connections with people who do not seem particularly interested in maintaining them with me. Acquaintances, old friends, and even blood relatives. I have spent a lot of time trying to create or preserve relationships, hoping that people would take an interest in getting to know me, participate in my life, or make an effort to maintain some kind of connection.

I am learning to recognize when that interest isn't there.

And I am learning to accept it.

Some relationships have limits. Some offer very little beyond the fact that we know each other or happen to be related. I can acknowledge that without needing to turn it into a conflict. I do not have to keep investing energy in relationships that are not being reciprocated.

I have decided to let go of some of those expectations.

That does not mean the doors are permanently closed. I do not hate anyone. I am not looking to block people, hold grudges, or make a point of showing someone what they have lost. I am not interested in carrying around the anger of feeling unwanted or overlooked.

It really doesn't matter as much as I once thought it did.

And even hearing myself say that out loud, I recognize how much weight I am no longer carrying.

The emotions attached to some of these relationships are slowly fading. I am not spending as much time wondering why someone doesn't reach out, why they don't take an interest, or what I could do differently to make the connection work.

Sometimes people simply do not want the same relationship that we do.

That is disappointing, but it does not have to become a personal indictment.

I used to be much quicker to anger. I could lose my temper at the drop of a hat and implode.

Some people experienced that side of me, and they got an explosion of raw emotion. I held on to things. I remembered conflicts as though they had happened yesterday, even when they belonged to a completely different chapter of my life.

I am working on that.

I am learning to put down some of the expectations I have placed on myself. The expectations about who I should be, how I should behave, what I should tolerate, and how I should respond when things don't go the way I hoped.

Some of those expectations have kept me tied to old versions of myself. I have carried conflicts

forward long after the circumstances changed. I have revisited conversations, held on to disappointments, and found myself trying to resolve things that happened a lifetime ago.

At some point, I have to recognize that those chapters are over.

That does not mean pretending nothing happened. It means deciding how much of my present I want to give to something that belongs to my past.

Sobriety has given me an opportunity to make different choices. I have had to learn how to process my emotions, recognize my behaviour, and take responsibility for the way I respond to the world around me. I have had to reconsider some of the ideas I held about myself and let go of parts of my identity that no longer serve me.

It is not perfect. I am not perfect. And that, in itself, is another thing I am learning to accept.

I can only do my best.

I can try to be kind. I can be honest. I can put the teachings I have received from my elders into practice. I can take responsibility for my actions and make choices that reflect the kind of person I want to be.

But none of those things can be measured by how other people respond to me.

The teachings matter because of how I live them. My sobriety matters because of the choices I make every day. My milestones matter because I know what it took to reach them.

Other people do not have to remember, acknowledge, or understand any of it.

And there is something freeing about that realization.

I am not waiting for someone to celebrate my progress. I am not waiting for someone to recognize that I have changed. I am not trying to convince people that I am worth getting to know or that I deserve a place in their lives.

I am learning to give myself that recognition.

One year and nine months.

A brisket sandwich. Banana pudding. A little reflection. A few things I am still working through, and a lot of things I am no longer carrying.

I find myself breathing in deeply and exhaling even deeper.

There is less anger. Less expectation. Less need to explain myself or resolve every loose end.

I still have work to do. I still have things to learn, relationships to reconsider, and parts of myself to understand. But I am not carrying everything with the same intensity I once did.

And today, that feels like progress.

Maybe that is another part of sobriety for me. Not just choosing to live differently, but learning to experience life without adding unnecessary weight to everything.

I can celebrate myself. I can enjoy my food. I can let people be who they are, and I can allow relationships to be what they are, rather than what I wish they would become.

I don't need everyone to understand what this day means.

I know what it means.

And that is enough.