A New Look For A New Focus

It's taken me over 20 years to get here.

To a place, The place, where I no longer define myself by my marriage to an alcoholic.

For as long as I can remember, his drinking was my identity.

I carried it like a secret scarlet letter wherever I went and with whomever I met.

"Are you married? "Yes." (To an alcoholic.)

"What does your husband do?" "He's an engineer." (And an alcoholic.)

"How long have you been married?"

"X years." (To an alcoholic.)

It was all I thought about everyday.

Until it became all I SAW myself as everyday.

I hated being married to an alcoholic down to every atom of every cell of my being.

It destroyed me, this marriage to an alcoholic.

It mad me angry and volatile, hostile and cruel.

It almost broke me.

Almost.

I came to hate (HATE!) my fucking life.

I couldn't believe where my life had landed.

I couldn't believe who I had become.

There were days when I felt like my soul was completely black. Like I was living from a place of utter darkness.

But somewhere, even if just the tiniest sliver, some light must have been getting in because I never gave up.

Even when I thought I had given up, I hadn't.

I kept reading and watching (YouTube, POD casts) writing and searching for any way out of the darkness.

It's been a slow process, that's for sure, but then I am not sure you can rush the process of growth and transformation, self-discovery and awareness.

What I finally know (finally!) is it doesn't matter if your life is off-track because of an alcoholic spouse or toxic family of origin or crappy job with an abusive boss. It doesn't matter what is CAUSING your life to falter because regardless, you are still RESPONSIBLE for fixing it.

I spent so many hours upon hours thinking "if only I wasn't married to an alcoholic" and that is probably 100% true. If only I wasn't married to an alcoholic, my life would be so different. I would be so different.

But I AM married to an alcoholic. (For now.)

And so, that is really of no concern. (Did I really just say being married to an alcoholic is of "no concern?")

Yes, it's of no concern in that regardless of him, I need to take back control of my life from my own mind as well as from the physical realities (i.e. alcoholic marriage) of my life right now.

I didn't intent this when I sat down to change up the appearance of the blog but as I was browsing the different images, I realized that I wanted an image of a woman in motion where as the first image I used when I originally designed the blog was that of a pensive woman sitting on a bed, looking out a window. I love that image and I see now, it reflected where I was at the start of this, where I needed to be: pensive and introspective.

And now, it seems I "knew" I was in a different place before I consciously knew because I just intuitively sought out a very different image.

I thought I needed to get physically free from my marriage, from his drinking in order to free my soul.

But it never works like that.

No matter what shackles bind you.

You need to free you soul first.

And then the physical freedom will easily and naturally follow.