Booze, Positive Vibes & BullSh*t

It's six o'clock in the morning. I was woken up by my four year old around 3:00, as is her new routine. So, here I am. I wasn't sure where to start on this platform as I haven't blogged in about a year. My social media consists of short, thoughtful posts. Yet, long form has eluded me for some time. Considering this is my first post, I'll begin with self observation.

Usually on mornings like this, I find myself sitting in my own recollections of my past. Often times none of it is positive. It seems that no matter how hard you work at the illusion of "Love and Light", deep inside there are still those voices screaming to the surface. For me, it is trauma. It could be a memory of a harsh word spoken in the 1990s. Some stupid, seemingly simple shit. Yet, it's still trauma.

At roughly four decades into this life, things are good for me. I'm a low level "Influencer" on The Gram. I have a hot husband who works hard so I can stand on my head and take pictures. I have beautiful children. We are getting ready to buy our first home after four years of renting a subpar piece of shit on a nice property. Yet, still in the quiet of my own experienced mind, there is still trauma. That trauma led me to several years of alcoholism and poor choices. When I met my husband, I was finally in a good place, sort of. A year into our marriage, I fell back into my own toxic and addictive behaviors. Now, finally sober and comfortable with it, I have figured out the secret (for me) to handling my own demons.

In the almost 18 years I have been teaching and practicing Yoga, I wrapped myself into this idea that I had to be positive all the time. That faking it until you make it would somehow, eventually turn me into a guru of peace and meditation. I'm here to tell you, that is all bullshit. My practice of forced self love and self awareness created a petri dish of emotions, just waiting to implode. It resulted in me drinking to create a false happiness. A false sense of calm. The drinking quickly exacerbated my anxiety. This, in turn, created more and more frequent emotional outbursts and mental break downs. "Positive Vibes Only" turned me into a monster and nearly destroyed my marriage.

It wasn't until I dropped the bottle that I was able to walk into a room full of my own traumatic past and face it. And in doing so, I discovered that it is OK to get angry. It is OK to have a shitty day. It is OK to wake up and think "Wow, I really look like a dogs ass today". What isn't OK, is having those unavoidable feelings and lying to yourself to create an image for thousands of strangers who don't know you. Fighting to fabricate positive emotion hurts way more, as I discovered the hard way, than sucking it up and feeling through it.

There is a something amazing in raw, real emotions. Recalling terrible moments in my life, feeling that, reliving that and then moving on. That is what keeps me real. That is what keeps me sober. Taking my bad days at face value and allowing myself to have moments of pain or sadness resolves itself much faster than when I kept those feelings suppressed. Especially when I poured some wine on top of them. It hurts less because the moments are usually fleeting. They come, I conquer and then they go away. Instead of living in anticipation of my past, I welcome it's fucking ugly self. I sit with it a while like an annoying neighbor who likes to stop by and bitch about their problems. Then, I show it to the door. Knowing it will return eventually, only next time will be a little easier.