The Difference of a Year

*Content Warning: talk of addiction, loss*

Today, April 9, 2021, marks one year.

One year since my grandmother died. One year since I relapsed. One year clean. One year of changes and progress and celebrations and loss and countless other events. One year of difference.

The person I am today is much different than the one I was a year ago. If you looked at an image of me then to now, you can even see some of the changes, but most of them aren’t visible in a side-by-side image.

On the other hand, even with a lot of differences, there are similarities as well, or even things that have relatively stayed the same. For instance, both this time last year as well as now, I was going through a lot of massive changes.

My snake died. A week and a half later, my grandmother passed. I was working the front lines in healthcare during the pandemic as Michigan was one of the leading states in cases, hospitalizations, and covid-related deaths. My lease ended, but I was waiting for an update (and sitting in limbo due to the health crisis) on my abroad program acceptance, and couldn’t resign or move until I knew I wasn’t leaving the US. We were having policy updates almost daily at work as the situation continued to progress and new information came available. I got engaged. I considered writing a will, just in case, but didn’t have the time or means to go through with it. And, with all of this and more, I just couldn’t handle it.

I’ve never been good with change. I’ve never been good with things that change that I have no control over. If I can’t fix the situation to recreate equilibrium, or at least make it better, I panic. I quite literally cannot handle it. Growing up, my way of dealing with all types of change and stressors were bad coping skills, that turned into learned habits, that became addiction. I had been working on cleaning myself up, and thought I had been doing pretty well. But, when you add in all those huge events, the new and constant trauma, the stress, the big and unexpected changes, and the utter lack of any control, I just… broke down.

April 10, 2021 would have been 2 years, 6 months clean. However, with everything that had been happening, and all the stress and high emotions I was feeling, adding the loss of my grandmother to that list wasn’t just the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was more like the asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs, or the like that asteroid fell at millions of miles an hour onto that camel, and completely obliterated it rather than merely breaking it’s spine. My natural instinct took over to protect me, and I relapsed. I took control over the one thing that was within my realm of decision making, and instead of making the choice to continue the fight, I chose to push all my emotions, thoughts, and worries aside for a moment of mental peace.

Of course, then I had to deal with the backlash. For every choice and action, there are consequences, and this was no different. This choice didn’t fix anything, give me any sort of control over any of the situations at hand. Instead, it meant I had to fight even harder just to return to recovery, to turn to my toolbox instead of throwing in the towel. Not to mention, I’d lost all that Time. Not that it was wasted, or that I was starting over, but it still meant something. (For more information on the toolbox and Time references, read Recovery is Anything But)

Now, a year later, I am in a similar situation. Not where I have relapsed, and not where I am going through the same exact circumstances, but similar in the way of overwhelming change and lack of control.

My contract was cut short as my country of residence entered a third lockdown. I am no longer working until I return back to the US. I have literally no semblance of a routine or schedule to keep. I’m not visiting my aunt and uncle in Germany as planned (lockdowns, travel restrictions, you name it, it’s a reason). One of my only two friends in the program, and the only one I’ve really been able to see during daily life, returned back to their country of origin since we are no longer needed. An uncle who I had wanted to know and never felt I had the opportunity to, died. As did the woman/family friend who helped take care of me through elementary and middle school. I have to figure out how to return home when the world is in chaos. This means I’ll have to leave the life I have here, and go from a relaxed schedule back to a massively overworked and stressful one. Not only is everything around me already changing, but I have to anticipate huge, upcoming changes that I can’t even fathom as they are different conditions than the ones I left In October.

Needless to say, with my history of not being able to handle change, I am not taking this well. To say I haven’t extensively thought about relapsing would be an utter lie. But, thoughts and intentions are different. While I am plagued with these thoughts, these desires, these urges and cravings to give into the only thing I know to temporarily relieve the immediate pressure, I have no intention of doing so. That's not to say I'm not still at risk, but I am aware of the situation and the possibilities, and am actively working to ensure that it doesn't happen.

In fact, over this last year clean, I’ve grown far more in my recovery than I have in the five or six years prior. I’ve added several tools to my toolbox, added several support lines, discovered warning signs and triggers, and come to terms with more of my reality. I’ve been dealing with emotions more, letting myself feel and experience the waves that humans are meant to. And, until the last week, when all of these massive changes flooded my life, I’ve been happier than I’ve ever been. Not only am I feeling negative emotions more effectively, but I’m feeling positive ones, period. This is something I’ve never been able to manage before.

I’ve also come more into terms with myself as a whole. While I made the connection and began coming out as trans/nonbinary in the spring of 2019, I didn’t start to really feel comfortable with myself until about a year in. This put me in 2020, and continued to evolve as I branched out and lived in another country. Which, is another huge accomplishment in itself. I made my dreams come to life in this last year, as October 29, 2020, I landed in the country that I’ve been working endlessly towards for nine long years.

A lot of the larger changes occurred after this. Since my arrival here, I’ve lost ~30lbs (~13.5kg). I’ve been eating healthier, exercising more, have been more relaxed, have been putting a lot of focus on my recovery, and just overall working on myself. I’ve seen a lot of new places, hiked up mountain trails, seen castles, walked monk paths, strolled along rivers, taught hundreds of students, and gained confidence and trust in myself that I never thought was possible. I’ve done countless things that I have only ever dreamed of, and not once imagined they were ever possible. On the outside, I may look very similar to the person I was a year ago today, but everything now is different. I’m not that person anymore.

Now, that’s not to say that everything has been hunky dory.

After my grandmother died, and I relapsed, there was a lot that I just… didn’t process. I’ve lost so many people in my life that it seems like I move on and accept things rather quickly, but the truth is that I just push it all away. If I can’t deal with an emotion, I don’t. Plain and simple. If that feeling is too much to handle, I shove it away saying that I don’t have the time, energy, capacity, and I’ll get to it when I do.

The thing is, I never do. Those feelings and unresolved instances just sit there in a locked corner of my brain, festering, waiting for a change to break free. You can’t process these things if you ignore them. Similarly, you can’t heal a wound if you don’t treat an infection. It will continue to worsen over time, no matter how much you push the pain away or brush the redness and heat off as something minor. You have to address the problem, or it’ll never go away.

This is something that I’ve really been working on in my recovery, and in general. If you asked me a year ago if I ever thought that I would spend more than five minutes crying before pushing away all thoughts and feelings and trying to keep busy, I would have laughed in your face long and hard before giving a resounding no.

At this point, though, I can honestly say that I already have, and it wasn’t that long ago. Actually, it was very recently, and it’s something I am proud to admit. So proud, in fact, that I put it on my instagram and claimed those Moments of Growth (yes, plural even!), where you can clearly tell that I had been sobbing my heart out.

But, in those following months after my grandmother passed, I threw myself into work. Even though work was hell, with constant cleanings, endless phone calls, patients at every window and nothing was going right, I worked as much overtime as my body could handle. If I was staying so busy I couldn’t think, well, I couldn’t think about any of the stuff that was tearing me apart. I couldn’t handle dealing, so I made sure my surroundings meant I didn’t have to. I took the one thing I had control over, beyond my addiction, and used it to do what I thought I needed.

What I really needed, was to face those emotions, not lock them out. I’m still struggling with it, but I’m getting better at it anyway. You saw the pictures. You saw I cried. I’m getting there, I promise.

But, without any sort of outlet for these things I was desperately trying to push away, I ended up lashing out at the people around me. My coworkers, most of whom I love very much, ended up taking the brunt of my attitude, my glares, the little things that screamed I wasn’t okay.

I didn’t intend for any of that to happen. In a lot of those cases, the things I said or did, I didn’t even realize I had a harsh tone, or was being overly snippy. More often than not, I thought I was just moving fast, and thought I had a pretty good handle on my outward behavior. That… was not the case. In the slightest. I think by the end of the summer, my coworkers were breathing sighs of relief that I would be leaving the country soon- so they didn’t have to deal with my unknowingly unchecked attitude for much longer.

There was actually one instance where my boss asked me specifically when my next day off was, and forbade me from picking up a shift no matter how much someone asked me to come in. I had worked 18 days in a row at that point, and apparently I was getting… very very short with everyone around me. She knew I physically needed a break, even though I, until that moment, did not realize I had any sort of issue.

At this moment, I couldn’t pretend my wound wasn’t infected anymore. I had to acknowledge the demons I had been ignoring.

It was then when I made the decision to focus more on the longer term aspects of my recovery, and building a life worth living- a life I could be proud of and not just survive in. I’d been passively working on it before, in never giving up on my dream, but that was really the extent of it. Now, I’m giving myself time to work on my hobbies (like writing), I’m making time to hang out with my friends (covid restrictions and safety permitting), I’m investing in new skills and experiences, and making memories. I’m trying to do things I want for myself, and not put as much focus on other’s opinions of my decisions. If I want to cut my hair a certain way, or wear this type of clothing, goshdangit, I can and I will. I’m standing up for myself, reiterating my pronouns, making space for me instead of shying away from my own existence.

Overall, I am healing.

And holy hell, what a difference a year makes.

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