Raspberry Iced M

About seven months ago, achieving peace felt impossible.

It was impossible. Ingestion of a sedative was the only way to ensure sleep.

My mind replayed everything – every decision, every mistake, every relationship I had damaged. The realization that prolonged dishonesty – with myself and with others – had cost more than I ever anticipated – sent me spiraling.

I hated some things I had done. I hated the version of myself who had made those wretched choices. And for a while, it felt like my entire life had collapsed inward. And I just couldn’t bounce back.

In previous seasons of my life, I had a pattern. When things got uncomfortable, I moved. Ran. Sprinted. To a new friend group, or a new job, or a new distraction. I would deflect just long enough to quiet that discomfort and put a metaphorical “band-aid” on a much bigger wound, all the while convincing myself that recovery was the solution.

But doing all of that didn’t shift me forward. I had only shifted sideways, which became clear when the same issues and same bad decisions and same cycles repeated themselves throughout various stages of my life.

The root problem – me – came along every time.

So when that happened again seven months ago, I stayed. No running. No deflection. No band-aids.

I didn’t outrun the discomfort. I sat in it. Like a whole new definition of “feel your feelings.” What I didn’t realize in all the times I’ve said that phrase is that sometimes the act of feeling your feelings includes feelings of guilt. Shame. Remorse. Regret. Grief.

So I sat. And sat some more. I felt those darn feelings. Additionally, I found a therapist, too. I did the homework. I read the books. I researched patterns and behavior, not because I’m a scholar by any stretch, but because I could not acknowledge what I could not define.

And most importantly, I didn’t stop at understanding why I did those things or why I repeated those cycles. Yes, self-awareness is helpful. But self-awareness alone does not change anything.

Work does. Daily decisions do. Forward movement does. Climbing, pushing, digging. And it’s all done slowly and often painfully, and with more discipline that I ever thought I had.

It wasn’t the loss of relationships that induced my need to change, because I’d lost people before, and still repeated the same mistakes. But or the first time in my life, on the heels of all of those repeated cycles, I was legitimately fearful. I realized that I had become someone even I couldn’t tolerate anymore. And the idea that I might stay that way permanently – that I might continue to live inside a version of myself that I couldn’t stand – scared me more than any external consequence. I simply did not want to be who I was.

Peace, right now, looks nothing like I once imagined. As it turns out, I am just as incapable as the next person, and I couldn’t do a complete overhaul of my emotions, habits, or coping mechanisms overnight. So my day-to-day is not dramatic or exciting. My life is currently pretty boring. Quiet. Uneventful. Routine.

But it’s also calm. Stable.

And the decisions I make no longer send me into a spiral of self-loathing. I can finally rest. Even when considering all I’ve lost, I can actually lay down at night and rest. Not because everything in my life is perfect or because I know something crucial that I didn’t know before.

I’m just being honest. Honest with myself. Honest with others. Honest, even when the day doesn’t go exactly as planned. Honest, even when I don’t complete every task I assign myself. Honest, even when regrets from the past try to creep back into my headspace.

I know that I am still actively choosing the next right thing. And that matters. To me.

I’m not finished. I’m nowhere close to having everything resolved. I’m not even sure I’ve reached self-acceptance yet, much less self-love.

But I am doing the work. Consistently, imperfectly, and daily. That is a kind of integrity I didn’t have before, and it’s that integrity that keeps me in forward motion.

There are moments, still, when grief overtakes me. Those moments bring waves of guilt.

But something has shifted. And now, instead of running from that grief and guilt, I can sit for a little bit.

I can, and do, acknowledge what I have lost without abandoning the work that is slowly rebuilding who I am.

So peace, right now, is not happiness. It’s just steadiness. It’s the quiet confidence that comes from doing the right thing repeatedly – even when no ones sees it. It’s the ability to tolerate hard emotions without abandoning my goals. It’s knowing that I cannot undo the past, but I can choose not to add to it. And slowly, seven months of choosing the next right thing – one decision at a time – has recalibrated something in my spirit. And now, even while carrying the weight of what I’ve lost, I can still rest in myself.