Never forget--this disease wants us DEAD. It is like a splinter in the brain, constantly filling our minds with thoughts that aren't true. It tells us that we're worthless. It tells us that we don't deserve for good things to happen in our lives. It tells us that we don't deserve to love and be loved.
I am a suicide survivor. I have one hospitalization that prevented me from killing myself, one attempt that didn't succeed, and a third time when I was interrupted before I could go through with what I was planning. But those were only peaks (or perhaps valleys) over nearly two decades of wanting to die. I remember not wanting to go to sleep each night because I knew I'd just have to wake up in the morning and do it all all over again.
This disease tells us that we don't deserve to be good to ourselves, that we shouldn't take care of ourselves because our self isn't worth taking care of. It's wrong.
The disease plays tricks on us, sometimes every single waking second. It tells us lies and distortions, all designed to keep us feeling like shit. To try and make us unhappy. And even those few of us who manage to get and stay clean will always have that nag in the back of our mind saying we are reprehensible, selfish, evil, for being good to us. That we are a horrible, wretched, individual for having the audacity to think that we are loved and deserve to be treated with love.
How we are made, how we have been created, is enough. Who we are, just as we are, is enough. We don’t have to DO anything. We don't have to BE anything other than who we are as we are. The disease tells us different. It tells us we have to do something to earn love. It tells us there must be a sick exchange, that if we do this or say that, or think this, or act some other way than is honestly ourselves, that only THEN will we be loved. It isn't true. If we be ourselves as we truly are, if we demand that others in our lives treat us lovingly, it WILL happen.
Maybe we were raised around people who didn't love and accept us for who we are. I know I was. Maybe we learned somewhere along the way that being ourselves isn't acceptable or is even BAD and WRONG. It isn't. That's just the disease fucking with us. We don’t have to sacrifice ourselves. We don't have to pretend to be someone different. We don't have to be miserable. We do deserve to be happy and healthy.
Other people in our lives, especially those in the grips of this illness, don't want us to be. They want us to be miserable too, for no other reason than because they themselves are and think that how they live is how everyone lives or should live. That isn't true either. And we don't help others by playing into that bullshit. Making ourselves miserable for someone else only keeps them miserable, too.
With Recovery, we set boundaries for ourselves. We begin to change, begin to live our lives being who we truly are. There will always be those who don't like it and won't tolerate it and will try with their last spiteful breath to tear us down. Don't let them.
No one can tear you down without your permission. No one can make you feel miserable without your allowing them to. So don't allow it. Demand of yourself that you be loved. Demand it down through to the core of your being. Know it, deep inside.
Who you are is enough. You really are worth it. Any time the disease tries to tell you that you aren't, it is lying.
