Today I am 360 days sober!
Some journey’s are best trekked alone. It is when you are free of external input and influence that you can really go far and be successful. Your intuition is not something to take for granted. For me, it’s always the first person that I take any guidance or advice from. I really believe that it’s the universes’ way of communicating information to us. Information and insight that is beyond what we can fathom in our reality. It’s a secret and forbidden truth and with the right tools we can bring it to life and remove it from our imaginations. I began to wonder, Was my journey of sobriety supposed to be the way it was? How much did my intuition guide me on my path? Could I really have done it any differently and been successful? This I will never know. Something I could ponder long and hard on and come up empty handed. As the one year mark approaches I can’t help stop and question if this is where I was supposed to end up. I should feel elated about my achievement, but there’s an emptiness where their should excitement.
My sobriety was quite a lonely journey. I have come to realize this as I am coming up on my 1 year. I now recognize that I lacked having support from other sober people in my life. These are people who would understand this milestone and what it means. This I take full responsibility for. I focused do much on myself and my own goals that I have now become out of touch and isolated form others struggling with sobriety like me. This is something I deeply regret. I have never attended an AA meeting. I never took the time to go out of my way to meet others like me. I sequestered myself from people who could provide amazing support for me on my journey. For what you ask? A sense of accomplishment and pride that I was able to do it all on my own with nobody’s help. I feel quite ashamed of myself in all honesty. I feel I have missed out on a lot because of that decision made in vain. But, I know that it was what I had to do to ensure that I was going to stay sober. I needed to put myself back together and build myself up before I reentered life in its full capacity. I would never be able to provide wonderful support and advice to others if I too was in need of this advice.
So, despite these mixed feelings about my approach to this journey, I stand behind everything that I have done. I was in such a state of despair and fragility that I had no choice to remove myself from many aspects of life. The biggest thing that I wanted to regain and incorporate was a never ending feeling of presence in my life. Without a strong personal presence in my life I would fall back down the rabbit hole. I needed to be self-assured and confident in my abilities before I pushed myself back into the overwhelming reality that we call life. That is something that I am celebrating. My self-awareness of not only myself but things around me has grown so much and I am stronger because of it. I am becoming more and more fearless each day. I feel invincible in this face of adversity. I feel indestructible as opposed to self-destructive. I feel proud to be who I am. I spend every day with a smile on face, and that simple fact is also the greatest change.
As I am now approaching a huge milestone on my journey, I want to make even more beneficial improvements. For starters, upon my graduation from school, which is also very soon, and settling into my post college job and career I am going to make more connections with other sober individuals. I want to really integrate myself within such a beautiful and incredibly brave group of people. I don’t want to be an outsider anymore. That also goes for reconnecting with my own people within the LGBTQIA community that I have been extremely distanced from. Even though my lifestyle differs from the average person in this community, especially around my age, I am confident that I can develop a group of friends who respect my sobriety and way of life. I just want to have a Kiki y’all! Anyways, connections, that’s what I need to make. It’s the next step in my sobriety journey and my intuition says so. So like I always have, I’m going with my gut and hoping to expand my circle. Fill it with people who are fabulous and beautiful.
Getting Back Out There,
Taylor James
Sobriety: My Fight, My Truth 