Starting Over is Cautiously Refreshing
There’s something strange — clean — about starting over. I vowed in January to make a clean break with the past, to leave behind the parts of my experience that I kept reinforcing with self-betrayal. In this fresh, new start I’ve found a burgeoning commitment to sobriety and to a calming, happy spirituality.
But there is so much silence in the spaces between activities that I didn’t expect. I wouldn’t even call it time to self-reflect. Per my clean break, there is no more time to overthink on the past and what I should have done, how I should have or shouldn’t have behaved.
Of course, it still happens, but I refuse to dwell on it when I am already changing for the better.
It feels minimalistic almost, the releasing of worry and the strain of the past. I keep expecting anxiety and guilt to crop up — I’m not too far away from the last panic attack that I had and it is surprising every time each trigger is met with a stunted response if one at all.
After years of deeply emotional responses, it is almost too good to be true.
Starting anew is certainly a godsend. I’m privileged to have a great support system that affords me the space and time to change my ways in peace and comfort. I’m hopeful that I’m doing right by the people in my support system by taking this time to truly prepare myself for the world.
A second chance. Often we ask ourselves, what would you do differently if you could go back and redo a period of time in your past? This question is no longer just a thought experiment for me, it is real life.
