Regretting the resolution

 One week into 2023 and I’m already regretting my resolution to write a blogpost every week. 

The thing is, writing is easy for me. I can churn out sentences that have elegance, flair, heart, humor, and hit close to home without raising my heart rate. Until, it’s something that’s going to be graded or reviewed or edited or published. Then the “it has to be perfect before anyone can read it” demon appears. And boy, is she loud. 

I initially wanted to write about my drinking problem and how I have very clumsily navigated addiction and recovery since I got sober on July 4, 2014. But the loud presence in my brain has taunted me all week with insults, fear, questions, and accusations. Accusations that I have no business writing about a drinking problem because I have never sought official help for it, I just quit. I never went to AA, rehab, counseling, sough professional help, and never got a diagnosed as an alcoholic. Except by myself. I diagnosed myself and gave up alcohol on the Fourth of July. A couple of years ago, I wrote a beautiful piece on that part of me and my identity and shared it on Facebook. The response I got was overwhelming. Mostly positive with messages of support and encouragement. Also, disbelief and people who argued with me and the label I put on myself. (Years later, they told me that my sharing made them feel like they were looking in a mirror and they were in denial then. But not anymore). And denial is a place where you can be stuck and no one questions or criticizes you. You’re there and you can bind yourself into a cocoon and a lair of lies and stay there. I know denial and I know how to live there comfortably. Ish. 

Denial feels to me like that the inside of the genie bottle on the old show from the 1960s, “I Dream of Jeannie.” It was a small living room with plush couches and jewel-toned throw pillows and it was neat and tidy and perfect and safe. And also, boring and an illusion. I sometimes wonder if I’m there with my journey in my writing. I often deflect compliments people give me about it and/or I get embarrassed and feel self-conscious and I dive into my own little self-constructed emotional and mental genie bottle. 

However, lately I’ve noticed the host (me) getting a little huffy with the guest (also me). They argue and arm wrestle and don’t ever resolve anything. So, the guest (me) packed her bags and left. And I insisted the host join me. At least for a couple of days. She likes it here, out in the open. On this blog that probably very few people will see and/or will read. That’s not a self-deprecating insult or a complaint. Just a reality. And it feels like a safe transition. A smart place to launch from. However that evolves and what it looks like. I climbed out of that web of binge drinking and arguing with myself that I had a drinking problem. I stopped arguing and conceded that I had a problem and the solution that made the most sense to me at the time was to quit. I didn’t know how or what I was doing, but I tried it anyway. Amazingly enough,  it worked and has continued working. The same could be true for my writing. I don’t know what I’m doing, how to beautify a blog, how to publish a book, but I’m going to do what makes the most sense to me right now. And that is to write. Right here, right now, from out in the open.