“Recovery will be amazing! You’ll feel so free and happy! You’ll love your life!”

Uh sorry but I call BULL CRAP. Recovery sucks. It’s really freaking hard. You want to give up every single second of every single day. You realize why you started purging/starving/cutting/drinking in the first place and it seems like a darn good idea because right now life is hard and you’re feeling feelings that you haven’t had to feel in years. Because the addiction helped you numb them out. And you crave that numbness. But then you remember all the terrible things that followed it. The loneliness, the depression, the hopelessness, the hospitalizations. And you know you can’t go back.

So what do you do? You just keep doing everything you hate. If you hate it, its probably exactly what you need. I hate getting out of bed in the morning, but I do it anyways. I hate going to work/school, but I do it anyways. I hate talking to people, but I do it anyways. I hate feeling my feelings, but I feel them anyways because, deep down, I know that’s the only way to freedom. I know that the only way to love our lives is to do the very things we hate because those are the things that heal us. The things that bring us back to the real world. And ya know what? Sometimes the real world sucks. And sometimes we don’t want to be a part of it. But other times the real world is beautiful and compassionate and full of kindness and overcoming. As my soul sister Glennon Doyle Melton says, life is “brutiful.” It’s brutal. But its also beautiful. So in order to enjoy the beauty, we must also endure the brutal parts of this life we’ve been blessed with. Or cursed with, depends who you ask. Anyways, after a while, you wont hate these things. Maybe, one day you’ll crawl out of bed, sleepy, but excited to begin the day. Maybe you’ll love your job. Or maybe you’ll hate it. But maybe you’ll meet people there who make you happy, people who grow your soul. And if not, you can find other people. There are so many people! People like you and people like me who are struggling. We are all battling something and the fact that we are here today, the fact that I’m writing this and you’re reading it means we are winning. Yes, winning. Even when everything sucks and you hate your life, you’re still living it and that’s the bravest thing we can ever do.

So if you hate your life, keep living it and I promise, eventually, you’ll hate it less.

And maybe, one day, you’ll love it.