Getting High on Recovery

Open yourself to love and yes, you will open yourself both life and it’s storms

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Your relationship with love will change your relationship with fear. Being loved will change how you feel anxiety, sadness, triggers, intimacy… or at least it will provide you with an experience that declares “I am more than this!” You are more than your moods and thoughts, no matter how they may press upon you to shrink back, lessen your confidence and not risk. You are loved.

Love will change you – if you are open. In a sense, love is like a kingdom, cold and full with shadows dark. Closed off, guarded.

And then a knock. Quiet at first, but persistent.

Knocking persists, curiosity builds. A door is opened.

Love greets – not with an invasion – but with an outstretched hand.

The kingdom is not instantly changed, but instead more willing to open doors, windows. Fresh air, light flows in. A new relationship with breath, with earth, with life, with each other grows. The kingdom expands as the world opens up – because the kingdom is open.

Opening doors, windows creates a pathway for love.

The kingdom on guard has sentries posted. Searching distance for threats. Doors locked, protected. Commerce is scrutinized. Guarded plans are made. Rigid rule.

But love knocks.

“Love has knocked, and I curious, have opened the door.”

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I wrote this the other day in my journal. I find myself at times reacting to unseen threats… afraid of hurt, of wound. But now I know that I have love as my companion.

My recovery has led me to love myself. I have learned to open to love, to seeing the world through an open door, instead of being on guard and on alert. I will be hurt – but that does not mean that love is in vain.

For when I open doors, I am changed. I grow. I see.

Love changes my relationship with anxiety, with fear, with depression, with food, with triggers, with the uncomfortable-unknowness.

Love opens the locked.

I never want to go back to my locked-closed-off-walled life. I want more and more. Of life. Of Love. Of color. Of experience. I never again want to live in a kingdom of fear.

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Truly, love heals and changes you. But then Monday’s happen. The day begins sun in face, hope in heart. But then then the mind. Who needs to say more? The mind chatters. You misinterpret what someone says, assume they mean ill, interpret another’s word or actions as judgement when it is innocent.

The mind runs wild.

Part of you goes unconscious. You leave work, mind wild. You drive, unaware. Somehow you arrive home. You are wild.

Tempted to drink, use, eat, stuff, rage, hate yourself.

So far from love?

Is it possible that love is still full and alive within you, despite the storms outside and within? Love frees you, not by making you impenetrable, but through blissful-happy-never-sad-moods. But love frees you by opening doors, windows. Open windows let in the light that melts along with storms dark and angry.

Love means that you are open to life as it is, not as you think it should be. Must be. Ought to be. Judged to be. Afraid to be.

Open to yourself. To life. To your work. To your experience. To those you love. As it is… rather than what your mind tells you.

Your relationship with love will change your relationship with fear. But it will not free you from ever feeling fear again. You will be triggered, but your relationship with your triggers will change.

Photo by Sofia Carvalho