return of the Blogger

I thought it would be appropriate to introduce my wayward rambles on the eve of my 34th birthday, because reflection is an indulgence I savor often and what day is better than a birthday?

Blogging has never been my medium. I’ve tried - in many forms and with no success - to facilitate an online space for the random rambles of my mind, only to abandon each project with the same apathetic resolve I reserve for hoarding mismatched socks. Why? Because blogging used to be hip and I call myself a writer. The perpetual optimist, I cling to those goddamn socks just as I cling to the hope that this time, this blog, will be different. Why? Because I have a story to share. Because I’m ready to be vulnerable. Because I want to talk about trauma and the peace I found with sobriety. But mostly, because of yoga.

My last drink was September 14 of 2018. It was a night I barely remember and a date I’ll never forget. I had flirted with sobriety in the months prior and found limited success; my first thirty days were rewarded with a bottle of rose on a wild night with my best friend. We drank and celebrated with shameless audacity, finding just enough deviance to become an anecdote we giggle over today. I was proud of my four-week trial and believed I could manage moderation - because I wasn’t an alcoholic. Life after lie, hangover after hangover, I convinced myself I didn’t have a problem. Until the night I blacked out in Houston and spent the wee hours of September 14th stumbling my way through Midtown. I was drunk as fuck, searching for my BnB - which was across town in the Galleria. By the time I was sober enough to charge my phone in a Whole Foods, it was 8am and I had walked 7 miles in circles around the city. Alone. My come to Jesus moment was the look on my best friend’s face when I finally made it back to our apartment. It wasn’t her anger - which was justified - or her worry, which I understood - it was her disappointment that said everything her words never could. Yes, I had a problem. My relationship with alcohol was toxic, and a theme I would later discover within all my intimate relationships, especially the one with myself.

To be fair, does anyone really know themselves? Humans are beautiful fucking heathens. We are a painfully complex algorithm of systemic biology and emotional fuckery. We eat to grow. We react to survive. And we feel to experience the infinite insanity of our human condition. We are the culmination of experience; we are learned behavior and trauma patterns, personified. Self-sabotaging and mad with curiosity, we crave connection yet lack the awareness necessary to deeply connect. And what is consciousness without connection? We are obsessed with questioning our own existence - which cripples us in the larger quest of understanding the Self, ourselves. Most of us would rather self-medicate than self-actualize - myself included - and we wonder why happiness feels so elusive. Perhaps it’s our chase of the proverbial carrot - believing satisfaction can be found with things or people, or that genuine happiness exists on the exterior. We’ve established an intimate familiarity with feeling “less than” and feel shame for anything deemed “undesirable” - thus, we’ve come to fear our own shadow. I feared mine so much I chose to believe she wasn’t real - imagine my surprise when I watched her wave from my reflection in the bathroom mirror, after a long night of absolute stupidity on the streets of Houston, Texas. I had to ask, “who the fuck are you?” and get serious about who the fuck I was, because the shitty decisions I continued to make were no one’s fault but my own. My shadow was real and so was my abuse of alcohol. Later, through therapy, I would address emotional triggers and unpack childhood trauma - and while PTSD can leave a nasty imprint, it wasn’t my trauma drinking bourbon to blackout. It was me.

So, why yoga? Because like yoga, falling in love with yourself is a practice and one you must commit to every day. Yoga keeps my wild, sensitive soul in check - it’s my medium for self-inquiry and where I find grace. I am the female personification of an emotional hurricane, fully-equipped with mood swings, foot stomps, and fearless crying eyes. I’m not ashamed of my humanness. I feel what I feel and I feel a lot - especially now that I’m sober. A tart treat of sobriety is experiencing my raw edges of emotion without the numbing veil of alcohol. My presence is required to face and deal with my shit, which is why I write and why I hold yoga so close to my heart. My mat is the safest place in my world: it’s the refuge I seek when shit hurts or feels heavy - it’s where I meet myself, in every form, and parse understanding from the inescapable chaos of our human existence. It’s where I cry because it feels good and let go of what feels bad. It’s my place to connect deeply with my most authentic self; not thoughts or feelings but body and breath. Inhale to lift, exhale to ground. Feel the density of your bones anchoring you to the earth as you settle into the sweet sigh of shavasana.

My relationships have evolved in nearly-two years of sobriety; the most intimate of which, myself. I acknowledge my “undesirables” and reclaimed the power I allowed to cripple me. I have a shadow and an abusive history with alcohol - and neither truth defines me. Faults don’t make me “less than,” they make me human. Vulnerability is beautiful and by voicing our bravest truths, we cultivate shared experience. It only takes one person to pull from within, for others to feel safe saying, “hey, I have that too.”