When You Are About To Relapse

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I need you to remember something: You made the right choice.

You’ve made reckless decisions; ones governed by your heart and emotions. The choices you’ve made thus far have not all been meticulously planned or calculated, but the one decision that mattered most, the one that would have broken you if chosen incorrectly, was the right one.

When you are about to relapse, remember this. Remember these words. Remember the progress you have made. Your thoughts no longer wander to them. Not everything reminds you of times spent together. You’re not 100 percent OK, but you’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s what matters most—you still have hope. You still see the light.

Heartbreak and loss stir up overwhelming feelings of devastation and hopelessness. We feel like we’re the only ones in pain, but it’s always helpful to remember that everyone was (and will be) broken at some point. And it is within that brokenness, that pain, where we will find our pleasure. We will find ourselves.

When we’re broken by the hands of another (or is it really by our own hands?), we shatter into a million pieces and we must learn to pick up ourselves at our own pace. For some, it’s a matter of days. For the less fortunate, it’s weeks, maybe months. For the even more unfortunate it can take years… or it might not even happen at all. But our first instinct is to clean house; to pick up each fragment of ourselves and carefully examine each one. We toss the parts about ourselves we can’t stand, and keep those parts we wish to cultivate. It’s a process, but a much-needed one. Our pain breaks us down, but it also creates the opportunity to rebuild; to truly learn how to self-sustain and self-love.

So when you are about to relapse, remember this: Take as much time as you need to overcome what seems like an impossible task: cleaning up, sorting and rearranging the fragile pieces of yourself. But during this process, your life is stagnant. And that’s OK, but don’t let it last too long or you’ll find that your days are spent locked in a haze. Life is beautiful—we are beautiful—because we choose to learn from our mistakes to better our lives. And ultimately, ourselves.