On flaws and forgiving ourselves..

By crickey I am flawed. I am so deeply flawed it is not funny. I know I’m a brave and amazing sober warrior (as are many of you!!) but in other areas of my life I try and fail all the time.

I promise myself I’m not going to eat sugar and then I furtively eat cooking chocolate late at night.

I tell myself I’m going to step up my exercise regime by doing longer dog walks and and then I do the short ones because I just want to get it over with.

I tell myself I’m going to sit and meditate every day for 5 minutes then I just don’t.

I tell myself I’m going to pull back on my Reality TV watching and then I think I can’t possibly miss the latest instalment of Dance Moms/Flipping Out/Keeping Up With The Kardashians/The Block.

I can be judgemental and jealous. I can be grumpy and snippy. I can be sloppy. I can be dumb. I can be vain and I can be insecure.

Of course I can be lots and lots of good things too.. but these are the sorts of flaws that I have, and believe me when I say the sense of failure I feel when I do these things is acute.

There’s only one way that I’ve learned I can cope with this messy range of human experiences that I now experience so acutely in sobriety. And that is to forgive myself. Over and over and over.

I forgive myself for being flawed, piggy, moody, lazy, less-than-perfect. I forgive myself and I tell myself that everyone does and experiences these things. I forgive myself, I pick myself up again and I keep going without it letting me drag me down permanently.

In my boozing days I would experience these flawed feelings and let them drag me down, down, down. I’d let myself  wallow in an extended pit of low self-worth. It could be pretty crippling.

But the longer I am sober the more I have come to accept that of course I am flawed, I am human! And the best thing I can do is pick myself up after every ‘fail’ and keep on going. It’s the only way to keep on going – with my self-worth maintained somewhat.

NONE of us are worthless pieces of shit. NONE of us are fatally flawed. NONE of us deserve to feel miserable and low consistently because of our normal ‘failings’.

Least of all because of self-imposed lofty ideals we struggle to maintain (message to self: stop imposing lofty ideals).

Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself over and over and over. And then forgive yourself again. In two weeks time forgive yourself. Next month forgive yourself. In five years time forgive yourself. I know I will.

The more I do this, the stronger I feel. With forgiveness comes an acceptance and, most importantly, a warmth and understanding. And sending those messages inwards is the most powerful thing we can do.

Love, Mrs D xxx