I realised something last night, when I was on my way to perform with my choir at a charity ball. While I was getting ready to go out my six year old daughter, who has just joined the children’s branch of my choir, was quizzing me about it and she referred to me as a ‘singer’.
And as I drove to the gig I was pondering this and suddenly thought ‘fuck me, I am a singer’. Which is something which would have been pretty high on my wish list if I’d happened across a handy genie lamp for pretty much my whole life. I mean, let’s be real, I’m a singer in a community choir. I doubt I’ll be asked to sing a solo anytime soon. I am not able to hold a room spellbound with just my voice like my lovely friend Chrissy. But, nevertheless, as someone who regularly performs by singing, I am still a singer. And I love it. It’s enough.
Then I got to thinking about what else I am. I am a writer. An actual writer. Which is something else that would have been way up there on my genie lamp wish list. I have two daughters who were so longed for – I am a mother, I have a family. I am studying psychology. I am (reasonably, mostly) accepting of my body. And I am a person who is in control of my relationship with alcohol.
These are all things that I have wanted to achieve for pretty much my whole life. So, in other words, I’m looking a lot like someone who is making all her most dearly held dreams come true these days. And I didn’t even realise.
I didn’t realise because none of it looks like I thought it would.
Like with the singing, genie-lamp me would not have wished to be a self-published author of a self-help guide for people wanting to quit drinking. She probably would have wanted to be a Booker prize winning novelist, or the next JK Rowling or Helen Fielding. Because you can be grandiose when you have an imaginary genie lamp. But, as it turns out, my way of being a writer is just perfect for me. And so much more than enough.
The other stuff doesn’t look like I thought it would either. Due to a hefty streak of intellectual snobbery in my nature, when I thought of studying I always thought of degrees, masters, PhDs. I would not have thought that counselling training at my local college would ever be enough. But it is. So much more than enough.
My family doesn’t look like I thought it would either. It’s my wedding anniversary on Tuesday. Eight years that we didn’t quite make it to. But we have our girls. And between us, with a lot of support from grandparents at the moment, we are working out the new normal for our changed family. And it’s the right thing for us. And even as a single mum I quite simply don’t have the words to say how enough my girls are. How enough they will always be.
I’m also teetering on the edge of truly healing my relationship with food, which is something else I’ve struggled with my whole life. And the only way I’ve been able to do this is by letting go of dieting. Letting go of attempting to control my weight and focusing on valuing myself enough to not continually assault my body with a load of crap. And I never dreamed I could be in a place of approaching acceptance of my body at any size, and certainly not at the size I currently am. But I am.
I guess what I’m trying to say with this blog is that things never look like we think they will, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve failed, or that we’ve not achieved everything we ever wanted. We just need to let go of the process. Accept that we can’t control the details.
My current relationship with alcohol doesn’t look like anything genie-lamp me would have wished for in a million years. In fact she would probably have fervently wished to avoid ‘having to’ stop drinking, her most dreaded worst case scenario. My wish list version of being in control of my relationship with alcohol looked like naturally reining in my drinking, with no conscious effort on my part, and having a nice, socially acceptable, middle class wine habit. And accepting that this was never going to happen was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
But here I sit, 1009 days sober (I find I’m mentioning my day count a lot at the moment, just loving those quadruple figures!). Entirely in control of, and happy about my relationship with alcohol. Which is to say that I finally realised what a horrible toxic relationship it was, always has been. And booted it out of my one precious life forever. And that is so much more than enough it’s just ridiculous. It’s a gift I could never have hoped for, a watershed in my life I will always be grateful for.
So, if things in your life don’t look quite the way you expected them to, just let go of the process. If you’re not where you thought you’d be by one month, six months, a year or five years sober, just let go of the process. Things never look like we think they will and if you keep on expecting them to you might be missing out on all the wonderful things you do have. All the amazing things that you already are.
Maybe you just didn’t pick up a drink today. Maybe you did but forgave yourself and promised yourself you’d never give up trying to beat this thing.
Maybe that’s enough.
