Sometimes, I write to myself. Instead of picturing a specific audience, I just talk to myself. Or I write to who I used to be. Or I write for who I want to be. I write to remind myself how far I have come or where I want to go. I write to process the feelings and emotions that I am experiencing, because I spent so much of my life just avoiding all of it with alcohol. Escaping. Never feeling. Always hiding.
I write for the girl that missed out on so much, and I write to help her get it all back.
Sometimes I write and have the Kim in mind from twenty years ago, holding a space of compassion and sadness for the young girl in my mind, thinking about all the shit she would get herself into. Sometimes, I write with such vulnerability, hoping to someday come back and read this and remind myself to fight hard like this again.
I write to the Kim whose parents divorced when she was only eighteen and left her to figure things out, still only a child.
I try to go back and think about what she was experiencing back on 9/11, as the world imploded around her that beautiful fall day in Maine. Watching the towers fall on the tiny T.V. in her college dorm room, she was hardly able to see that her family was also crumbling around her back home in Connecticut.
I write to the girl who graduated from Colby and moved to New York City hoping to find a new life for herself, only to find more fear, sadness and anxiety in the loneliest city in the world.
I write to the Kim ten years ago who was spending her days alone with a newborn, finding comfort and support in the bottom of a wine bottle while her husband spent long, fifteen hour days at the office in downtown Boston.
I write to the Kim from last fall, who was on the brink of losing everything she ever loved to a substance that didn't love her back.
I also write to all my friends of the sober community that have reached out to me over the last several months. To all the people that I have met and connected with throughout this journey. We are not alone. We may head in different directions at times, but the paths we take are often paved with the same emotions. It is all hard. It is all scary. But it is worth it. Life on this side is so much sweeter. I write to you all today; we are together.
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