This one isn’t going to be rainbows and mantras, but I guess it’s only fair to write about the hard days right beside the victories, and also, no one likes a faker.

*P.S. I started this last week when it was 80*, now it is 36* and I want to punch Mother Nature in her fat face. 

Today was just, well it was just so hard. We get ourselves all ready, we meditate, we exercise, we drink our water and put on our fancy clothes and we feel prepared. Then one tiny insignificant thing happens and it feels like everything is caving in. Today I ate lunch with a friend, it was sunny and warm. We sat on the patio and caught up for almost two hours, I ate a shrimp taco with too much sauce and we laughed about dumb adult stuff like the price of store-bought ground beef vs paying for a butchered cow. She had to leave earlier than me so I walked down to a store where they were having a trunk show and passing out champagne. It was filled with women shopping and laughing holding their mini cup of champagne and it hit me so hard. I’m the broken one. And then I sat in my car and cried. I wasn’t crying for the alcohol, I was crying because being different hurts sometimes. I was crying for my story because this work is hard. I was crying because I don’t want to feel alone. I was crying because now I started this stupid blog and people probably feel weird around me. I was crying because some days it is exhausting to be strong.

Middle school me wants to fit in. I want to have the right neon socks tucked into my white Keds, all the hairspray in Oklahoma concentrated only on my bangs, and a side pony rockin’ a scrunchie. Instead, I am kind of the weird kid picking their nose in the corner. I can mom talk myself and say all the right things, “You weren’t made to fit in!”, “Different is cool!”, “Be an original, not a copy!”, “You are a snowflake!” but today, I am just going to let myself feel lonely. I’ll be booger kid.

Doing this work, whether it is sobriety or something else for you, is not always magical. It does not always feel special. There are a lot of days that I want to just be done. But I take a break, I sit in my car and cry and I remember the secret we don’t understand when we are in middle school… booger kid grows up. And when booger kid grows up, he’s got money and abs. 🙌