I didn’t plan to be here again. 

That’s the part I keep circling back to – the quiet confidence I had this time felt different, that I had it under control – or at least was well on my way to. And then something shifted, or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was always there, just waiting. 

I replasped.

Hard enough to make my heart sink as I write this. And even typing that feels heavier than I expected, like the words themselves carry shame I haven’t figured out how to put down yet. 

Anyone who knows me and knows my journey of the past 7 or so years of trying to get sober, of trying to figure out how to live sober, knows that relapse is not unfamiliar to me. In fact, it’s been more consistent than my actual sobriety. That’s a hard truth to have to swallow and come to terms with. Yet, it hasn’t stopped me most times from going back. 

In fact, a lot of times, I think it’s what drives me back. The shame of it all. 

It feels like it escalated so quickly – like one moment I was steady and the next I was right back in it, full force. Addiction raging and suddenly I couldn’t see the way out. But if I’m being honest, I don’t know if that’s true. I think I want it to be sudden because sudden feels easier to forgive. 

If it “just happened”, then I don’t have to look too closely at everything that came before it. But there were signs, weren’t there? Subtle shifts in my thinking, in the quiet justifications, the moments I chose not to pause and check in with myself or anyone else. 

I keep asking how I got here again, like it’s a mystery, but part of me knows it wasn’t one step – it was a series of small ones I didn’t fully notice, or maybe didn’t want to acknowledge. 

I think the hardest part to admit is that it doesn’t feel like I just slipped- it feels like I’ve been slowly giving up on myself for awhile now. Little ways, quiet ways, choosing what’s easy over what’s right, telling myself I’d try harder tomorrow.

And now it feels like that’s caught up to me, like the people around me can see it too, and maybe they’re starting to give up in their own ways. And I can’t say that I blame them. 

That’s what hurts the most I think – that this doesn’t just live inside me. It spills out onto everyone who cares about me, and somehow I feel like I’m the one causing the damage while also being the one stuck in it. 

I feel alone in a way that’s hard to explain, like even when people are there – reaching out, trying to support me – I’m separate from them, watching myself disappoint them in real time. And I want it to get better so badly, I want to feel different, to be different – but the work it takes to actually change feels so overwhelming that I don’t even know where to start. (Or start over again, I should say.) 

And that’s the trap isn’t it? Because picking up a drink cuts through all of that for a few minutes. It softens the edges, quiets the noise, makes everything feel manageable – until it doesn’t. Until those few minutes get shorter and shorter, and I’m left chasing something that barely even works anymore. Something that not only doesn’t work, but is intent on destroying my life. 

Even though it doesn’t feel like there’s hope right now, I know – somewhere deeper than my emotions – that there is. Because God has never been dependent on how I feel. He isn’t a God of fleeting comfort or temporary relief; He’s a God of promise. 

And I’ve lived that before. I’ve walked through darker, heavier seasons than this and somehow, every single time, He’s been steady when I wasn’t. Faithful when I drifted. Present even when I couldn’t feel Him at all. So I know He’ll do it again – I just don’t know how to hold on in the meantime, and that’s the part that feels almost unbearable. 

Maybe that’s where surrender comes in. Not the kind that feels peaceful or resolved, but the kind that costs everything. 

Letting go of the person I thought I loved. Letting go of the life I was trying so hard to build and control. Letting go of the version of myself I keep trying to force into existence. And trusting – really trusting – that maybe everything needs to be undone before it can be rebuilt the right way.

That maybe, I need to step back and let Him rearrange what I’ve tangled, rebuild what I’ve broken, and carry what I was never meant to hold on my own…. Even if it means starting all over again.

I don’t write any of this to impress anyone or to turn it into something meaningful for other people. If anything, it’s the opposite. I write because I need somewhere to be brutally honest with myself, somewhere I can come back to years later and see the bigger picture I can’t always see in the moment. 

Because when I look back over the years, over entries written in completely different headspaces, I can’t ignore the pattern – God has been faithful even when I’ve been completely lost and out of my right mind. 

It hasn’t been random.

It hasn’t been pointless.

Even when everything felt chaotic, He was still doing something underneath it all. And if I’m really honest, the times my life has gone the most off track are the times I stepped out of where He had me and decided I knew better. I chased my own way, my own timing, my own desires and my own control- and it’s never once ended well for me. And still, I keep going back to that, like I forget every lesson as soon as things start to feel okay again. 

So I write because this is the only place, outside of numbing out, where things get quiet enough for me to actually think. 

Where I can sit with the confusion instead of running from it. Drinking makes everything go silent for a moment, but this – this is different. This is where I try to make sense of things that don’t make sense to my very human, very limited mind. 

Where I can be messy and unsure and still somehow feel like I’m not completely lost in it. Where I can remember, even faintly, that there’s something bigger happening than what I can see right now. 

Right now I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel redeemed or even remotely put back together. I feel like something in me has been scraped raw – like I can still feel the damage in my chest, in my hands, in the way I keep replaying everything I wish I could undo. Everything I wish I could unsay. 

There’s a heaviness that sits in my body like I can’t outrun it, no matter how much I want to disappear from it for a while. And I hate that I did this again. I hate the version of me that reaches for something that destroys me just to stop feeling things for a few minutes. I hate how quickly it becomes a cycle I recognize and hate, but still step into. 

But if I stay here long enough – past the shame, past the spiral, past the urge to shut it all down – I know the only way forward is through honesty and small, deliberate steps back toward life. Not fixing everything at once. Not becoming someone new overnight. Just stopping the bleeding where it is, one choice at a time. 

Reaching out instead of isolating. Telling the truth instead of hiding it. Letting the discomfort exist without feeding it. And trusting that even now, especially now, I am not beyond repair. I don’t have to feel ready. I just have to not disappear from myself again. 

If this is the version of me the world sees right now – struggling, messy, trying and failing and trying again – I don’t want that to be the whole story to my life. I don’t want to be remembered for the nights I gave up on myself or the ways I numbed out when things got hard. I want to be remembered as someone who kept coming back. 

Someone who fought for her life even when it felt impossible. Someone who loved deeply, who cared, who didn’t stop believing that God could still make something beautiful out of the broken pieces. 

I want to be remembered for choosing to get back up, over and over again, even when no one saw it, even when it felt pointless. Not because I did it perfectly – but because I didn’t stay down. 

So this is where I am. 

No clean ending, no neat redemption arc – just me, sitting in the wreckage of my own choices, telling the truth about it. I don’t have a breakthrough to wrap this up with. I don’t feel fixed. I feel exposed, tired, and painfully aware of how easily I can lose myself. 

But I’m still here. 

And maybe that’s the only honest place to start again – not with confidence or clarity, but with nothing left to hide. If there’s any way forward, it has to begin here, in the mess, with me choosing – however weakly, however imperfectly – not to run from it this time.

To be continued….