My hamster shit in my shower.

A list (love lists!) of things I never thought I would say:

– Another beautiful sunrise this Saturday morning!

– I haven’t had a drink for 179 days

– My hamster shit in my shower

Life huh?!

Life really is incredibly unpredictable. How often have you heard yourself say,

“Well if you’d have told me this is where I’d be a few years ago I’d never have believed you!”?

None of us honestly know what is around the corner. One can plan all they like but it’s often things that haven’t been planned or prepared for that side-swipe us. Like a stealthy ninja, coming from nowhere, they sweep our legs from under our feet and we end up on our arses with no idea how we got there. But we get up and we brush ourselves down and we carry on. Shit happens! We weren’t worrying about that ninja but we still got past the sneaky bastard. And, more often than not all of those other things we had been worrying ourselves silly over turn out to be a piece of cake to deal with. All of that wasted energy, worrying about the future. That fear. It’s pointless right? That fear is the same fear that also holds us back. The fear of the unknown, because change is scary. When life isn’t fulfilling you and you know that you need to do something about it, to change, you get fearful. You start thinking things like,

“Ah it’s not so bad really. I’m relatively happy. I don’t need to do anything about it after all. It’s a bit fucking scary making any kind of change so I’ll just roll with the status quo for a while longer.”

But that feeling of ‘Is this really IT?’ keeps coming back at you. Slowly to start with. So you carry on. But it becomes louder and more frequent. It starts frustrating you. It comes along every day in the end. And it gets tiresome. And this is where it can become problematic because you start looking outside for the answers. Or you look to other things to break the monotony of it all. For me this was alcohol, and the problem with alcohol, like any drug, is that it can become addictive and that’s where you start swimming in dangerous, deep, and scary waters. Until it’s got it’s grip on you and makes you believe that IT is what you’re looking for. What you need. IT can make your evenings more enjoyable. IT can make you a better person. IT is the answer. To everything.

Feeling happy? Have a drink! Feeling sad? Have a drink! Feeling stressed? Have a drink! Feeling tired? Have a drink! The sun’s out! Have a drink! The weather is shit. Stay in and have a drink!

And it becomes a bit of a problem (no shit!). It blinds you to the point where all you can think about, whatever is happening, is alcohol. It takes up all of your energy and even when you’re not drinking you’re thinking about it. Either because you’ve got a steaming hangover or you are thinking of when you can have your next one. So you are effectively blind. You’re living your life and to everyone else around you, you may appear to be perfectly happy. But really you’re not. Shit, you may have even convinced yourself that you ARE happy but there is still something inside, getting smaller all the time mind you, that knows that you aren’t happy.

Nothing changes if nothing changes

At this point it’s up to you. It might finally be time to put your big boy pants on and change something. I tried this while I was still drinking. I still did things, things that I was proud of. But that feeling of contentment was short lived and I kept finding myself going back to that point of feeling unfulfilled. It wasn’t until I stopped drinking that I realised it was alcohol that was the thing obstructing my path to true feelings of contentment. Who knew right?!

I realised that once I’d cut free from the shackles of alcoholism, that my mind, body and soul had been yearning for this freedom without me even realising it. I had space in my head to really listen, now that it wasn’t crowded out and filled close to bursting with negativity. Alcohol is a depressant after all. I stopped looking outside of myself for that fulfillment and looked inwards. I rediscovered my love for nature, for sunrises (see number 1 on the list!), for reading, for learning, for music, for writing! Yeah I guess I could still do all of those things before but I was never truly invested in those moments. I rediscovered pride in myself, in my job, in my friendships and in my family. I truly realised how incredibly lucky I am.

I was fucking scared to stop drinking, to make that much of a change in my life. That fear, like I’ve said, held me back. But I faced that fear. I made the change. And it was quite simply the best thing I’ve ever done.

SIDENOTE:

Oh and my hamster was in my shower because, according to people that know more about hamsters than I do, you need to be with your hamster in a safe space and allow it to crawl over you to let it bond with you, and become tame. A bath is most recommended but if you haven’t room to swing a cat in your flat, like me, and only have a shower cubicle then that is fine. It was an odd experience. Maybe I should make sure the shower isn’t on next time. She had a shit in there because hamsters shit everywhere it seems.

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