I Stayed When It Would Have Been Easier to Leave Myself

Dear Delyara, Recovery has taught me that staying present is a skill. I used to leave myself in smaller ways than people realized. Through habits, through numbing, through anything that could interrupt feeling for a while. It wasn’t always loud enough to look alarming from the outside. Sometimes it just looked like coping. Now there are evenings when I feel the old urge to disappear and I do not follow it. That might not sound heroic. It is. Because staying means facing the real shape of my thoughts, my grief, my restlessness, my loneliness, my own company. It means not taking the shortcut away from myself. And even now, I’m still learning how brave that is.