joy is a touchstone of growth

how I've grown through joy as well as pain

This week in my Q&A someone asked when I started to enjoy recovery, when it turned over from something I had to do into something that I was passionate about. 

I answered very honestly, that the first two years of my recovery, whilst they had fun in them, were not fun. Largely they were two years of me working out how to do all the things I missed as I spent my developing years and early 20’s obliterating my consciousness and getting music degrees. When those are the only two activities you engage in, you miss a lot - like how to make a cup of coffee, how to pay bills and get places on time, how to open your post, cook a meal for myself and do the dishes, how to advocate for yourself without crying, shutting down, saying ‘actually it’s fine!’ or shouting, and how to be uncomfortable. I didn’t have a lot of experience being a human, and the first two years were largely the acceptance of that fact, and taking baby steps in the right direction. 

I was not passionate about it, in fact I was fucking miserable about it. I was deeply ashamed of the fact I couldn’t do the daily tasks of managing a household even when I was the only person in it. I was angry at the fact that I wasn’t allowed to blot out my uncomfortable emotions anymore. I deeply, deeply resented the amount of work I had to do on myself to even slightly resemble a normal person. Whether it was stubbornness, fear or something I was too cynical to call hope - I kept going.