A Million Reasons
I had a dream last night that I was on the Ellen show. The freaking Ellen show you guys! But wait, there’s more. Not only was I dreaming I was on the Ellen show talking about my experiences and my book, but I was also describing how much I love the one and only Stefani Germanotta – THE Lady Gaga herself and how much she has helped me in this journey. Just then, she announced she had a surprise for me. If you know the Ellen Show, you know what the surprise was. Lady Gaga herself.
We sat next to one another, holding hands and crying over all the things we have been through and how similar we are. Then I woke up. I woke up feeling amazing by the way. It’s not every day you meet both Ellen and Lady Gaga, even it is just in a dream.
It was either my total obsession with the Mother Monster or the fact that I knew she needed mention in this book that has consumed my mind, whichever, that dream was freaking awesome!
During any hard time, or any good time it was her music that soothed me and seemed to speak right to my soul. I would quote lyrics and put them up as reminders on how to go about my day. Music and I have a very special relationship. For the most part, my mood can be easily detected by the type of music I am currently listening to. And I listen for the message, the meaning and the melody that really speaks to me.
But one spoke to me the most. The song Million Reasons. Damn. I even played it for my husband at one point, to which he asked if he was that bad. Yep. And that good. Ill explain.
The million reasons – the lies, the manipulation, the hiding, the lies, the manipulation, the let downs, the lies. The many, many lies.
But one good reason – one good time, one smile, one good day, one sober day, one show of promise, one show of a good future – just one. That one good reason is what we stay for, what we strive for and what we want more than anything. It gives us hope and promise to hold on to. And sometimes that hope and promise is all we need to endure the reasons that make us want to let go. Sometimes that hope and promise is the part that makes us stay when we shouldn’t. Sometimes it’s just not enough, and sometimes it is. And sometimes you just don’t fucking know which way is up or down, and drift a little.
Ever have those thoughts of “if I just didn’t have to deal with this anymore, everything would be perfectly ok”? I did, a lot. That’s when I would blast songs like this and probably cry in my car. Now I am going to say the hard part. This isn’t the only bad thing in your life. Sure, it can feel like it is ever consuming and the worst thing in your life and if you just walked away from it, everything would somehow magically align and things would be all sunshine and rainbows. However, it is not your only issue. It is not the only thing going south in your life.
It is really easy to blame everything in your life, especially the bad, on this one issue, not to mention the person doing it. It is so easy to blame them for everything. I blamed my husband for terrible traffic and getting home late, for any bad mood I had, for a bad day at work, the list could go on and on and on, and none of it was his fault. Even in the good times, it is so tough to let that wall down and just be happy, and so easy to blame them for that. Sometimes it would feel like the hardest thing and exhausting work just to appear happy.
And all it took was one reason, to make it all better.
I put my happiness in someone else’s hands, in someone’s hands who couldn’t figure out happiness for themselves, yet I gave him the task of figuring it out for me as well. How fair is that? It’s not. Not even a little.
I kept thinking if he would give me that one little reason, continuing sobriety, it would be the one thing that would magically change all my bad days, the traffic, my job, all of it. With a decision he would make, it would change my whole life. What pressure that is, I can feel it now just writing this. The pressure of holding someone else’s good days and happiness in your hands when you are also attempting to figure out your own shit? Wow. And I did that. Both to him and myself. I was destroying two people.
But how can it work both directions? In many ways, his addiction was the downfall of my own life, it destroyed me – each time he relapsed – it destroyed me, it made me lose trust, it made me lose a little love, it made me feel second best and worthless. So, if it can make me feel all the bad, how can him stopping not make me feel all the good?
That question I will answer later, because it is a long answer. But the main point here is that my happiness and my own recovery as a spouse is my responsibility and mine only. What he does in his life, and the decisions he makes about his own life are not mine, I cannot control them and in the same line, they cannot control me. That is so tough to swallow, but it is the truth and what made everything change for me.
Taking control of my happiness and my decisions about how I would respond to any and everything – including drinking – were mine. It was so freeing to finally realize that. And it took a while, I am still practicing this actually, because it is so tough. I definitely still had moments of screaming, I still had bad days that I blamed on him, I still was angry and resentful, but I was working so hard on myself that all of these things drifted away slowly. I felt myself not yelling quite as much and instead taking a moment so I could respond. I found myself taking time for myself in general, just so I could reflect on myself and how I wanted to be. I found myself having more good days, because regardless of what he was doing, I was making it a good day. I found myself not trying to figure out his every move, not trying to smell is breath when I got home, not watching his behaviors searching for something that was off. It took some real time, and still does, but I am getting there. And it makes it so much easier to just be myself and be happy.
I still get sad and frustrated and angry, and all of those things are natural human emotions and we are allowed to experience them all. However, I check my reactions and attempt to respond. And I know I am in control of the emotions I am feeling, no one else. And I work on checking myself when I am feeling a sort of way.
If I am feeling sad or angry, I allow myself to feel that way – alone. I allow myself to feel the emotions I need to feel so that I do not take happiness for granted. If I get frustrated, I get down to why I am really feeling that way and if it won’t matter later that day, I do my best to let it go.
And I listen to music, almost always, any time I can, I listen to something that inspires me, or something that seems to just get me in some way, something that allows my anger to come out. Oh, and I work out, cause you know, endorphins and all that.
All you need is one good reason to stick around, to keep someone in your life. The point here is, you cannot force someone to give you that reason, they get to make up their minds all on their own. And the more you attempt to force them, the further they typically move away. It is on you to make yourself happy, and it is really unfair to put that responsibility in someone else’s hands, especially when that someone may not even know how to make themselves happy.
Wake up to what is going on and to how you feel about it. If you do not like something, stop putting up with it. This does not mean to leave the person – unless abuse is happening, in that case please do and please get help immediately – it means to start taking accountability for yourself and be responsible for you and you only. You cannot change someone, no matter how hard you try, and again the more you try the less likely you are to make it happen. However, you can change yourself, at any point you decide to. And that is the point here, you making yourself happy. You giving yourself that one reason to stay, you letting go of the million reasons. And most importantly, you not becoming a doormat for anyone.
Read more from Breaking the Silence by grabbing the full book here (just click on the cover image below):
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