The Life-changing Magic of Learning to Accept Reality
My parents taught me a lot, but not all of their lessons were healthy. Do you relate?
My mum is wonderful and hilarious and beautiful and hardworking. But growing up, I saw her spend years of life trying to change my dad. She wanted him to come home from the pub earlier (a totally fair request, tbh). To dress more smartly. To work harder. To be more professional.
My dad was kind and funny and handsome and talented. But from my perspective his refusal to compromise cost him a lot. He was disinterested by the conventions of society generally and he certainly didn’t appreciate my mum’s attempts to ‘improve’ him. He wanted her to relax. “Don’t worry, be happy!” he said.
They went around in circles like this, struggling to accept the reality of each other and getting into ever greater conflict. Eventually, they divorced.
At some point in the early days of their love I arrived on earth. Like all fresh humans, I worked hard to fit into the corner of the planet I arrived on. I tried to learn the rules though they didn’t always make sense.
My parents believed in nature over nurture and so didn’t seem to worry too much about my learning. Perhaps they were struggling with the same bewilderment I was experiencing. Whatever the reason, I was left to my own devices a fair amount.
I watched from the sidelines much of the time, feeling self-conscious and inept. How did the other kids know how to play? How did they join in like that? I mimicked and copied and coped my way through.
It was easier as a little kid but once the systems and rules and processes grew more complicated I began to flounder. There was no internet back then and so social survival techniques came from whoever took me under their wing.
Aged 10 I made a good friend who taught me many of the lessons that would shape my life. She introduced me to alcohol, and I discovered how it could help you loosen up and join in. She taught me how to defend myself from bullies, too. The trick was to become a bully yourself!
At secondary school, with her tutelage, I became a totally different sort of person. I mucked about in class and drank at the weekends. I began to feel daring and notorious rather than sweet and overlooked.
I was delighted with the changes booze brought to my life. It felt like the real me had arrived. I had no complaints. And nobody ever challenged me on this behaviour. I joined the ranks of the many heavy drinkers that surrounded me.
I made it to university, where I learned many wonderful things. But graduating, I recognized the ways in which I lagged behind my peers. I had no internship. No money saved for backpacking. No clue what job I was qualified for.
My friends were leaving, with exciting plans, and I wasn’t ready to take the next steps towards independence. Luckily beer was there to help me with uncomfortable feelings of not measuring up, and I drank it with gusto. Cheers!
Time passed and nothing changed. I kept waitressing, which I not only hated but was terrible at. The only good things about my job were the size of the gin and tonics and the shifts I got to work with my favourite chef. He was handsome and sarcastic and mysterious. He drank the way I did and found the conventions of society infuriating, too.
It was my first real love experience and I was ecstatic. My new boyfriend was a few years ahead of me, life-wise, and he assured me that my observations were correct. The system was bullshit. It was all about who you knew and since we knew nobody of significance we were doomed to struggle.
He was funnier and more intelligent than me, and I hung on every word he said. We told ourselves we were nihilists destined to live on the fringes of society. He was an artist — the only profession worth anything (cheffing was just a stopgap) — and I would be a writer. Nothing else would do. Until we achieved our dreams, we would just have to suffer.
By now, I was in my early twenties, and the cost of all the self-neglect was adding up. My mental health wasn’t good. My social anxiety wasn’t getting any better. I had regular night terrors and panic attacks. I frequently struggled to see the point of living since life felt so hard.
I felt trapped in circumstances I hated with no idea how to change them. My dream boyfriend had changed over the years too. He drank too much and turned mean but I loved him too much to leave him. Or maybe I just didn’t have the strength to. Besides our lives were entwined. We worked together and lived together and I spent more time with his family than my own.
I begged him to drink less, so we didn’t argue so much. I pleaded with him to take me out for dinner. No matter how many times he showed me who he really was, I didn’t seem able to grasp it.
I wouldn’t realize for many years, that I had spent years repeating the mistakes of my parents. Choosing heavy drinking men like my dad, then trying (and failing) to change them, like my mum.
At 33, my unhealthy patterns caused enough pain that I asked for help. Through AA, I learned how to stay sober, a day at a time.
Longterm sober for the first time since my teens, I found myself right back in the feelings that I’d started drinking to escape. Underneath the beer and bravado I was still that shy and quiet, overlooked girl/boy who had no clue how to connect with people or how to have confidence in themselves.
And so the work of building an identity and a belief system began in earnest.
Five years later, I’ve made helluva lotta progress, but I can still be uncertain of what it is I really like/want/need. I have to work hard not to defer to whoever’s closest.
The crucial lesson that I was missing until I got sober, was how to accept reality. I couldn’t accept myself and so I drank. I couldn’t accept boredom and so I drank. I couldn’t accept mortality and so I drank.
To get sober I first had to accept that alcohol was a barrier to building the beautiful life I dreamed of. I had to accept that I had no idea how to fix the mess my life had become. And I had to begin to accept that quiet, gentle, malleable girl/boy that was me.
As a consequence, I learned the magical lesson of accepting other people for who they are, too. I stopped seeing people (okay, men) as projects who needed my help. I began to understand that accepting people as they are is the truest way to love.
I worked at acceptance, with the same determination I had approached learning the techniques of fiction. Deep down, I knew my life and happiness depended on it.
Gradually, it began to pay off. Choosing my next partner I asked myself if I could accept them exactly as they were now. If they didn’t change one bit. Four years later we’re still together and our relationship is going from strength to strength. This isn’t because we are perfect but because we both do our best to fully accept each other.
Getting sober taught me that it’s never too late to do the hard work of growing up. You can make small changes day by day, and in a few years find yourself enjoying a life that actually suits you.
Acceptance is an ongoing quest. It doesn’t mean settling. Acceptance means living in reality and making the best of what is.
If you appreciate my writing and believe writers should get paid, consider signing up for a paid subscription. Early adopters go to heaven! : D
And if you can’t afford to pay, but want to help then share this with friends who might appreciate it, then I thank you!
If you need help to cope, you’re not alone.
If you’re ready to try something different, read beautiful hangover and discover what I did to get freedom from alcohol. Do whatever it takes to stay sober for 30 days: go to your doctor, try Smart or AA or Hip Sobriety or Soberistas.
Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind. Try Moderation Management.
There is a whole community of people waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting.
Sign up for my latest work at beautiful hangover ❤
Chelsey Flood is the award-winning author of YA novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers and a lecturer in creative writing at Falmouth University. She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love, and is working on a non-fiction book about getting sober as well as a new YA novel.
She also has an illustrated newsletter about Autism.