Discovering my sobriety and all the feels
 

I’m not sure what’s happening exactly and how this ties into sobriety but I’m pretty sure it does. Over ten years ago an ex and I broke up. I found out today that he is engaged and all the emotions I had drank away through the years from our failed relationship bubbled up. It was after that break up that I started to drink and that was through increasing my social life and also drinking away my feeling of the unsettled upset-ness that comes with not getting closure and just having a messy breakup. I can’t express it but I feel my feelings of hurt, hating him all over again and knowing I have to really let go and feel whatever it was I need to feel to put this for sure to rest. Every now and then i think I should be moved on from that relationship but there has always been some weird tie to me to it. It’s such an odd thing that something can hit me so strongly when so much time has passed. Is this something that drinkers go through when they have avoided letting themselves feel the emotions that go with something (even when it happened that long ago??)

Well, I'm no therapist, but I know I'm (5 months sober) doing some work with a therapist and it seems to be starting to help. Just recently we started talking about stuff from a looong time ago. And I'm noticing things in the way I think (a handful of re-occuring memories, etc.) that I had not really noticed before.

My guess is that while drinking we were very much suppressing feels and emotions that need a chance to be felt and reckoned with. I don't think our brains care if it's 1 year or 10 years or more... it's all the same to it.

Maybe consider talking with a therapist? I find it's helping bigtime. I look forward to my sessions now - gives me a safe place to talk about some things I've been carrying for quite awhile.

-B