Future me will thank today me

I’m back in a craving, angry funk and have been daily debating how much longer I can hold out. Yet somehow, every day I squeak past witching hour by the skin of my teeth and wake up grateful, but nervous.

Everyone says this is hard work, so my experience shouldn’t really come as a surprise. I don’t want to be a dry drunk which means I have to take this seriously and get through it if I want to arrive at that bigger, better life I crave.

I’m trying to latch on to this thought of how grateful future me will be for taking care of myself today. I’m looking at this in all aspects. I’ve been a nutritional nightmare for a month: future me will thank me for eating a damn salad today. I’ve been letting my laundry pile up: future me will thank me for just folding it and putting it away, right away.

And most importantly, future me will reach out to me today and hug me, and brush my hair back from my face and kiss my cheek. She will say, Thank you, dear one, for this struggle. Thank you for enduring such a severe and unrelenting discomfort. Thank you for somehow, by some will you don’t understand and never knew you had, continuing to say no.

She will recognize how I was totally blindsided by how hard it would be, for how long, and she will hold me and say, you had the power in you all along. It was uncomfortable peeling back those layers of self doubt, because you’ve never lived without them. But now you’re free and naked and can start clothing yourself in things you truly love: confidence, self-love, optimism.

So, while it remains hard, I am preemptively grateful that I’m crawling through, step by step. Everyone says it’s worth it. Future me knows it’s worth it. Today me just has to not drink today.