Relapse.
It’s like a ghost. It approaches with barely audible creaks, until it haunts you. You’re so immersed in whatever is causing you to lose control over your life that you don’t even notice that you’ve lost control. You don’t even notice that the bad habits are back until you remember how truly bad they are.
You think to yourself: “This reminds me of a time before…”.
Before you got better. Or did better. Or were better.
This Sunday, in Montreal, it seems like the spring will experience a relapse. Freezing rain (though a bad sign, still spring-y enough for us to delude ourselves into thinking that there in fact is no relapse around the corner) will turn into snow.
The reality is that there is always a freezing rain that precedes snow. A sign that offers the impending relapse-r plausible deniability along with fear.
And gosh, don’t you want to deny it? Especially when it’s out of your control — you want to deny it. You want to fill in your relapse with the colours of any other thing. You want to spin it and twist it into anything but before.
So now, it’s the time of the year when even the most disciplined of rise-and-grind evangelists are starting to slip out of their new habits and into their old ones. It’s that time of year when we begin to look ahead — towards the things that will change. Maybe it’s once we’ve done our spring cleaning. Or at the end of Q1. Maybe it’s once we’ve ripped the band-aid off and finally got out of that horrible situation.
Shit. It’s that time of year when we wait for circumstances to change. For things to get better. To get to the other side.
But, I guess, I’ve learned that maybe it doesn’t get better. Instead, it’s this constant tug of war. It’s steps forward and steps back. It’s pushing the boulder up the mountain.
Every day I am trying to gain new ground. Then I’m propelled backwards (through fault, or no fault, of my own). Then, I gain ground again. Progress and relapse happen every week. Every three months. Every six months. Horrible habits and patterns are marching on my health and my life. I have to have the self-awareness and the strength to beat them back.
The whole world has given me these petty narratives about succumbing or overcoming. Either I beat the disease, or died to it. Either we won, or we lost. It isn’t really like that — is it? It’s chronic.
But, and I promise there’s a hopeful turn, it’s also extremely educational.
You go all of these wrong directions. Find yourself in bad situations. Lose ground you thought you’d gained for good. Then you go a different route the next time. You pick up all of this data that life gives you. For me, it’s data about business and health and love and friendship. I’m constantly having to find new ways to be better and kinder. In some ways, I’m constantly gaining new ground.
At a young age, I have to be very grateful for relapse. It has taught me a lot.
And so, when it is finally time to rest or face a test — we will have earned our stripes. We will be wiser. We will be kinder.
I hate relapse — but as long as we don’t fail to learn its lessons, within it there is something to propel us forward.
