Potted.

Sometimes, I think of the pot I've planted myself in, and I sigh. It can feel a little constricting. Sometimes, I think I want to break the pot. I can feel the squeeze all over me, and I want out. I want different. I want more.

For so many years of my life, I ran away. When things weren't working, I ran. I went somewhere else and started a new life. It would work, even, for a while, but always, I'd catch up with myself. Whatever new life I'd started would gradually come unraveled, and there I'd be, sweeping up the shards.

Sometimes, though, I look around, and I just want to scream at the world. I want the pain to stop. I want the hurt to go away. I know, though, that if I left my husband and went somewhere else and started a new, single life, that pain would follow me. The hurts of our past still happened, and I bet I'd still find myself, suddenly awake in the middle of the night, riveted by visions of my husband in another woman's arms...hung up on grief and memories of loss and lies and deception. It would still have happened, and it would still hurt.

Early on in my experience with 12 step recovery, I made a commitment to myself to stick with this situation and not to run away. I made a promise to myself to try to find the root of it and to find the tools necessary to stop undermining my own life.

I am just so tired, and I am so hungry for peace. It's better, but it still feels like I'm constantly on the verge of some new, big pain. I want to put down my gun.