(The picture above are of my 2 pups. These are 2 of the little things I enjoy in life now.)

Do you ever feel like life passed you by because you didn’t live in the moment? Do you feel like drinking washed away half your life? I feel like that sometimes. I hope that no one takes this blog as a complaint about my life. I will preface this by saying that I wouldn’t change a thing if I could and that my life has been amazing, but I will tell the story so that hopefully someone can relate.

I started a business in 2000 providing debt consolidation services. It began in the extra bedroom of my home. We set up an office in that room and worked all hours of the night. I remember answering the phone at 1am trying to bring in as much business as possible since we were a small start up. We quickly grew to 600 new customers monthly and servicing thousands of clients on a monthly basis. A false sense of confidence grew and I completely identified with what I did for a living.

I constantly worried about money, how we were going to market our services in the future, compliance issues – you name it, I worried about it. There was never a minute of peace. I was only 23 years old and had no idea how to enjoy my life. I would drink occasionally to escape the stress and the pain of my past. My drinking habit got much worse later in life.

The money started pouring in, but it left my hands just a quickly. I went on lavish vacations, shopping sprees, nice dinners and totally lived it up for a few years. I didn’t realize how wasteful and irresponsible I was. I also noticed that I wasn’t happy. No matter how much money I made, I was never happy. I always felt the urge to be moving and wrote that off as ambition. After years of being irresponsible in every part of my life, I finally had to ask myself “What am I running from? Why is success so important to me? What am I trying to prove and to whom am I trying to prove it?

At the end of the day, I realized that I couldn’t sit still for a minute because I might have to feel something. I might have to deal with the emotional turmoil caused by my childhood. I literally felt like if I let myself feel something, that I might fall apart. My ambition was fueled by my parents disapproval. I wanted to prove to them that I was somebody. By the time I was finished, I found myself tied down, stressed out and exhausted. My parents were proud, but that wasn’t enough for me. I was still their gay daughter that they didn’t approve of . As years went by, I watched my parents go to my brother’s wedding, take care of his first child and bask in the joy of his straight life. When I told my parents I was getting married, my mother told me I would be punished by God. At that point, I realized that no amount of financial success would ever change my parents opinion of me.

My life is much different now. I cherish every little moment. I work on being a giving, mindful, compassionate person who serves others without expectation of anything in return. I fail at that sometimes, but try not to beat myself up about it. Although living that kind of life leaves me feeling like an alien at times, I keep in mind that at the end of my life, the derogatory things that were said about me because I’m a recovering alcoholic won’t matter. I will have made a positive contribution to this world and that’s all that matters to me.