Living As If

People in the program always say, "fake it 'til you make it." I call this "living as if." Living as if you are okay when you aren't - until you actually are okay. Living as if you believe your higher power will come through, even when you doubt it - until you actually believe it. I say I don't want to pray. People say pray anyway. Pray even if you don't know who you are talking to. Pray even if it is only to say "fuck you" to your higher power. Just fake it, until eventually you actually get it. I say I am unhappy, they say to pretend. Pretend. Pretend. I say I am tired of pretending. They say to pretend anyway. I say I have no acceptance. Again, they say pretend. Just fake it. Live as if you have acceptance. Live as if you are happy. Live as if you are okay.

In order to actually accomplish this whole "faking it" concept, you have to pretend, while pretending that you aren't pretending. Am I actually fooling myself here? Am I fooling anyone else? I have figured out, while pretending not to pretend, all the while pretending, and at the same time saying I am tired of doing this - that there is only one way to live. I have learned this the hard way, perhaps the only way. It is a balance, that I can't seem to strike. It is the delicate balance between the present, the future and the past. I've lived my whole life everywhere but the present. Even today, after everything I have been through, I can't seem to wrap my mind around this and actually do it.

When I found out I had breast cancer - I had what seemed like life altering shifts in my perspective. I had a true appreciation for just how your whole life can be altered in a split second - a true appreciation for just how short life is. I had deep feelings of regret about the way I have lived my life for the past 10 years and certain things that I have done. These feelings are balanced by feelings of just how long life is, just how much is left for me, hopefully, maybe, or maybe not. All of these feelings are balanced again by the reality that I have to live with. The elephant in the room which is my own mortality. The thing no one talks about. Only one person has ever spoken frankly to me about it and talked to me about what it feels like to have an appreciation of just how fragile my own life is. People ask me all the time how I got through this and the truth is that I have absolutely no idea. I only know that the only way to get through it, is to live as if you are going to in fact get through it.

My shifts in perspective have shifted back without me even realizing it. My regret dissipates and re-materializes as I find new ways to achieve acceptance, and create new things to have regret about. I live in the future and the past again. I am only here, right now, in the present, on a very momentary basis. What brings me back to the moment, to right now, is when I can manage to remember that someday, maybe sooner than I hope, sooner than my time, sooner than everyone else I know, I will wish that I had one more chance to do this right.

I have realized, in this process of getting sober, living sober, living through breast cancer, dealing with the past and my childhood, that there is only one way to live. You have to live as if you are going to live forever, while at the exact same time, you have to live as if you have only one more day left.