That's how I felt when the hammer came down upon me two years ago on a very dark, very cold July night. I had enter a probationary period where I had limited options. Where my choices of where to go and what to do were also limited. I was lucky to still have my job. That became the only thing keeping things glued together. I remember thinking, this will forever change my life. I was right.
Broken. Is how I felt that night. Memory was shaky, for I had inhaled what could pass for a liquor store. I had overdone it and had run out of luck. My guardian angel just watched from above, shaking his head waiting to see if finally I learned my lesson.
Disappointment is all I felt as I continued to stare at the pale wall in front of me. The floor was cold and all I could think was how I would never touch alcohol in my life again.
But it wasn't much of what had happened that night that made me realize I needed to change. It was more of this sort of collection of things that had happened throughout the previous year up until that night that really opened my eyes.
I was drowning my sorrows and burying the anger, without really paying attention to the consequences. It took me these two years to realize what a fool I was and how this lesson was a hard one to learn. But I finally stepped over that last hurdle and passed the test. On this day I feel free again and I no longer feel the need to remain so silent. I spent those two years in fear. Wondering how to avoid making the simplest of mistakes, because that is all that would've taken for the system to throw me back into a hole where there would be no escape from.
Today I can stop being afraid, being paranoid. Today I exit the probationary period of my life and welcome back the world with open arms.
Two years of hiding has been enough.
Today I break the chains that bind.