Will it be easy? Nope! Worth It? Absolutely.

13 December 2024

Nothing worth doing comes easy

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

I was inspired to write this post not because I suddenly remembered reading about a 1940 speech from the 26th President but rather from some words stuck on the mirror at my local gym which got me thinking. The phrase at the gym states “Will it be easy? Nope! Worth It? Absolutely.” Duh, I think every time I see the sign at the gym. Working hard towards physical fitness goals has been engrained in me since childhood. Most goals I worked towards and attained in life, including my military career, didn’t come easy. Some things come easier than others for some people. In basic training I sucked at marksmanship with the M16. I envied the privates who qualified expert on their first try. It took a couple of years of diligent drilling, humility as a young officer to ask for coaching, and lots of range time to master that weapons system. To the contrary, the first time I cradled an M240B in my arms it was as if I intuitively understood that beautiful belt fed monster (and we had quite the love affair in Iraq and Afghanistan but that is a bunch of other stories).

It’s the same in recovery. Sobriety; changing my entire life – has not come easy. I would also argue that my trauma and alcoholism didn’t come easy at first either. I worked really hard to nurture the effects of my trauma; isolating, lying to family, friends, bosses, doctors and counselors; pretending everything was alright was exhausting. I may have been born with a proclivity towards addiction, but it took years of heavy drinking to create the mental obsession and physical necessity for alcohol. However, now, I fear that all it would take would be one rough day ruminating on either some new or old trauma to go back to my old way of thinking and one drink to pull me back into that hell hole of active addiction. That now, would be easy.

Recovery at first was excruciatingly difficult for me. It took five years of working towards sobriety to get to where I am now and it has taken almost 10 years to work through my trauma. For some reason, when it came to my mental health and chemical dependency, I couldn’t channel the same humility to ask for help as I did on the range. Some people just decide to stop drinking and they do. Others go to one AA meeting and never pick up a drink again. I thought I could just hit the easy button as what I assumed they did and be sober. That was not my experience. It took a village of people who valued my life more than I did to support me in my darkest times and then once I got that spark to live again a shit ton of hard work, soul searching, and humility to get on this path. Things in recovery that were once supremely difficult for me have gotten easier. But just like in the gym where I am pretty happy with where I am at physically, I still have to exercise discipline and put the work in. My recovery is the same way and it is worth it.

Now, reflecting on the words of President Roosevelt, I am thankful for the difficulties I have experienced in this life. I can’t say I am thankful to be an alcoholic but I am monumentally thankful to be in recovery. In recovery, I have created bonds with people just as strong as those I have from combat. I now enjoy life more completely than I ever did. I look in the mirror and recognize my imperfections, acknowledge that I am worthy of love, and embrace the opportunity to be just a little better of a person than I was yesterday. None of this came easy just as none of it came easy for the people I respect the most and who I try to emulate. Honestly, if it came easy I would probably be drinking again or most likely dead. Now, I have something that I have fought and clawed for that is precious to me and I will do anything to not give that up. Worth it? Absolutely!