Plucking the thorns

I remember a time when I was quite prickly. I told myself I was okay and played the part to the outside world, but inside I felt prickly and stuck. I had been hurt by others, but that was hardly the problem. The problem was that I didn’t know that I could heal from it. 

One day I made a decision that would be the most monumental decision of my life. I stopped drinking. Alcohol was my friend and my favorite confidant. It was my courage, my strength, my big hug. It’s how I coped with the hard times and celebrated the good. I put it down because it just wasn’t working anymore. My prickly insides were getting quite painful. The prickly on the inside, it turns out, had also pushed through as thorns on the outside.

Over the years after I got sober, I did some hard work. I learned that I had alienated myself from others, though I always thought they were the ones who rejected me. I really looked at myself and plucked those thorns out one by one. It was grueling. I kept plucking them - painfully - until I finally realized there was a rose there all along. I learned in healing myself that I could become the person I always was but was too hurt to see.

My message to anyone reading this: if something is nagging at you - really nagging at you on the inside, look at you. You may have some thorns to remove and I bet your rose will bloom.