There comes a time when something inside you quietly says, this isn’t it.
Just when my life looked picture-perfect, something inside me began to fall apart. On the outside, everything seemed fine. I had the life people assumed should feel fulfilling. But inside, something was off. I couldn’t name it then, but I knew something had to shift.
What I found wasn’t instant or dramatic.
But it was real.
And it was the beginning.
It was the early ’90s when I began to feel that quiet unraveling, when the life I had worked so hard to build no longer fit who I was inside.
I went to therapy. After each session, my therapist would hand me something, a suggestion, a quote, a book. One day, she handed me a small note about something called Al-Anon. I brushed it off, thinking it was only for families of alcoholics. It didn’t apply to me. I wasn’t that person.
Six months later, she handed me the note again. And this time, it landed. I had followed every suggestion—journaling, reading, collecting quotes to keep me steady, but this one thing, I had resisted. Maybe that’s exactly why I needed to go.
So I did.
I still remember my first meeting. I walked in, listened to the preamble, and immediately thought: What a bunch of weird people. What am I doing here? I didn’t belong. These people had family members in AA. Some were in recovery themselves. I didn’t see myself in any of it.
At the end, they read a closing statement and encouraged newcomers to try six meetings before deciding the program wasn’t for them. I thought, Fine. I’ll prove this isn’t for me.
So I kept coming.
Week after week, I sat in the back and listened to things that made no sense:
Live and let live.
No, is a complete sentence.
Let go and let God.
I rolled my eyes. I judged. I planned my exit.
But something kept tugging at me.
Without realizing it, I kept showing up.
And slowly, something began to shift.
I saw how much I overextended. How I explained too much. How I confused control with care. Most of all, I saw how tired I was from trying to hold it all together.
Little by little, those meetings became part of my rhythm.
And slowly, I changed.
I didn’t have to fix everything.
I didn’t have to be everything.
I could just… be.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. But it was the beginning. And looking back now, I can say with certainty:
The day I was sure I didn’t belong was the day everything quietly started to change.