This week I finally got confirmation of something I’ve waited almost a year for. On Monday, I’m booked in for detox.

It feels like it has been a long time coming. Relapsing in October last year was a huge mistake, and one that has taken so much from me over these past eleven months. I have to take responsibility for that, however uncomfortable that responsibility might be.

I despise that the first thing I think about is how I can get a drink. How I can consume as much as I can. How everything somehow finds its way back to alcohol. And come Monday, I won’t have to worry about hiding it anymore. I won’t have to think about where the next drink is coming from or how much money I’m spending on it.

It is never going to be easy. I have tried to mentally put myself into a place where resilience will be key, because my brain is going to have to learn other ways. That is no mean feat when I have drunk since I was twelve years old. My life has orientated itself around alcohol. Around getting enough and fucking the consequences.

But now I have to stop.

And I have to keep telling myself, repetitively if necessary, that it is no longer a path I choose. It is a road I no longer wish to walk, even on the days when I desperately want to cave in.

I know there will be days ahead that will try to break me. I know old habits will want to resurface. There will be moments when alcohol will probably feel like the easiest answer because, for most of my life, it has been the answer I have known.

But I also know I cannot allow myself to keep returning there.

So Monday morning is a new chapter. I am going to do my best to embrace a new journey. Not one without bumps and difficulties, but somewhere new. New scenes. New faces. New times.

The hope exists. The willpower will need to come through and help carry me when hope isn’t quite enough.

Because new chapters and new beginnings can come at quite a high cost at first. I am giving up something that has accompanied me for most of my life, even if that something has also caused immeasurable damage.

And perhaps that is what I need to remember when it hurts.

There will be a cost.

But this is not a cost too far.