Anxiety Filled Determination

For years I have known that I am not doing what makes my heart beat the way it is supposed to. I am good at my job. Very good at it – but by no stretch of the imagination am I passionate about it. I am a digital marketing manager. I design magazine ads and editorials for media mags, and I manage the companies website and marketing. Its creative and I get to hide comfortably in the right side of my brain, But I admittedly spend a great deal of time staring at the ocean out of my window – or hanging out of my window grinning as the trains go past.

I am Bipolar. I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and a history of drug and alcohol abuse that makes Amy Winehouse looks like Bo-Peep. I did the suicide attempt that failed and that made me ANGRY. I did rehab twice, and underneath it all was just anger and lots of it because I never really addressed the trauma I had been through. Its taken me some time, but it finally dawned on me that I need to do something that does make me heart beat. Something that I am good at that I actually FEEL something for.

I need to take my less than flexible disposition and my junkie brain and do something good, and something long lasting. So I started the leg work for opening a rehab center. That first started in January and even then I had no idea just how much work it would be.

4 months later and I have surges of anxiety because of how its all falling into place and how real it all is and fast its all going. I’m 36, and for the first time ever – I feel grown up in a way that I have never before felt. Dealing with medical professionals and having to have every single detail covered and to have a plan A, B and C just in case makes my brain wants to melt.

I live in a small one and a half bedroom flat. The properties I am going to be opening the rehabs in are huge, and yesterday as I stood on the third floor looking over the balcony – my stomach knotted up as I imagined the responsibilities ahead of me. This is my passion, and my dream, and I have no doubt that I can – but I also know what I was like as an aggressive and fiercely opinionated addict when I was in rehab – and I know I have my work cut out for me – as will all the staff in my employ.

But I also know how and why I am one of the small percent of those who stayed clean and sober. THAT is why I want to do this. People dont get better if they dont want to – so I will be sad more than I will be happy…     but I am okay with that.

I’m excited. But im also terrified.