Winter calls for rituals that actually make you feel amazing—and Pique’s Sun Goddess Matcha is mine. It delivers clean, focused energy with zero jitters, supports glowing skin and gentle detox, and feels deeply grounding on cold mornings. Smooth, ceremonial-grade, and crave-worthy, it’s the easiest way to start winter days clear, energized, and glowing from the inside out

Get Up To 20% Off

Crossing A Boundary

During a particularly dark time in my life about two weeks ago, I was seriously considering packing up all of my belongings overnight and traveling to South Carolina to either start over or to self-delete. I wasn’t sure which one would be most preferrable but I had reached a point where either one sounded like a good idea to me. My mind was permeated by a dark cloud of heavy desparation from a problem that I could not competently handle on my own without having intense and inappropriate emotional reactions that multiplied the severity of this particular dilemma. I knew damn well that I had put myself in this position unnecessarily by reacting to so aggressively. It would not have existed to begin with if I had been able to find the emotional maturity and intelligence to manage myself properly.

Over the last six weeks, I have presented my therapist Angela with a confession that I had been poking the proverbial bear by ranting and raving at some family members over text message. The revelation that trouble could be headed my way as a direct result of my reckless and irresponsible communications with these people had worried me, but I continued in this exhausting cycle of resentment and lashing out followed by a short lived remorse and a cooling down period, then I would restart the cycle all over again. I had reached a point where I required zero provocation to justify my behavior. I was (and to an extent still am) emotionally rattled and unstable.

My therapist and I had gotten into an argument about respecting people’s boundaries sometime around March 3rd, in which she reinforced the idea that I ought to respect the fact that some people, did not want to communicate with me any longer. I knew this to be true and for the first time, I made a commitment to actually stop. Not just say that I would. Instead, I compensated by sending Angela a series of emails over the next few weeks expressing my grievances, my profound sense of betrayal, my grief and my utter hopelessness. I somehow knew by the third or fourth email that our next session was going to be different from any other we had had before. And how could it not be? By my own admission, I was quite unstable in those emails and though I had successfully managed to get enough of a grip to not contact certain people again, these emails would have unforeseen consequences.

In our most recent session, Angela and I sat down and she told me that she didn’t think that continuing my treatment plan with her would be helpful anymore. She believed that I required “A higher level of care” and referred me to a support group that had a rotating roster of discussion topics. Initially, my response in the beginning was to refuse the help. I started out with a hard “No”, but over the course of the session I quickly warmed up to the idea and gave in. There was nowhere for me to realistically go, a decision had already been made on her end and I could either take the help or be left to my own devices. I remember asking her point blank during that session “Do you think I have a personality disorder or something?”. She responded with “No, but I do think that the behavior you’re exhibiting reflects your diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome”.

I initally took this response very poorly because I felt that she was implying something along the lines of “This is just what you are, this is your destiny and you will never change or get better because of it”. To imply that my behavior was related to some disorder was also to imply that I could not control myself, that I was nothing more than a wild animal pretending to be a man. The types of individuals who are categorized in this way are the narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths of our society. The types whom you would lock up and then throw away the key into a sewer for the protection of everyone else. Suppose I were to face a judge, what good could come of being categorized in this way? Certainly none at all! Yet, after she explained that in context with her suggestion of a higher level of care, I realized that she wasn’t saying that at all. If someone really believed I was beyond any hope of growth or change, the last thing they would do is bother to even consider any other treatment options for me. It would be the typical “bigotry of low expectations” phenomenon. I didn’t like hearing it because to me it also felt like an excuse. I walked out of the session feeling like I had crossed a major line and that I was being exiled and expelled from someone’s presence with whom I had spent the better part of two years building a trust based, personal relationship with. Now here she was, essentially throwing her hands up in the air and saying “I’m sorry Bobby, I just don’t know what I can do to help you anymore, good luck!”.

I felt a profound sense of betrayal but knew no amount of begging or changed behavior could reverse my luck, at this point. I had already gone too far off the deep end and I was drowning right in front of her. She threw life preserver after life preserver, but I failed to catch. Whether I realized it or not I preferred to drown instead. I hated to admit it, but there was a part of my mind during the session where I realized that it would be a waste of her time and perhaps my own to continue, if I was not showing signs of improvement. I had a meloncholly realization that I was taking up time and space from someone who perhaps could benefit from her services, but it was such an uncomfortable thought for me that I pushed it into the back of my mind.

Loss & Grief

My resentment had already cost me my relationship with my sponsor Matt many months ago and now here was another manifestation of consequences in the form of my therapist “giving me the boot”. It seemed that my inability to accept certain facts about my life had snowballed over time into a monster of life ruining proportions. I knew it wasn’t the people I was angry at themselves or the issues I was having with them, but my reactions to it. I believe that when most people see the ugliness of resentment in its purest form, they are turned off by it.

They rebel against it in disgust and outrage as their patience begins to waiver. At a certain point it’s no longer about your anger, but about your character. You’ve been discovered for what you are and face intense social scrutiny as a consequence of your defiance against human decency. You have violated the norm of keeping the peace and have now entered into the domain of being a nuisance and a time waster. An emotional black hole, sucking the goodwill out of those around you who slowly become just as corrupted as you, so they pull away to preserve their sanity. They see the sickness for what it is and want no part of it anymore.

Based on the reactions I’ve seen from others, my resentment nearly borders on pathological. I have gone from author of my own story to victim of my own story. To address my grievances even on the internet to my total satisfaction would raise red flags and aside from violating every social norm imaginable, would also inevitably result in having my voice restricted and ultimately silenced. The world would just keep on spinning and I’d still be drenched in my own despair and misery. And that leads me to a major point; no amount of complaining, insulting, attacking or belittling would ever be enough for me, even with carte blanche to say as I please.

Understanding Tragedy And Pain

Without realizing it I’ve been exhibiting the symptoms of a control freak. No man can control the world or other people no matter how much he wishes he could. If knowledge of this fact by itself were sufficient to produce change and unlock personal growth, I would have been over this long ago. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but with age and experience, perspective transforms trauma into meaning. And that is the problem that we all face with our greatest disappointments; finding meaning in something that hurts us and challenges our ego. If we can find meaning, we can find motivation. Through finding motivation we find our self-esteem and through finding self-esteem, we find ourselves.

The Power Of Contrast

As has been commonly observed, you cannot have light without darkness, pleasure without pain or love without hate. Therefore, the only way to see a light is to be immersed in darkness. I remember hearing someone say something really profound in an A.A meeting two weeks ago. The man said “I kept trying to force open doors in my life only to realize that God was on the other side, making sure they stayed locked”. I really liked that analogy. It seems that a continued realtionship with certain people just isn’t in the cards for me. Maybe God is on the other side of that door keeping it firmly locked and shackled up in chains, because it really isn’t the type of connection that is right for me.

I feel like I almost need to have the option of even trying to reopen that door forcibly removed from me in order for this psychological sickness and obsession to go back into remission. Not that I should have my internet access or access to a cellular phone revoked, but moreso that no matter what emotional triggers may come up for me about lost connections to people from my past, I have no ability whatsoever to reach them. That I am forced into a place of absolute acceptance and surrender to my predicament. A total psychological rock bottom where any hope of recovering these long dead relationships is made violently clear to me and accessibility for even a moment of attention or conversation from them is permanently and irreversibly removed.

Like the alcoholic stuck to his bottle as if it were his mother’s breast, until I am able to experience real loss of connection, my hope for recovery from this feels practically nonexistent. This attachment (like a drug) is keeping me sick and haulting my progress. I have become too dependent on these relationships and this has severely weakened my resolve to the point of being transformed into a pathetic, helpless child in a man’s body. One of the most profound stories ever told in A.A history was about Rolland Hazard asking the famed psychoanalyst Doctor Carl Gustav Jung for help to try and conquer his drinking problem.

Dr. Jung tried many things to cure the man of his ailment, but in the end even he had to confess that there was nothing he could do to help Mr. Hazard kick his alcohol problem. The miracle of this was that through total acceptance of his hopeless condition, Rolland did eventually recover from this hopeless state and as the story goes, never drank again! This is where the idea of “Rock Bottom” originates from. It is a place of complete dispair where one is forced to acknowledge that they can’t bargain with reality itself. Only when there are no options left do real options start opening up. I can’t heal while I’m still hurting, especially when the source of my wounds are still as accessible and addictive as ever.

As I turn towards a better future, I remember the wounds of yesterday that have shaped and changed me. They never leave me, but they can always get just a little bit better. Sometimes with time and distance, I am able to gain some clarity and perspective, but that rarely comes when I’m still in the middle of the fire, burning alive from the inside out. Everything I’ve said in the last ten sentences absolutely contradicts the autonomy and personal responsibility narrative I’ve been trying to embed into this blog, but I don’t care about that. I recognize truth whether it makes rational sense or seems to contradict itself. Sometimes true freedom comes with a price and in this case, that price would be loss. Total and uncompromising and maybe even brutal to some degree. I’m allowed to be afraid of facing it but I still must do it if I want to have any shot at staying sane and moving forward.

Bravery Despite Defeat

The one who loses is the one who gives up, the one who gives up is the one who tried too many times. Defeated by our own weaknesses and shortcomings, we search for answers. They maybe scarce but they usually come at the most unexpected times in our lives. Concession and defeat opens up doors. Choices we once disregarded become available to us. With enough pain and pressure, we become willing to see things differently and take on new attitudes. Dig your grave and lie in it, decide if it’s comfortable or if you’d prefer to try again.

Finality has a way of changing you. Survival instinct overpowers self-destructive ideation, barring certain extreme circumstances and temperaments. The day you realize that death is imminent is the day you are born again. I haven’t reached that point with my resentments yet, but I know for a fact that day is coming. I’ve felt it at other times and it has changed me. Feeling trapped is ironically freeing, but it takes some time to realize that.