Welcome to the Shit Show: Sobriety in a Small Town

🧹 Reclaiming Your Life After Sobriety and Starting Fresh with Sawdust and Sanity

There’s something surreal about waking up sober in the same town where you once danced on picnic tables with your boots on the wrong feet. Everyone remembers the version of you that partied. Fewer stick around to meet the version of you that got tired of the noise.

But here’s the truth: you’re allowed to change. You’re allowed to outgrow the stories people tell about you. And most of all, you’re allowed to rebuild—even if the only blueprint is “try again, but healthier.”

🍻 When Your Hometown Drinks as a Lifestyle

Small towns have a rhythm. Ours sounds like laughter around bonfires, boats on the river, cold drinks clinking in the sun. It’s beautiful… until it isn’t. Until you realize the fun started costing too much—your peace, your health, your sense of self.

If you were a bar fly here, chances are you did something loud, messy, or mortifying. You might’ve burned a few bridges with lighter fluid and regret.

Okay. Own it. Then move on.

Sobriety doesn’t erase the past. It reclaims your right to a future—one that’s not defined by other people’s memories or your own mistakes.

🔧 Rebuilding Yourself: No Assembly Instructions Included

Getting sober is weird. You’re still you, but rebooted. You don’t laugh at the same jokes. You don’t want to spend weekends hungover, explaining things to people who never changed.

And it’s hard, because:

• You’re the oldest you’ve ever been, and the newest version of yourself

• You’re surrounded by folks who still think “just one” is a valid pitch

• You’re grieving the fun and the fallout

But you’re also gaining:

• Clearer mornings

• Energy with direction

• A deeper relationship with the person you’re becoming

🎨 My Therapy? It’s Covered in Paint

I found my peace in creating. In flipping something old into something new. A busted chair, a chipped cabinet, a scarred piece of wood—it’s all salvageable.

And so am I.

Every brushstroke is a small declaration: “This is mine. I fixed this. I matter.” And somehow, in all that sanding and painting, I’m rebuilding the part of myself that got buried under years of beer cans and bravado.

That’s Semper Sana—always healing, even when the process is awkward, half-finished, or covered in wood filler.

🌱 You Are Not Who You Were. And That’s the Whole Damn Point.

Let them whisper. Let them cling to the version of you they’re most comfortable with. They’re narrating from the cheap seats while you’re busy building something that matters.

Find your thing. Your peace. Your weird little pocket of joy. It doesn’t have to be perfect—it just has to be yours.

You survived the chaos. Now make it art.

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