Sophie Cook takes her Not Today philosophy to the next level in ‘Not Today: Losing My Addictions’ — coming soon
Humans are imperfect creatures, for the most part we are not complete beings, with healthy, well rounded views of ourselves, our relationships and the world around us.
We are holey, not divine complete holy beings, but holey, full of holes.
There are holes where trauma has hollowed out parts of our soul, bad relationships, abusive partners, horrible bosses, bereavement, loss, financial worries, frustration that the wrong contestant got evicted from your favourite reality TV show, the true opiate of the masses.
How we attempt to fill the voids in our holey souls can dictate the direction of our lives, it can heal the wounds, or more likely, offer a temporary numbing of the pain in exchange for an eternity of struggle as the stitches gradually come undone and the holes rip our soul asunder.
Of course this all sounds very dramatic and I can already sense that you’re picturing Renton and Spud shooting up in an Edinburgh squat, the very picture of junkie glamour, but the variety of ways in which we attempt to fill these holes are as diverse as we are and the very traumas that cause those voids in the first place.
Me? Well I’ve tried it all, the holes in my soul were so numerous and large that there were no limits to the ways in which I would attempt to stave off the darkness and the feelings of self loathing, self harm and suicide that accompanied it.
Not Today, the philosophy that I used to overcome my suicidal feelings could be used to help to overcome my addictions and indeed many other of life’s difficulties. It’s now a lens through which I see the world and my place within it. It’s taken me outside of the moment and allowed me the space to make more positive life choices without using guilt or shame to beat myself up for previously having taken the wrong path. We can do nothing to change the past, we can carry guilt and shame for past actions and by doing so punish ourselves and increase our chances of failing in the future, or we can learn from it and thereby grow from even the most negative of experiences.
“I know that one day I’ll succumb to my addictions, because I don’t know how to stop feeling this way but it won’t be today. In the meantime I’m going to do the best I can to enjoy every single day and then on the day that I die, in many, many years time, I’ll look back and realise that I didn’t get around to doing it.”
The crowdfunder for ‘Not Today: Losing My Addictions’ is currently paused due to the delays in production caused by the COVID pandemic.
Please note: previous donations to the crowdfunder for my first novel ‘Words That Kill’ have been transferred to this project as this book has been prioritised for publication, thank you.