My dream, from addict to writer.

Hello Steemit,

This is me.

I know, you must be jealous. I'm sure you haven't seen such a fine looking man in a very long time.

Now that I've got a little bit of your attention, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

My name is Stef. I'm 23 years old and I currently live in the Netherlands.

For most of my life I've been an addict. Looking back, the first time I noticed this behavior in myself was with playing video games. Later I started drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. When I turned 19 my kryptonite was added to that list, weed.

Despite being granted with an excellent brain to study, I quit 2 studies in less than a year time. I couldn't be bothered studying. I didn't envision myself doing these kind of jobs in the future. I hardly even saw myself getting out of bed the next morning.

I started avoiding some of my best friends, the people who wanted the best for me. I rationalized this away by saying that I didn't need these people in my life, but in reality I was only running away from confrontation. I hurt a lot of people in the progress. I was a shitty ass friend and an even worse lover.

Somehow I always thought that happiness and love were things I could get from other people or things, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

Since I had nowhere else to go I went to travel. I started meditating and got interested in personal development. I met amazing people and saw beautiful places, but nothing compared to the 12-day silent meditation retreat I did in Thailand. I had nowhere to run anymore. I had no one left to blame. It was horrifying and painful, but finally after all these years I felt alive! And I was ready to show it.

I discovered my love for spirituality, personal development and writing. I told myself I wanted to become successful and keep travelling the world.

But when I returned home I hit a wall. In no time I returned to my shitty habits and old life style. I thought after realizing all of this it would be easy to change my life, but it wasn't. It made my life even harder. It made the downs deeper, but it also made the ups a lot higher.

I felt like I was making real progress despite my addictive behaviors. I even managed to quit smoking weed for a while, but at the end of 2017 I realized I'd been lying to myself. I felt like I wasn't an inch closer to actually living my dreams. I had a lot of ideas and I gained a lot of knowledge on living a dream life, but again I was just dreaming. It wasn't tangible. I didn't put my words into action. I just keep fooling myself at every step.

Again, I have nowhere to run anymore, nowhere to hide. My dream is to become a writer and Steemit seems like a brilliant place to start. I'm done fooling myself. I want to make my dreams a reality and this time I'm not quitting.

Thank you for reading!

Suggestions and support are very appreciated.

With all the love and gratitude,

Stef.