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Yesterday, I was assembling a new desk for my office.

Luckily all the pieces were there, most of them fit, and the instructions were passably passable. Long story short, the new desk is assembled and I love it. (I’m sitting at it now as I type this).

Life, however, doesn’t always work like that.

Life isn’t a neatly packaged pre-fabricated piece of furniture.

We all arrive with a pile of pieces, many of them mismatched and not threaded correctly, certain things don’t line up, you’re missing half of them and the customer service department is next to impossible to reach. For lucky ones like me, we arrive with incredible mentors and guides like my parents, plus countless others who have come before me – some of whom are still working out how to make it all fit – just like the rest of us.

And, I don’t think that ‘working it out’ ever really happens and it never really ends.

When I embarked on my journey of recovery over six years ago, I was attempting to put together the most Ikea-est-of-Ikea things in my life, at first blindly using all the wrong pieces that I had been gathering for years and decades leading up to that moment.

There were no instructions, but I knew I wanted/needed that piece of ‘furniture’ in my home, no matter what it took. I was determined at all costs to do my best to figure it out because I admittedly didn’t really have any other alternatives. Well, I did, but none of them ended very pretty.

For myself, or anybody else.

Sometimes, screws still come loose. It wobbles from time to time. But, it still brings me joy because I know I put it together myself – or at least, I placed the order for it in the first place – I still use it to this day. To say I got my money’s worth would be an understatement, and others have come to appreciate and enjoy it over time, too.

Recovery, like all pieces of furniture, still and will forever continue to collect dust.

And it’s up to me to keep it dusted, and to tighten the screws when they come loose.

It goes without saying that I didn’t actually put it together all by myself.

I have countless people to thank, as I believe anyone in recovery does: counsellors, authors, friends and many other vulnerable individuals walking the same path as all of us, and of course – Buddha (I will always be grateful for buddhism and its teachings). I know I’d be hard pressed to find anyone in recovery who can honestly claim they did it all themselves - or anyone on this planet, to be honest.

If they do, they’re likely no one you should look up to or hope getting help from, anyhow.

Though I was given a mishmash of parts I collected randomly up until the point of coming-to-terms with my predicament (most of which led me on an apparently never-ending goose-hunt of searching for other parts to fit them) I kept my focus, though wavering at times, on the truth that I had ordered this myself, and now I needed to figure out how to put it all together.

I searched under every rock. On every bookshelf. In every coffee shop. In every song. In every social media group; my inbox, the news, in my stacks of journals and most importantly in those I loved and who have loved me unconditionally, supporting me all along.

The patient ones. The ones who continued to nurture me, because I’m still me and you’re still you, no matter what.

The ones who when I needed someone to help me hold up a shelf so I could at least get that one piece attached and fastened as best I could were always there and the first to lineup to support me.

You see, recovery is not something you do on your own, like trying to assemble a new desk for your office by yourself on a Thursday morning hoping all the right pieces are simply there with perfectly clear instructions – and wishing for the best.

No – recovery, just like a new desk, is what you asked for because it’s something you need. Putting it together – no matter what – is the next step toward building what you want.

Or at least, starting to.

I really did believe for a very long time that I had embarked on this ‘solo journey’.

That I myself was solely responsible for putting the whole thing together without others to help me hold up all the bits and pieces, or to point out all screws that may have rolled away. It is a solo journey in a roundabout way, because the drive and commitment comes from one place and one place only: the only place that all the critical pieces come from.

Within yourself.

Within myself.

The inspiration to simply keep going though - and how - almost always comes from outside yourself. The boards and frame come from you. All the screws that help put it hold it all together come from others.

No matter the amount of cheerleaders and kind words of encouragement or motivation I already had or continued to receive, without my own commitment to turning my life around it didn’t matter how many nuts and bolts I had collected or how well drafted my blueprints may have started to look – I still needed a lot of help from others to hold up so many pieces I needed to supply myself, or this thing wasn’t ever going to get put together.

Not the right way, anyhow.

And, I still very much do.

It all came down to learning how to accept that life is and will always continue to be self-assembly required – but knowing that help is there when you need it – and remembering to ask for it often knowing that if you don’t the whole thing will inevitably collapse in on itself.

I am a firm believer that we are all here walking our paths so that we can help others we meet along the way; that whoever you meet and for whatever reason have not arrived on your journey by chance but because in one way or another, we are here to help each other.

Because we all belong to one another.

That is the beauty of life. We are all always, always, assembling furniture on our own – until we inevitably – always – meet someone who arrives to help us, or who we can offer our help to, instead.

To help you build, while you find a way to help them build, too.

Once you’re sitting at your new desk typing a new piece for your blog, or pausing to appreciate the table that now serves to gather your friends and family around it – the sense of pride and appreciation that you somehow, with the help of an army of supporters, managed to piece it all together is more valuable and rewarding than anything that arrives fully assembled and in no time, is taken for granted.

Writing my book didn’t happen simply because I wrote it.

It took six years of trials, struggles – and support from countless others along the way – who in turn, wrote the story with me.

It took more people than I can count, many of whom I haven’t even met in person.

It took a village to help me put the pieces together, to hand me the screws and tools I needed to tighten it all up into something worth being proud of.

The same goes for my recovery, for my friendships and relationships, my home, my career, and for everything that arrives chosen just for me as part of my every day.

So, no – life doesn’t come fully assembled.

Neither does recovery, happiness, navigating grief, addiction, or the endless losses and successes we all experience throughout our lives. It comes in the form of a cryptic puzzle made up of a million random pieces that make no sense, and without any diagram or picture on the outside of the box showing you what it’s even supposed to look like in the end. All we have to go on is our gut, our intuition, and our vision and determination for what we want to create – and why.

That, and some people willing help you on your journey of putting it all together.

Trust me – there will always, always be people to help you hold up the shelves.

And you’ll always need help holding up the shelves.

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Oh, and I made YOU a Playlist!

I’m trying to put together a new, Life in Detox-inspired playlist on Spotify each month, full of songs that inspire me or keep my mood up. My hope it to change the genre and vibe from month to month, because my musical tastes are as diverse as the meandering path of my life to date. For March, the inaugural playlist, it’s an upbeat, toe-tapping (more or less – a few rogue selections slipped in there) collection of songs that remind me of recovery, or some of the underlying themes I talked about on the blog in the month before.

Link to the playlist is below!
If you’re on Spotify, save it and let me know what you think.

There’s 41 songs and it’s 2 hours and 20 minutes long. I hope you enjoy it!