Last Sunday night, I sat at my neighbors’ house and cried and cussed. Terry and Cody were at church, and at some point in my conversation with Jimmy, something in me gave way.

“I’m tired of life being this hard,” I told him. “I got sober almost four years ago, and look at how much harder it’s gotten. Three breakdowns in under two years? Are you kidding me? I’m so f-ing tired of this.”

I told him it would be nice to have some money in the bank again, to get taken out to dinner, and to have something happen that was simply enjoyable instead of difficult or meaningful or character-building.

“I’m just about done with the whole f-ing thing,” I said. “I’m sick of whatever lessons God is trying to teach me.”

I meant it.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from working very hard to make your life better and watching it get harder anyway. I got sober almost four years ago. I have gone to therapy, made amends, and learned about trauma, boundaries, nervous systems, and accountability. I have examined my relationships, my faith, my choices, my patterns, and myself. I have tried to repair what I could repair and accept what I couldn’t.

And I’m tired. Not tired in the way that a good night’s sleep fixes. I’m tired of everything being something I need to work through. I’m tired of rebuilding, needing help, and starting over. I’m tired of resilience being one of my most frequently exercised muscles.

Sometimes I don’t want another breakthrough. I don’t want another lesson. I don’t want to discover what this difficult season is teaching me. I want to have some f-ing fun.

I want steady work and money in the bank. I want to be taken out to dinner. I want to laugh until my stomach hurts. I want music and good food and trips and people I love sitting around a table. I want to make plans because I’m excited about something instead of because I’m trying to stabilize my life. I want more days that don’t require recovery from them.

I stood there looking at them because I could swear I’d seen this before— butterflies around another dead armadillo. It turns out butterflies aren’t nearly as precious as we’ve made them out to be. Some butterflies are attracted to carrion. They can get salts and other nutrients there that they don’t get from flower nectar. The creatures we’ve turned into delicate symbols of beauty and transformation will apparently hang out with buzzards and flies and take what they need from something dead.

I couldn’t help but appreciate the timing. Less than twelve hours earlier, I’d been sitting across from Jimmy telling him how thoroughly sick I was of finding meaning in hard things.

And I still am.

I’m tired of trying to turn the last few years of my life into an inspirational story about how everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe that anymore. And I certainly don’t believe God has spent the last few years knocking me flat because there were a few more lessons Leah needed to learn.

Some things are just terrible. Some things hurt. Some things die. And sometimes, after you’ve worked incredibly hard to change your life, life gets harder anyway.

Sobriety saved my life, but sobriety didn’t hand me an easier one. There have been losses and financial struggles and relationships that changed. There have been three mental health breakdowns in less than two years, along with hospitals, apologies, and starting over. There have been moments when I’ve had to hear things about myself and my behavior that made me want to crawl out of my own skin.

There have also been people who stayed. People who fed me, helped me financially, sat with me, listened to me cuss, told me the truth, forgave me, made me laugh, and reminded me who I was when I wasn’t entirely sure myself. There have been relationships repaired and extraordinary kindness.

There have been mornings beside the creek, walks with my dogs, and meals with people I love. There has been music played too loudly in my car, ridiculous text conversations, good coffee, and unexpected laughter. There have been moments when I’ve thought, Oh. There I am.

And lately, I think I need more of those.

Not because enjoyment is another mental health intervention. Not because fun is something I should add to a checklist under “wellness.” Because I’m alive, and I’d like to enjoy some of it.

Maybe that’s why the butterflies got my attention. Not because I needed one more metaphor for transformation. God knows butterflies have carried enough of that burden. And not because their presence made the dead armadillo somehow beautiful. It was still a dead armadillo. It smelled like death. It was covered in flies. There were ten buzzards hanging around my property because they knew exactly what it was.

The butterflies didn’t change any of that. They were simply there too.

That’s the part I keep thinking about: buzzards and butterflies. They weren’t on opposite sides of the property, with the ugly thing over here and the beautiful thing safely over there. They were in the same place.

I think I’ve spent a lot of time waiting for the buzzards to leave before allowing myself to believe I’m in a beautiful part of my life. Maybe that’s not how it works. Maybe a life isn’t divided neatly into terrible seasons and beautiful ones.

Maybe you can be scared about money and grateful for your home. Maybe you can grieve relationships and deeply enjoy the people who are still sitting at your table. Maybe you can be angry about what has happened to your mind and still trust it enough to write something worth saying. Maybe you can be tired—really, profoundly, cuss-in-your-neighbor’s-kitchen tired—and still laugh your ass off later. Maybe you can desperately want your life to get easier without failing to notice that parts of it are already good.

I don’t want to become so skilled at surviving that survival is all I know how to do. I want pleasure back. I want anticipation. I want delight. I want ordinary days that are allowed to be ordinary. I want dinners I don’t have to cook and conversations that don’t require processing afterward. I want work that pays me well and uses what I’m good at. I want adventures, dancing, laughter, and love. I want to sit beside my creek and be completely uninterested in what anything means.

I want to enjoy being alive.

And maybe that’s what I almost missed that morning. I went outside because I heard a buzzard. I walked toward the creek because something was dead. But when I got there, there were butterflies.

The buzzards were real, and so were the butterflies. I don’t need to pretend one isn’t there in order to notice the other. But after several years of paying very close attention to the buzzards, I think I’m ready to spend a little more time watching the butterflies.