This fight with addiction, the stigma of addiction... it’s a THING – with a capital T H I N G – and it can be beyond exhausting some times. I’m reminded on a daily basis (second by second?) that I don’t have the luxury of “just one sip” to ease my anxiety, celebrate an accomplishments, or escape the day’s troubles.
This is a forever journey. I’ve fought for every single sober second I’ve experienced. I’ll continue to claw and scrape forward to battle the sirens call to take a wee sip of that burning rum again and I will be victorious.
I’ll come out on top because I’m learning how to love myself again. I’m worth it. I’ll win because there’s nothing more important to me than my children and family. Their love and support humbles and grounds me. I’ll be victorious because of the hard work I do EVERY! SINGLE! DAY! to make myself a better person as I try to ensure those around me feel loved, heard, and respected.
I may not feel presentable to the outside world, but I promise you this: I will never stop pushing myself to be more grateful, more loving, and more empathetic towards myself and others in my *most imperfect, messy, unique, authentic way*.
Honestly, I’ve already tried living the lie of perfectionism and look how that turned out for me? Instead I actively chose to see how embracing my truthfully messy life goes.
Cheers to another 7 years of sobriety, fought for one moment at a time.
If you or someone you know needs help with alcohol dependency or addiction, please contact the National Drug & Alcohol Treatment hotline 24/7 at: 800.662.HELP (4357).
I wrote you a letter in purple pen. I was high again. Relapsed the day before after having 6 months clean, and I knew that you knew I was high the last time I saw you at the Care Center. I felt so guilty because I felt like I was crawling out of my skin to get out of that room.
Not because I didn’t want to see you, but there was nothing to do in there with your hospital bed; you could barely get out of and the TV was constantly running. We talked about how you needed to find a new place to live and how I could live with you again and help you out, writing all these ideas and plans.
A few days later, I helped pack up your apartment, trying to save everything because I knew how much you loved all your knick-knacks and junk. You and I were always the sentimental ones. After going through and packing it all up, putting it into storage, just until you were out of the Care Center.
I should have come to see you. I was literally just down the street. Wouldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes to see you. But I was coming down.
All I could think was lets’s get this done so I can go pick up. I didn’t even stop by or call you that day.
I went to the park after getting my fix and started writing you a letter. Telling you how sorry I was that I wasn’t the best kid, and didn’t always appreciate you, and that I know you did your best with what you could; that I loved you.
The next day I was at work and get a call from grandma.
She tells me that you had a heart attack, and you were gone.
They have stolen thousands of dollars (money I was saving for a house down payment). They keep taking money out of our account and not paying it back like promised, thus leaving me to pull from what little savings we had to help us get through winter in order to keep the bills paid.
They are slowly draining me of our money and my soul.
I am obsessing over what they are doing; where they are going. I’m searching the house for stashes.
I found a box of baking soda and a burned spoon.
I found the missing (now empty) money pouch from when my kids were fundraising.
I feel like I’m going crazy.
I went to an Al-Anon meeting tonight. It was my first time. I didn’t share, or even speak.
It hurt so much that everything that was said was so relatable. That they’ve all been through this, felt this way. I didn’t even tell them anything. They told me I wasn’t crazy.
That hit me. Hard.
I think I’m living with an addict. And I don’t know what to do.
I know I have a better life than a lot of people, and I try to be grateful for it.
I feel guilty when I dwell on my problems: other people have it so much worse: how can I complain? How can I mope around or be depressed?!
Oh how I wish I could talk to someone, to sit in a group and swap stories about burning the inside of our mouths, or panic attacks, or how much it sucks to have to lug all your belongings around in a garbage bag.
But I just can’t.
I have walked past the building where NA meetings are held probably a hundred times, looked at their website again and again, memorizing their schedule, but I can’t bring myself to go.
I’m afraid that people won’t like me because I’ve been clean now for four years, that because now I have a car and an apartment in a slightly decent area of the city, I’ll be told to get over it, to stop whining.
On the other hand, I think, what if I go to a regular counselor and I scare them? What if, when I admit to the time I smoked crack with my pregnant best friend, it’s too much and they kick me out?
What if I get the cops called on me when I admit to all the illegal things I’ve done?
Now I’m surrounded by people that, if they knew what I used to be and what I still am, would go running in the other direction.
I even tried to become an alcoholic for a few months; I drank myself into a stupor everyday, forced it into me until my brain chemistry was so out of whack and my kidneys hurt right through my back.
I still drink – get drunk – by myself, but I have to be careful because it makes my panic disorder worse. I drink just until I feel myself going crazy, stop for a few days, then back at it.
It’s funny, when my brother hanged himself, I was kind of mad that he took that option away from me: you can’t have two kids from the same family both kill themselves!
I’m okay with his suicide, though. I understand it was a planned out thing, so things were obviously pretty bad to get to that point. My brother didn’t speak, though; I was the only one he spoke to until he was about 17, and then he even shut me out.
After a while, I started getting paranoid that he was going to kill me, so I distanced myself from him even further.
I’m pretty alone now.
I lost most of my friends when I got clean, and I’ve moved to a different city since. I hate it here a lot, and most people here are way out of my league education and status wise. I have a few friends from work that I go for drinks with on the weekends, but I can’t really connect or open up with anyone.
I’m afraid to date again; my ex is still too fresh in my mind, and the thought of having to have sex again makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like being touched sexually.
It’s a shame because I would love to have children – they would give me something to focus on, to love and be loved back, without having to be in a relationship.
But I guess as of right now, it’s me, alcohol, and my two darling cats.
My husband and I got into a very heated fight (to say the least). We were in each other’s face and things got physical and turned into domestic abuse.
Alcohol was involved.
I ended up going to the ER and was diagnosed with a head injury and a bruised rib. The police came to the hospital to ask me what happened – if I’d been the victim of domestic abuse – and I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want both of us to to to jail.
I was charged with a domestic abuse charge. He would have been too, if I’d said anything.
Anyway, there’s a no contact order between him and I, but he has my children: my 2 1/2 son and my 9 year old daughter. I am only allowed to communicate through my attorney or at the family resource center.
Right now? He won’t answer the phone to either number.
It has been nine excruciating days since I’ve seen my children.
I want to see my children but he will not let me see them and I’m devastated.
We have a hearing for the restraining order on the 11th. I don’t know what to do to prepare for it. I have the hospital records of my injuries. I don’t want him in trouble because he is my husband and I still love him very much – we both need help and things got out of hand.
Without my kids, it’s hard to get up in the morning.
*UPDATE* I finally got in touch with my attorney and let him know all the details. He told me to bring the hospital records to the hearing. As much as I wish this never had happened, I’m not going to be a doormat and let him scare me.
With all the upheaval and negativity running rampant through our lives, it’s important to be able to stop, take stock of what’s important, and find some joy wherever we can.
At The Band Back Together Project, we like to take the time specifically to arrange a little happy boost for everyone.
t dawns on me as I sit there, anxiety at an all time high, my left butt-cheek falling asleep, that I could be somewhere else eating a bagel. Like Paris. Or Detroit. Or learning the Swahili phrase for “pants are bullshit.” Or washing my car. Okay, maybe not washing my car. It was like -900 degrees out. Washing my car would be like that scene in the Terminator with the Nitrous Oxide and the robot.
I smile, imagining my car shattering in the car wash, until I remember I’m probably sitting on barf germs. I hate barf germs.
My iPhone isn’t getting any signal in here. Stupid AT&T. Should be named the iCAN’TPhone because I haven’t been able to make a phone call since I got the damn thing. Hm. I really could use some mindless interaction from The Twitter right about now. Or maybe a Vicodin-Chip cookie. Or some vodka. Because my heart feels like it’s going to pound right the fuck out of my chest.
When the hell did this HAPPEN?
When did I start feeling stretched as taut as an over-tuned violin string? Why did I feel like the pressure to do more; to be more, to constantly outdo myself was omnipresent? Like I couldn’t ever possibly manage to live up to my own unrealistic expectations? Like I had to somehow be everything to everyone. Like if I didn’t constantly prove myself, I would cease to matter. I would cease to exist.
When did this start? And moreover: how could I make this stop?
These anxious racing thoughts; this anxiety, this had to stop.
Admitting that I had a problem the first step, I know from Al-Anon, and doing something about it was important. Hence the bagel-craving and the barf-germ-coated chair in my doctor’s waiting room. And, of course, the urge to flee so that I could learn Portuguese or Mandarin or really anything but admit that I had a problem.
I’m so tired of problems. I’m so tired of having something wrong that I barely want to admit to myself that I have a problem. Between migraines and my lazy-ass missing-in-action thyroid and insomnia, I can hardly stand to be in the same room with myself anymore without wanting to punch myself in the teeth. Problems are bullshit. I hate problems. Maybe I can make a “Problems Are Bullshit” shirt. Because they are. Bullshit, that is.
Maybe this isn’t ACTUALLY a problem. Maybe I can just ignore it and it’ll get better on it’s own.
Except it hasn’t. Because that’s what I’ve been doing. And it’s not working. Clearly.
Before I could do anything, though, the nurse poked her head into the waiting room, “Becky?” she trilled calmly, clearly unaware of my churning guts.
I sighed, put my iDON’TWORKPhone back into my purse and followed her back.
“What seems to be the problem?” she asked kindly.
“Well,” I started, looking at my hands, ashamed to be admitting this to anyone but the people who live inside my computer. “It’s sorta like this…”
