As we all leave this past year behind us, saying, "Goodbye 2014! You ate all of my snacks and talked about your sucky new boyfriend the entire night so GTFO!" We also say with some trepidation, "Sure 2015, I guess you can come in? You seem.....OK ", I've realized that I've learned a little bit about a lot. Or a lot about very little.
Anyway, it's been a long time since I blogged.
It's been a long time since I've written anything...period.
Although, at this point, I think it would be incredibly out of character and slightly alarming if I churned something out every week or so. I wouldn't want to frighten anyone so I'll just stick to my way of being; in this regard, anyway.
Although, (again), flying in the face of that was a flurry of little posts I had written back in the middle of last year, right after I was unceremoniously dumped by both my job and my boyfriend.
I like to think of that time as my "I-SWEAR-TO-GOD-I'M-FINE/I'M-NOT-DEPRESSED-OR-SUICIDAL-EVERYONE", frantic posting period.
It wasn't until a few months later that I realized that I was massively depressed. But of course.
Whether or not my body started deteriorating from the onset of said depression or the depression originated from the onset of said physical deterioration is anyone's guess and honestly doesn't really matter. And that whole chicken/egg thing has always made me fucking crazy, anyway. Why bother?
I would make the world's worst philosophy major: Lots of eye rolling...lots of papers beginning and ending with, "I don't fucking know. Who cares?!"
I just knew that I could no longer eat. When my appetite was decent, I had a hard time swallowing and an even more difficult time keeping food down and digesting.
Early on, when all of this started, I got a phone call from someone who I had gone on a first date with just a week prior. He called to ask me out for a second date. Halfway through a really interesting conversation, I suddenly started choking. I kid you not. I started choking on....nothing. It turned out to just be my stomach acid. For some misguided sense of what I thought to be good manners, it didn't even OCCUR to me to hang up the phone, but instead, to very politely "Mute" him so that he could keep talking, uninterrupted. (Yes, I understand the insanity of this).
Anyway, as I desperately tried to save my own life, while he chatted on unknowingly, bashing my windpipe against the metal edge of my kitchen sink, possibly breaking a rib or two, I eventually managed to get a breath back into my lungs, at which point a never-ending stream of bile got vomited up. (You're totally welcome for that imagery, by the way).
All the while, I worried about how rude it was to keep him on hold for so long. So of course, among my many other faults, I suffer from an honesty-disease and proceeded to tell my potential suitor (once un-muted) every. single. detail. about what just HAPPENED.
Two days later, he called to tell me that you know, life was just really busy and hectic right now aaaaand he would probably have to cancel our date.
This is one of my favorite stories.
Anyhow, veering away from ridiculous dating misadventures and swerving speedily back onto the winding road of illness, things of course continued to decline.
I soon found myself getting unexplained fevers on a daily basis; sometimes multiple times in a day.
This would happen in social situations at times, with no warning and having no outward appearance of flu or cold. I would just suddenly sink into myself; my body, skin hurting, eye-sockets on fire. And in my perpetual insecurity of needing the people around me to like me, would only concern myself with how anti-social I appeared in those moments.
And in truth, that's how I was beginning to feel in the quiet moments. The many quiet moments I spent at home, unable to get out of bed, unable to gather energy to make food, let alone keeping it down at all, unable to focus on anything except for the pain my body was continuously plagued by.
My weight kept plummeting...lower and lower down the rabbit hole it went with me.
An already previously diagnosed heart condition worsened. My mitral valve prolapse kept...well, I guess...prolapsing...?
I had no health insurance; no job prospects; my unemployment benefits abruptly stopped and even if I had had any employment prospects, how the hell would I impress anyone in an interview?! I looked like I was dying. And if I had somehow, miraculously passed the interview, how could I work an eight-hour day? I couldn't stand long enough to wash five dishes in my own apartment.
So in and out of the hospital I would go. I'm unsure if any of my few family members doubted whether or not I was truly ill and that I had just manifested this completely psychosomatically or, if they had suspicions that I had had a relapse in my sobriety.
Either way, if either of those two scenarios were suspected, it wasn't expressed to me verbally.
SAVE, for one person. Someone whom I was so close to that they knew every activity I was up to, every single day of the week.
I'm an isolationist on my BEST day, but sick, moody, any sort of non-optimum condition I'm in and you may not hear from me for months...easily!
Yet this person could always get through to me. Even knowing every move I made, they voiced their doubts about my sobriety during the other most awkward type of conversation possible: Money.
I was in the position of having to beg for money, again, in order to pay my rent and avoid homelessness....again.
In case you couldn't guess by this point, every single practical area of my life had hit bottom. I was sick, I was depressed, jobless, broke, fearful and absolutely uncertain of what, if any kind of future I had.
And the way that I looked....
Two key moments my memory locked in on: Noticing for the first time that my eyes were so sunken into their sockets, that my entire face had taken on the resemblance of my mother's in her last few months alive.
Another: Undressing in front of a man I was having "relations" with and without him knowing that I was looking, catching an array of pity, revulsion and guilt spread across his face within seconds as he surveyed my bag of bones.
That was an entirely new experience for me.
ALL of this to say, that the idea that someone that close to me, who spoke with me every single day, would suspect me of having fallen off the wagon, I guess wasn't all that far-fetched. Painful and hurtful AS. FUCK. But no...not far-fetched, at all.
Once you admit you're an addict, there is no going back. You are by extension admitting you are a fuck-up.
Certain personality traits that you exhibit when using....who knows; maybe even prior to using, are hard to shake. They are what you AIM to eliminate once you become sober.
They creep up on you as you come out of your drug-induced haze...a slow-dawning nightmare of a realization that just the mere ACT of getting clean didn't just automatically eliminate your lifelong bad habits and self-sabotaging personality traits.
It sucks.
You want, and expect, like a spoiled child quite frankly, to wave the magical wand of sobriety that bleaches away all of the distrust and resentment that your loved ones have towards you; your broken relationships are of course repaired; you are suddenly a fully functioning adult who can run your life with expert precision and grace like Martha Stewart on an Adderall bender.
None of that shit happens.
You're just you...as you've always been. Only now, more aware of what a fuck-up you are.
That's it.
And so it continues; your screw-ups, your problems...
The game becomes: How do I break all of these habits/traits/cycles? How the fuck do I do all of this?
Actually, I'm unclear which, yet and it's already Feb. 17th, 2015.
Anyway, it's been a long time since I blogged.
It's been a long time since I've written anything...period.
Although, at this point, I think it would be incredibly out of character and slightly alarming if I churned something out every week or so. I wouldn't want to frighten anyone so I'll just stick to my way of being; in this regard, anyway.
Although, (again), flying in the face of that was a flurry of little posts I had written back in the middle of last year, right after I was unceremoniously dumped by both my job and my boyfriend.
I like to think of that time as my "I-SWEAR-TO-GOD-I'M-FINE/I'M-NOT-DEPRESSED-OR-SUICIDAL-EVERYONE", frantic posting period.
It wasn't until a few months later that I realized that I was massively depressed. But of course.
Whether or not my body started deteriorating from the onset of said depression or the depression originated from the onset of said physical deterioration is anyone's guess and honestly doesn't really matter. And that whole chicken/egg thing has always made me fucking crazy, anyway. Why bother?
I would make the world's worst philosophy major: Lots of eye rolling...lots of papers beginning and ending with, "I don't fucking know. Who cares?!"
I just knew that I could no longer eat. When my appetite was decent, I had a hard time swallowing and an even more difficult time keeping food down and digesting.
Early on, when all of this started, I got a phone call from someone who I had gone on a first date with just a week prior. He called to ask me out for a second date. Halfway through a really interesting conversation, I suddenly started choking. I kid you not. I started choking on....nothing. It turned out to just be my stomach acid. For some misguided sense of what I thought to be good manners, it didn't even OCCUR to me to hang up the phone, but instead, to very politely "Mute" him so that he could keep talking, uninterrupted. (Yes, I understand the insanity of this).
Anyway, as I desperately tried to save my own life, while he chatted on unknowingly, bashing my windpipe against the metal edge of my kitchen sink, possibly breaking a rib or two, I eventually managed to get a breath back into my lungs, at which point a never-ending stream of bile got vomited up. (You're totally welcome for that imagery, by the way).
All the while, I worried about how rude it was to keep him on hold for so long. So of course, among my many other faults, I suffer from an honesty-disease and proceeded to tell my potential suitor (once un-muted) every. single. detail. about what just HAPPENED.
Two days later, he called to tell me that you know, life was just really busy and hectic right now aaaaand he would probably have to cancel our date.
This is one of my favorite stories.
Anyhow, veering away from ridiculous dating misadventures and swerving speedily back onto the winding road of illness, things of course continued to decline.
I soon found myself getting unexplained fevers on a daily basis; sometimes multiple times in a day.
This would happen in social situations at times, with no warning and having no outward appearance of flu or cold. I would just suddenly sink into myself; my body, skin hurting, eye-sockets on fire. And in my perpetual insecurity of needing the people around me to like me, would only concern myself with how anti-social I appeared in those moments.
And in truth, that's how I was beginning to feel in the quiet moments. The many quiet moments I spent at home, unable to get out of bed, unable to gather energy to make food, let alone keeping it down at all, unable to focus on anything except for the pain my body was continuously plagued by.
My weight kept plummeting...lower and lower down the rabbit hole it went with me.
An already previously diagnosed heart condition worsened. My mitral valve prolapse kept...well, I guess...prolapsing...?
I had no health insurance; no job prospects; my unemployment benefits abruptly stopped and even if I had had any employment prospects, how the hell would I impress anyone in an interview?! I looked like I was dying. And if I had somehow, miraculously passed the interview, how could I work an eight-hour day? I couldn't stand long enough to wash five dishes in my own apartment.
So in and out of the hospital I would go. I'm unsure if any of my few family members doubted whether or not I was truly ill and that I had just manifested this completely psychosomatically or, if they had suspicions that I had had a relapse in my sobriety.
Either way, if either of those two scenarios were suspected, it wasn't expressed to me verbally.
SAVE, for one person. Someone whom I was so close to that they knew every activity I was up to, every single day of the week.
I'm an isolationist on my BEST day, but sick, moody, any sort of non-optimum condition I'm in and you may not hear from me for months...easily!
Yet this person could always get through to me. Even knowing every move I made, they voiced their doubts about my sobriety during the other most awkward type of conversation possible: Money.
I was in the position of having to beg for money, again, in order to pay my rent and avoid homelessness....again.
In case you couldn't guess by this point, every single practical area of my life had hit bottom. I was sick, I was depressed, jobless, broke, fearful and absolutely uncertain of what, if any kind of future I had.
And the way that I looked....
Two key moments my memory locked in on: Noticing for the first time that my eyes were so sunken into their sockets, that my entire face had taken on the resemblance of my mother's in her last few months alive.
Another: Undressing in front of a man I was having "relations" with and without him knowing that I was looking, catching an array of pity, revulsion and guilt spread across his face within seconds as he surveyed my bag of bones.
That was an entirely new experience for me.
ALL of this to say, that the idea that someone that close to me, who spoke with me every single day, would suspect me of having fallen off the wagon, I guess wasn't all that far-fetched. Painful and hurtful AS. FUCK. But no...not far-fetched, at all.
Once you admit you're an addict, there is no going back. You are by extension admitting you are a fuck-up.
Certain personality traits that you exhibit when using....who knows; maybe even prior to using, are hard to shake. They are what you AIM to eliminate once you become sober.
They creep up on you as you come out of your drug-induced haze...a slow-dawning nightmare of a realization that just the mere ACT of getting clean didn't just automatically eliminate your lifelong bad habits and self-sabotaging personality traits.
It sucks.
You want, and expect, like a spoiled child quite frankly, to wave the magical wand of sobriety that bleaches away all of the distrust and resentment that your loved ones have towards you; your broken relationships are of course repaired; you are suddenly a fully functioning adult who can run your life with expert precision and grace like Martha Stewart on an Adderall bender.
None of that shit happens.
You're just you...as you've always been. Only now, more aware of what a fuck-up you are.
That's it.
And so it continues; your screw-ups, your problems...
The game becomes: How do I break all of these habits/traits/cycles? How the fuck do I do all of this?
What happened to me in this past year is just life shit. It happens or can happen to all of us. we all lose our jobs, money...we get sick, we lose people, etc. It happens to us all: Addicts and "normals" alike.
Again though, it comes full circle: Chicken or egg? did my very nature as a drug-addict (in recovery, yes, but regardless...), did my very nature as a drug-addict conjure all of this/imbue it with more drama or exaggerate these circumstances more so then they would if I had been "normal"? Does it matter to question it?
I doubt it.
All that I've managed to work out is that I am physically ill and I'm taking it one day at a time to try to get myself better. Fine.
But really what I've worked out is that I suck at life and I'm starting from the bottom...yet again. I suck at the administration, doingness and daily operation of life.
I am, without a doubt, a fuck-up.
And I have about a million excuses and almost zero solutions.
I am an addict in recovery. And stepping in your own shit and cleaning it off the soles of your own shoes is the daily learning process. It can be slow and without a doubt, it is quite painful. I can't imagine the full extent of frustration it causes our family members and friends. I probably only get the very TIP of those brutally cold icebergs. And echoed in real life, I have NO neat and tidy way to wrap up this post.
There will, without fail, be more messes to clean up along the way. I'm trying to figure it out.
As painful as it is to live and to watch from afar, I'm trying to figure it out.
Again though, it comes full circle: Chicken or egg? did my very nature as a drug-addict (in recovery, yes, but regardless...), did my very nature as a drug-addict conjure all of this/imbue it with more drama or exaggerate these circumstances more so then they would if I had been "normal"? Does it matter to question it?
I doubt it.
All that I've managed to work out is that I am physically ill and I'm taking it one day at a time to try to get myself better. Fine.
But really what I've worked out is that I suck at life and I'm starting from the bottom...yet again. I suck at the administration, doingness and daily operation of life.
I am, without a doubt, a fuck-up.
And I have about a million excuses and almost zero solutions.
I am an addict in recovery. And stepping in your own shit and cleaning it off the soles of your own shoes is the daily learning process. It can be slow and without a doubt, it is quite painful. I can't imagine the full extent of frustration it causes our family members and friends. I probably only get the very TIP of those brutally cold icebergs. And echoed in real life, I have NO neat and tidy way to wrap up this post.
There will, without fail, be more messes to clean up along the way. I'm trying to figure it out.
As painful as it is to live and to watch from afar, I'm trying to figure it out.
You're not a fuck up forever. Or rather, everybody is a fuck up eventually. Which is the same thing, right? It's just that not everyone gets their card pulled at the same time. But since you've already gone down that road, you're ahead of the game, really. So, congratulations on that. lol
ReplyDeleteLife might or might not be bullshit in the end. If it is, then just know that you make the bullshit just a bit more bearable for certain humans out there. And probably a few plants. And most animals. But not cockroaches. Fuck those guys.