I admit I am becoming drunk on the sense of possibility.
I should explain.
I’ve always been so goddamn suicidal that the answer to the question of what I wanted to do with my life was meaningless.
I wanted to die.
That was it.
That veil is lifting now and I’m remembering what it’s like to use my brain for things.
Good lord am I rusty.
But I’m getting better.
I’m seeing potential in things and ideas whereas before I only saw obstacles.
What a gift.
Now to go gently, so I don’t flame out.
Tag Archives: recovery
Truce
I have reached
a bit of
a stalemate
with my
neurochemicals.
They don’t
hurt me
and I don’t
hurt them.
No more
drinking
and various
self abuses.
I’ll take
my meds.
I’ll do the
sunshine thing.
I’ll even
exercise.
This gets me
to the point
where I can
exist at equilibrium
only the
faintest whispers
of the
craving of death
pounding
like a heartbeat
from the
hollow cavern
in my chest,
I feel like
this is
as close
to normal
that I may be
capable of.
I’ve made
a truce
with my
brain.
We don’t talk
as much shit
about each other
any more.
I’m learning
to remember
the love
I had for it once.
Before the
shock therapy
And the concussions
And the whole
“smacking myself
in the head when
in distress” thing.
I’ve apologized
to my hallucination goo.
I’m gentler on it now.
I hope it can forgive me.
Kidnapped
Coming out of depression isn’t like a fog lifting or a flower blooming. That’s entirely too romantic. It’s more like a bright light, but it’s only just spiking through, it’s mostly dark, you’re tied up. Rough. Burlap and rope tied around you, left alone to figure out your confinement and your freedom. Everything is rough and cold but it’s a real feeling. You take inventory, try and figure out where the pain is worst, try to piece it together with a memory stunted by sedative. Bones creak and scars are measured. Checkmarks go with traumas as you remember the things that you agreed to when you weren’t a qualified advocate for yourself. You’ll pay for those for the rest of your life. You were kidnapped by depression. It owns that part of you. It’ll always creak behind your thoughts. But today you’ll get to wonder if this chance at freedom is real.
Doing and not doing
I haven’t been blogging lately. Or writing at all, really. Or exercising. Or getting up on time in the morning. One thing that I have been doing is drinking.
Depression and alcohol abuse are really a chicken and the egg problem. I know the depression came first in my case, since the first time that I told someone I wanted to kill myself was second grade, and I certainly wasn’t abusing alcohol then.
Together, my drinking and my depression spiral with each other, in an elegant, lumbering dance to the shame pit.
My husband mentioned to me regarding my recent binges “I don’t know what happened, you were doing so well.” It was hard to hear my sobriety as a thing that I would or could be doing well at, or think that it has a moralistic view to it, not drinking good, drinking bad. This is because I like to pretend alcohol doesn’t have a grip on me, or at least not that bad of one. These are the lies I tell myself.
I know what drinking does to me. I know what it did to me, the damage it’s caused. A hundred pounds of weight gain, 2 institutionalizations, a brilliant mind that’s become twisted with doubt and fear, wasted time
wasted life
getting wasted.
Why did I write today? I don’t know. To be honest, I had given up on me writing. I guess it’s because I was thinking about the measures of success. For me, today was a failure because I didn’t get up on time and I had drank the night before. I viewed it as a failure before it even started. I’m crying right now at that realization, the standards I hold myself to. I know I wouldn’t want anyone else to think the way that I think, especially because today was a good day. I cut a lot of wood with my husband and my dad. I spent 6 hours with some of my favorite people planning for an Artprize project that’s bigger and more out of my scope that I would ever dream of accomplishing, and I’m honored to be a part of. But as we were packing up, I was overwhelmed by the sense of emptiness that sank in my chest. I don’t ever seem to remember the good moments, the laughter, the productivity, the engagement with the team. But I know I will remember that feeling of emptiness. In fact, it’s creeping in right now.
Maybe I’ll go have a drink.
And maybe tomorrow I’ll try to focus my self sabotage making me human, not a failure.
Rexicorn 