A Lovely Dream

And it's May

Art from my workshop Tell Your Story.
I've been working myself literally to death, and then trying to exercise, so I got horribly sick. I'm sure it has something to do with my upcoming sobriety date and my general panic around birthdays and holiday events. I dislike milestones. I prefer ordinary days when nothing extraordinary is expected to happen.  Now that I have a fever and can do nothing I am even more emotionally cracked out.  Sitting still and not being able to do anything just lets me think. And feel. Two shitty things when one is in a bad space, and sober.
  I know most of you here don't have a life like mine. Most of you are married and settled, have a kid.  I admit that I feel very foreign to the women I teach, especially when I do in person classes. For varying reasons I have for most of my life sequestered myself in my room and see very few people.  It started after Highschool when I developed panic disorder and really couldn't go anywhere.
But it grew into a general uneasiness in the real world. And sitting here sick makes me think of it even more.  I feel like such a fk up.  That even though I have many valid excuses as to why I am how I am and what fked up things happened, I still feel like I'm doing it wrong.   Obviously I am because I'm so sick.  I know what I need to do for my health and I go on the roller coaster of doing it and then not doing it and I pay for it like now.  It is absolutely the same thing as pouring a bottle of vodka down my throat only its not vodka, its 18 hour days and eating pop tarts.  Same results - exhaustion, sickness, it just happens slower. There's more time for me to stop it then when I'm in a binge of drinking, and when I drank once I had one it was Off To The Races and I would be unable to stop...sort of like how I got to here today. Sick like I am.

 

Once I'm on that manic roll of sugar and work and no feeling and go gO GO! I don't want to stop. Stopping means feeling and thinking and missing and longing and looking at the superficial aspects of my life and knowing I am not where I want to be yet.  And knowing I'll never get there if I don't deal with my health.  It's a circle of not wanting to feel or think then doing things so I wont feel or think and then it makes me sick. So I'm sober, but still act like an addict, does that make sense? The first step is of course admittance.

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  In AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, you sit on a cold metal chair in a church basement, weak coffee in a styrofoam cup in your hand, and you tell your story; what it was like when you were drinking and what it is like now that you are not.  You wont remember what you’ve said when you are done because you were so nervous you blew through it like fire through a log cabin. You recall explosions and how its better now that the fires out.  Any rational person knows that drinking and puking and a life of chaos does not equal peace, a rational, non alcoholic person that is, but to the room full of drunks listening, they need to be reminded.  That’s what keeps us sober, stories.  The more years away from our last drink does not make us any less alcoholic, it just gives us time to learn the coping skills needed to get through emotional situations. Give us a bad day and we can, and often do, go back as if we never stopped.  That’s why they call alcoholism a disease. It is one of the mind in which once an addict gene is triggered, we become insane.

“If a little is good, more is better,“ said every addict that ever lived.

Alcohol trickles down my throat and all care for health and well being disappear.  With my misshapen alcoholic gene I don’t want to eat or sleep or be sober ever again. The gene wants to drink until I drown.  And, like the psychopathic gene it is, it disguises it’s devious intentions of doom and romances me.  I have a poetic fondness for amber lighting and the dark wood of the classic pub. Its an embryonic cushion. Nearly all my boyfriends I met at the bar, poets, musician. Love equalled amber bottles and intoxication.

What got me to stop drinking was my last hangover. I drank a bottle of vodka and woke up shaking and needed help but there was no one in my life to call.  I knew I would die if I continued to live that way but I told you, addicts have to be reminded.  When life gets uncomfortable I still think about going to the bar and its promise of oblivion.  Filling the ache in my chest with whiskey is something I’ve done since I was 15. I need to hear a girl with only a few days sober tell her story that with this relapse her depression took over and her emptiness and loneliness made her feel like she couldn’t go on.  “Why bother,” whispers the mutant gene, and she tried to kill herself, again. She has bandages on her wrist. Alcohol not only dulls your ability to make sensible decisions, it increases sadness. What starts out as a way to numb your pain, (the first drink),turns into a hell you can’t get out of until you are sober. Ive been in meetings where people have lost limbs due to drinking.  One woman stood in front of a Mac truck, and there was a guy who lost his arm.   It is these stories that saves me from going to the bar when my father dies because believe me, I want oblivion. 

First, it helps you to tell your story, it lightens your load, but it helps others as well.  Not everyone will identify with you but someone will, and all it takes is one person to save a life. WE are that important.  We can give hope to the hopeless and create light where there is only darkness.  “Hey, look, I’m making it through. You can too.”


Because even though the ache is bottomless, joy is too. You can experience great happiness even in the midst of great pain.  It is worth it to keep going and see your life through. 

So that is what I am saying. You tell me your stories, and Ill tell mine to you.

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Yup.
Not so hard to stay sober really. Just never leave the house. I need to start meetings again for sure because things like anniversaries aren't a lot of fun. Instead of an accomplishment you think instead about what you felt that day you got drrunk last and how terrible you felt right before the shot hit the back of your throat. The reasons you had for drinking that night and why you drank so much. And those reasons are still there. The feelings you will take with you forever. You may work through them, you may not feel them all the time but they will always be there. Just there, laying next to your dna.

So I need to get to a meeting.  It's on my to do list. Get back into being grateful for being sober and remembering that not being will be really bad. Cause you forget about that when the years wrack up.

So no congratulations necessary. I've simply been too busy to get into trouble. If I don't start doing the things I need to be doing, though, trouble will surely find me.  It always does.

Journal Page from my class A Lovely Dream

 

Cynco de Sober

4 years ago today I was throwing up and shaking in my bed.
I didn't have anyone to call to get me pepto. At least pepto, let alone get me a soda or hold my hand or god forbid take me to the hospital. I was poisoned, for sure. I drank an entire bottle of vodka (after several chocolate martini appetizers) hard and fast on an empty stomach. 

I'd just ended a date with a boy who hated me.
I had no friends.
I was taking classes I didn't care about.
I was lost.
I was lost.
I was lost.
 

And so I just stopped.

Everything I thought I knew,
I knew
I knew nothing.


Whatever I would normally do I'd do the opposite.
Or do nothing.
If I've learned anything its that if you don't know

where you are going
it's a good idea to stay where you are.

Sometimes we are guided.
Sometimes we are not.

You can't wait for someone to be there for you.
You must be brave.
And be there for yourself.

All of this 4 years has been learning more about me.

Who am I . really?
Where do I want to live?

What do I want in a friend?
What kind of friend am I?
What do I want more than anything?
What am I done with?

Sometimes we have to go back and re-parent ourselves.

Go to bed early.
Make nutrition a priority.
Stay outdoors.
Heal.

I don't know when my healing will be over.
I still feel like a used up rusty thing, most of the time.
But with sunshine I feel better.

Sometimes I am scared and want to be held.

Sometimes I feel alone no matter who is around.

It's about relearning everything. Its habit, that's all.
Habitually thinking negatively, about yourself, your potential,
about the future.  You only give yourself
what you think you deserve.

Look around you.
Right now, go ahead.
I'll wait.

 

Do you like what you see?

If not, then put down everything bad and ugly.
All of it. Whatever bad and ugly is to you.
Only collect around you what is beautiful and loving.
                                                                    (this includes people).
Love mean people but don't hang out with them.
                                               (until they start being loving).

For me - I bought the pinkest, loveliest 80.00 soft soft baby soft

blanket and smooth bed sheets.
And lavender room spray.
and gigi.
and banana peanut butter milkshakes.
and pens and journals and
time.
Here is to becoming who we were meant to be.
And sticking with it no matter how long

it takes.