Fear

First off, thank you my friends for helping me stay sane last night.  I made it through the day without using.  Days like yesterday are incredibly hard to tolerate.

I came across this sentence recently:

"Fear is the great convincer. Fear overwhelms reason, education, logical thinking, and common sense."  

While the article it was in was unrelated to addiction, I thought it fairly relevant to addiction nonetheless.

I think deep down (or hell, maybe not even that deep down) all addicts have a fear of life.  I guess I shouldn't speak for all addicts though, so I'll say that I have an intrinsic fear of life.

Fear of success, fear of intimacy, fear of change.....why all this fear?  Why the hell do we fear that which can bring us immense joy?  Fear of failure.  I think that's it.  We've convinced that anything we attempt in life we will fail at, so why bother trying at all.  Again, only speaking for myself, I am aware that I have perfectionist tendencies, and massive control issues.  Which is funny, because only I can control whether I use or not.....but when I'm using I am completely out of control.  Irony, you are a bitch.

Change is the only thing you can count on being consistent in life....another irony.  I fear change, yet crave it.  Immense joy....I fear that too.  It doesn't make sense, but I distrust happiness.  It doesn't feel right.  Maybe because I have experienced so little of it in my life I don't know how to feel about it.  It's like putting on someone else's shoes.  They might be the right size, and will enable you to walk from point A to point B, but they just don't feel right.  So I guess with happiness, instead of waiting awhile to break the shoes in to make them my own, I get out of them as fast as I can.  Self sabotage.  Sometimes I'm aware of doing this, other times I'm not and only realize it in hindsight when I'm analyzing my life and trying to figure out why the hell I'm in over my head again.

I'm constantly reminding myself of the Serenity Prayer:  Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Some things are really, really hard to accept though.  I get so hung up on the past that I become unable to move forward.  Fear of failure.  Fear of success.  So the temptation is always there to return to at least what is familiar territory, despite the misery of it.  I know what to expect, even if I'm taken by surprise.  I know how to navigate, while being totally lost.  I'm surrounded by like people so that I'm not alone, despite being completely alone.  I love it, even while hating it.  Drug addiction is a world full of paradoxes.

Thanks, Sue, the log jam has become unstuck.

Mind Games

I want to use so badly right now I can barely concentrate on keeping my fingers on the keyboard.  My thoughts, every emotion, every sense is consumed by this desire.

I know I can't give in to it.  I know that if I give in to this compulsion I would be throwing away everything that I have achieved in the last 8 months.  I know this.  I know that the older I get each relapse gets harder and harder to return from.  Always the knowledge is there, this time I might not come back at all.


And yet sometimes, like now, the desire to use threatens to overpower all logic, all knowledge and all reason.  Feeling like this is horrible.  I feel stupid, weak, dirty, cheap, ashamed, and a failure for feeling this way, and yet I can't make it stop.  I'm embarrassed to write and admit this.  After battling addiction my entire adult life, after everything I've been through and put others through, after acquiring all of the tools necessary to beat this....I still haven't beaten it.

I don't think it's a war that can be beat.  I might win battles every day by making the right choices, but the overall war will never be won.  I'll never not be an addict.

I just needed to vent while I was in the thick of things.  I know this craving will ease up eventually.  But goddamn fuck it's hard to not obsessively think and feel all of this while it's going on.

Today I choose abstinence but the devil monkey on my shoulder is trying to convince me that I'm being silly.  Mind games.  It gets to the point of not being able to trust myself, my judgement or anything I know to be right.  When in the thick of it, all memories of the pain, desperation, degradation, and misery conveniently fade away and detach from my brain as if it were someone else's memories, and surely *I* would *never* allow that to happen to *me* because I'm so much stronger and smarter now.  Surely just once in a while would never hurt, eh?  After all you still drink and can control it, that proves the point!

Mind fucking games.  This is what opiate addiction is like.  Doesn't matter if it's heroin, vicodin, morphine, codeine, oxycontin, percocet, or any of the rest of them......opiates fuck up and permanently rewire your brain for life.  Last night in a group conversation on facebook we contemplated if we could travel back in time, where would we go - I would go back to that fateful night in 1994 where I was offered to try heroin for the first time and stop myself.  Fanciful thinking, that.  It has done nothing but make my life miserable and yet I still. fucking. want. it.

Vent over.

Word Association

Ok Sue, here ya go.

Carnival
clowns
scary
Poltergeist
movie
Roadhouse
seedy
drugs
thugs
crime
time
time out
score
game
board game
Life
bored with life
escape
free
free from responsibility
spiral
danger
barrel
log
log jam
too many thoughts
attention
attention deficit disorder
manic thoughts
ping pong
calm
balm
drug

GBE 33: Work.

Work for a living.
Work for the paycheck.

Work to pay the bills.
Work to stick to the budget.

Work at your relationship.
Work at not telling her that outfit really does make her look fat.

Work around the house.
Work to clean the toilet at least once a week.

Work at remembering to return the library books on time.
Work at remembering to call your auntie to wish her a Happy Birthday.

Work to unwind at the end of a long day of....work.
Work to rid your mind of all the unceasing worries that keep you up at night.

Work to stay clean, one day at a time.
Work at remembering why you need to stay clean, one day at a time.

Work to paste the smile on your face at a family gathering you'd rather not be at.
Work to keep from retorting back to the rude comment made at your expense.

Work to look at yourself in the mirror everyday and see a lifetime of regrets look back at you.
Work to keep plugging on and pretend that you have hope for the future.


Posted for GBE #33, topic:  "Work"

Good Riddance 2011

I'm so ready for this year to be over.  How about you?

But I don't see that 2012 is going to be any better.  I hope I'm wrong.

I don't want to deal with any more death, financial woes, depression, and job loss.  I've had enough.  The world has had enough.  It's going to get worse before it gets better....isn't that always the way of things though?  So in the immortal words of Margo Channing, "Fasten your seatbelts....it's going to be a bumpy night."

I've been reposting some writes from my old Myspace blog.  I kinda regret deleting it so rashly, but then, I was so pissed off at all the changes they made it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.  I backed it all up to Word so I still have all the posts, just not online, which is why I'll be reposting some to this blog as a sort of archive.  I'm trying to get back into writing mode after dropping off the face of the planet for the last few months.  Starting in September with the death of my dog, then one bad thing after another seemed to happen to me with no letting up.  I had nothing good to write about and I was too depressed to even share what was going on in my life.  Yeah, I'm so over 2011.

So on to 2012, may you be a brighter, more hopeful year for me and everyone on the planet.

The Mirrors Of Our Life

Another repost from 2009.




The Mirrors Of Our Life

A troubled man went to a carnival and saw a fortune teller in her tent. 

She said, "That which you seek is not far away.  All you must do is find the reflection within you, and remember that we need never be ashamed of our tears."

He left confused, and pondered her words as he stepped into the funhouse.

Children and adults all around him were laughing at their images in the wavy mirrors, seeing their realities distorted.

Upon stepping up to the first mirror, the man didn't see his distorted reflection, but saw a child of 10 staring back at him. 

The child had red welts around his neck, and his eyes were wary and haunted.  The man recognized himself with a shock as he stared back.

He stepped to the next mirror and again saw a child, a child of 13 with the vacant but giddy expression of one who has just discovered the joys of illicit drugs.  Behind the eyes lurked a truth that belied the grin.  He hesitated before going on to the next mirror, for he was afraid.

He next saw a young man of 18, belligerence and agression stamped all over his face as he leered out of the mirror.  The man stared at the angry eyes of his younger reflection and saw that same truth behind them, present though more disguised.  He didn't want to go on but now felt compelled to learn more about that truth.

He walked on and now saw himself at 25, dismayed but not surprised to see the festering sores of track marks lining his arms and dead eyes looking back at him.  The man could feel the anguish and despair coming from his younger self, and could feel the truth still simmering there even through all the layers of denial. 

The next mirror showed a man of 32, for all appearances on the outside a man who has it all together and is happy; but the eyes never lie...and the man could see how feeble his attempts had been at trying to convince the world he was recovered from his past self-destruction.  He could also feel that other truth hovering near the surface, waiting for the right time to make its presence known.

The man walked on to the next mirror, expecting to see himself as he is now but he was met with blankness; absolutely nothing was reflected.  He was dismayed....why would the mirror not show him anything?  He was desperate for the mirror to reveal the truth; he had been so close. 

He closed his eyes and the fortune teller's words came back to him. 

"That which you seek is not far away.  All you must do is find the reflection within you, and remember that we need never be ashamed of our tears." 

He thought about what he had just seen in the mirrors, all of those moments of his life captured in time.  He realized he already knew the truth, had known it all along.  All of those moments in time going back to childhood flashed through his mind; his eyes opened with a snap.  The truth, at last.  Tears flooded down his face, and he was not ashamed.

He looked back at the mirror and was shocked to now see a reflection; not of him in the present, but a vision of a slightly older man.  The older man was smiling...not a fake smile but a truly joyous one.  Tears stood out on his face too, tears of knowledge of what trials the younger man had yet to endure; but also knowing he would come through them all the stronger.....to peace.

Hands

This is a repost from my old Myspace blog in 2009.

He looked down at his hands
hands that had done so many things


Held beetles and frogs in his youth
and made snow forts in the trees


Hands that flew to his face in oft-learned reflex
to protect him from his father's rages
and wiped tears from his eyes in the aftermath


Hands that yearned for a comforting touch
but instead learned comfort at the plunge of a needle
with blood on his hands, robbing and cheating others
to feed the demon


Shaking, clammy hands when the needle betrayed him
and taught him the meaning of mortality
and humility


Hands holding on for dear life
as his world crashed and changed around him
forcing him kicking and screaming into living


Fingers that came alive in an unexpected way
once a keyboard was under them
and his mind was free to express itself
without repurcussion


Hands that still shake sometimes,
longing to hold that needle and
feel the plunge


Hands that search to do something meaningful
to keep those old demons at bay
and give his life purpose


He looked down at his hands
hands that had done so many things


And wondered what they were
going to do next