Casualties of the isms

Before I ever used drugs, I was an addict. Moderation is not something I ever knew, I was (and still catching myself being) impulsive and would always be extreme with it. Before I ever used, it was shopping addiction, eating addiction, even attention seeking addiction. All the 'isms' were there, I was, and always will be, an addict. I didn't love myself, the need for more consumed me. Although I do not regret using (in a way it saved me), I did have innocent casualties because of the war inside of me. 

I hurt so many people when I was hurting. I never saw the pain I caused until it was too late. The people who will never understand addiction fled, while my fellow addicts could relate and only left to feed their own pain. When my addiction started I had an amazing man in my life, recently celebrated 6 years of our story together. He is an amazing man, I loved him more than I loved myself. I don't know that he will ever truly understand that there was nothing he could have done to not lose me. I cried out to him and he couldn't fix me. I was unhappy, I didn't know who I was, my insecurities destroyed us. He is everything I ever wanted in a man, he will always be the man all the rest have to compare to. He helped start my journey and helped start the path to a better future. I will always love him and I will always be his biggest cheerleader. He will always be my Captain, I pray he eventually understands that I never meant to hurt him. Without him, I wouldn't have started seeing my worth.

Then came the man who introduced me to the drug. I met him when he was sober and I was sober. We instantly were attracted towards each other, but sober us didn't even make it a matter of weeks, blink of an eye and we were in the madness together. My life started spinning out of control and we were toxic using together. Every sober friend and family member blames him for what I became; he blames himself a lot too. I am an adult and I make my own choices. He never forced me, pressured me, or waved it in my face; I asked to try it, if it wasn't with him it would have just been a matter of time til I did use. He was suffering too, neither one of us could kill ourselves fast enough. He's also sober now, I never knew his pain was so deep til he asked me 'how many times did you find me dead'. Too many to count honestly, I never knew if I could revive him. I can't count how many times I cried over his lifeless body hoping I could wake him again. He explained 'I didn't care if I died, it didn't matter to me'. I remember trying to hold him up in the bathroom after he did too much. He was too heavy for me, I woke up on the bathroom floor three hours later with a huge knot on the back of my head. I cried out for him, when he woke just as confused as me, his first reaction was to comfort me. I cried in his arms the rest of the night, the next day we went to treatment together. He OD'ed and I was knocked out trying to save him; we may not have loved ourselves, but we loved each other enough to try sobriety. Today we are both sober, like when we were first attracted to each other. I love getting to know him more and more everyday.

Friends I have had for close to 20 years have been hurt, my family has removed me from their lives, and people I knew less than a year have been hurt by me. I can only blame myself, I'm no good to others when I am no good to myself. If anyone I hurt isn't eventually able to forgive me, I can only blame myself. I never meant to hurt anyone when I was hurting, I just hope they know I am sorry. For those that can forgive me, I hope they can love the new me and understand I am still a work in progress.

I still have no regrets, without the wreckage of my past I would never have learned who I truly am and how to grow as a person. I don't aim to be perfect, I never will be. As my journey continues I may still hurt people, I am only human. If I do hurt anyone in the future, I just want to know my intentions were never malicious. I still have so much grieving, pain, anger, and trauma to accept; my journey of self growth is far from over. Hopefully it never ends. I aim to be a person who is kind and fair. In a world that is full of unexplained and unfair treatment, I want to always strive to be the small glitter of hope left.

Just for today I make that choice for me

Quickly approaching is a lot of 'one year since... ' days for me. I have spent a lot of time over the last few days reflecting on who I was one year ago to who I have become today. I am still grieving the loss of who I was.
That wonderful girl I was a year ago will never be here again. I wish I knew how amazing she was back then. She was kind, loving, nurturing, but she was niave, too trusting, and viewed the world as fair and just. She was ignorant, but it was blissful. If she was happy, I would never be here.
It's been over seven months since my last run. Although physically and mentally I feel better, I fear I will never escape the control it has given my mother over me.
On my last birthday I went out to eat with my mother and father, against the advice of my sponsor and counselors. Talking about being in the treatment center she chose, my mother looked at me and asked 'aren't you so happy you did this?'. I could no longer bite my tongue, I responded 'am I glad I have been forced out of an apartment I had, lost a wonderful job I had just started, lost both my dogs and almost everything I own to be thrown in a homeless shelter and forced to eat at soup kitchens everyday?'. When I asked why she did this to me she responded 'because you wouldn't let ME get you help'. This was never about me, this is about her. At thirty years old I was able, for the first time, choose a treatment plan for myself. She found a way to force me into what she wanted, simply because she wasn't involved. After that meal I walked five miles back to the shelter in the rain.
After seven months sobriety I am back to being on the run. I can't move on with my life, I don't even feel like I can have a life. I will never be viewed as my own person, I am merely an extension of her and until I submit to her control, I will be punished.
I will be turning myself in, and this time begging to serve out the 6 months. Maybe after that I can finally have freedom from her. It will be living in a constant fear though, scared that one day she will find me and systematically destroy my life again. After reading my blog, all she could say was that I am 'too smart, too manipulative, and have too much time'. I am my own person, I should be allowed to express my own emotions. I do not choose to feel this way, I can not simply choose not to be hurt.
My mother likes to tell people 'she is an addict' to devalue anything I say. It is unnecessary as I will be the first person to tell anyone that. I have fought a battle that is life or death. The enemy is myself and the victor is myself. Until a person has battle the demons inside of them they will never truly understand one of the hardest battles known to man. When you have truly lost everything and you can't kill yourself fast enough, finding the strength to fight for anything is nearly impossible. Just hearing the word dope and my whole body shuts down, remembering how easily the poison made me feel nothing tempts me to escape the claws of control. I have never had control over my own life, shooting the poison in my veins was the only thing I felt I could control. But even that was a delusion, it controlled me just as my mother continues to try to do.
Just for today I will remain sober. Today I make a deep and personal commitment to remain clean and sober. God, grant me the serenity to accept the people that I can not change, the courage to change the one that I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me. Just for today.

Chasing Death I Found Life

Knowing that no other attempts to contact me after this hurts. I can imagine they believe that I continue to get high, but how are my mother and sister to know if I am or if I am not. I have been shunned from my family, I am the black sheep that is an embarrassment to them. I am okay with that.

The choices that I made during one season of my lifetime do not define me. I am more than the poor choices I made during this time, more than the sleepless nights and dope sick mornings. Being a recovering addict is something that I am proud of. We addicts do not always make it out of the madness, death is getting to common and jail can be a savior. Everyday is a struggle to stay clean, with temptation and triggers at my every turn. I am winning the battle as I watch so many of my fellow addicts continue to lose.

2017 was a very trying year for me. Giving up seemed like the best option, sometimes the only option. Over the past year I have been broken and beaten down. I have lost friends and lost structure. I have seen death and desperation. I've meet sober snakes and dope sick angels. I lost fear, knowing no one on these streets could do anything to me that hasn't already been done.  For a while, I lost myself. I will never be the same person I once was. I hate that I will never be the same person again. My qualities of being trusting and somewhat naive will never be there again. Instead I feel like I walk around in a trance waiting to wake up from this nightmare. From here though, I can only go up.

The hardest things I learned over the last year was how to grieve the loss of someone that is still alive. Someone that I sometimes can not avoid being around for now. I have had to grieve the loss of a mother figure that I have always sought and understand that I will never have. The anger and resentment that I have carried over the years is only hurting me, she doesn't, and never will, see the trauma and effects of her actions. I recently learned that, as the child of a narcissist, the volatile and unpredictable emotions of my parents made me a textbook empath. As a defense mechanism, I learned to read people's emotions without ever hearing them talk. Body language, movements, and other indicators tell me what a person is feeling, I can better protect myself from any possible out lashes.

I have learned so much about myself this year, I have no regrets. Understanding why I react certain ways or why I do certain things has really helped me work on my character defects. Growing as a person is important to me, but also being a person who is kind with strong morals and ethics is even more important. Without destroying myself over the last year, I would have never found myself. I truly have been humbled.