This year, 2015, was an incredible year for me. There was a lot of negative. A lot. I felt constantly like I was starting over. Struggling, crying, failing, anything you can think of that would make you want to run and hide, I felt. I remember on New Years Eve thinking, this is it! This is MY year. I had no idea why, or how but I knew and was determined to make this year the one where I finally make it. I finally pull up my boot straps and I get it together. I’ll stop making the same mistakes and I start living correctly. Correctly being already an incorrect concept being that my mind was constantly consumed by a desire for destruction, and has been my entire life.
In this year, things fell apart. I feel apart. And when I say fell, I mean things plummeted towards the ground harder than I ever thought they could. I spent most of 2015 blacked out. Crying, chain smoking on my front porch, glass of wine in hand having the greatest pitty party anyone had ever heard of. And believe me when I say that If you would listen I would drunkenly describe to you just how unfair it was for me in this world. I couldn’t figure out how I was ever going to feel normal again. After losing my grandmother and my husband within a year of each other, I couldn’t understand why God did this to me. I couldn’t comprehend why I was still in so much pain from him walking out, leaving me with nothing, and never looking back. I couldn’t understand how God didn’t grant us a special privilege and just let my grandmother live eternally, because well, I needed her. I couldn’t believe that I finally opened up my heart to another man post divorce and ended up yet again heart broken. I was led to believe I was important, appreciated, cherished and in the sense capable at the time, loved; only to find out I was a convenient distraction for a heart needing security in the “mean time.”
Why me? Why again? How will I survive? WHEN WILL THIS STOP. I couldn’t take it anymore.
By October of this year I was drinking every day. By 4:30 pm, the anxiety that filled my body knowing that soon I would be at home sipping my wine controlled me.That was what I looked forward too. I couldn’t wait for 5pm. I had no desire to drink with others anymore because other people don’t drink like me. They’ll just give me some type of grief for drinking “too much.” but how dare they? They don’t understand the pain I feel, and if they did, they would drink like this too.
From that point on the months are a true blur. I lived and existed in such an unmanageable state that those who loved and cherished me began to contemplate stepping in. I had no idea. I had no clue that my house was a wreck. That’s not true. I knew, but I didn’t care. Nobody lived with me, this was my messy house and If you didn’t like it, don’t come over. My shower was moldy, I didn’t care. Not as much as I cared to drink after work, so it remained filthy. My dishes stacked up on the counters. I didn’t care. Not as much as I cared to clean just one glass to drink out of and maybe a plate to use if my best friend Justin came over for dinner. (which he often did, and he always did my dishes. I love him eternally for that constant support I didn’t even know he was providing.) Soon I stopped using a glass entirely and just drank from the bottle. A liter of wine became a nightly companion and that’s not an exaggeration.
I had an amazing job, caring for an amazing baby girl that I had been with since she was 4 months old. I would wake up, feeling horrible, sad and broken but upon arriving and seeing her, her mom and dad who had quickly become like family, I felt okay. I felt safe. I felt like because of this child, I had purpose. I cherished the moments I was at work. I didn’t feel at all as if I was working. However, that time around 4:30 would come, and then I would rush out to head home to oblivion. I was sickening.
I couldn’t afford to pay my heating bill that winter because I had put if off so long it had become well over $500. I used my stove to heat the house and wore hoodies and slippers and slept with two space heaters. I was essentially homeless within walls.
In November I moved back home to live with my parents. My Grandmothers home was finally empty and ready to be remodeled. My lease on my duplex was up and I had no where to go. I had no money even though I had a stable job with a fine income. Moving home temporarily was the only option. I hated it. I knew I would have no privacy. My family watching my every move? Where was I going to do my drinking now? What if I wanted to bring someone home with me? I was so disgruntled by the amount of supervision I was going to have that it turned me against them. I became angry and distant to those who loved me and wanted to provide me a home to live in while I waited for another beautiful home to be finished. One that was given to me with nothing but pay but the taxes.
Imagine a soldier being shot at war, laying in a battlefield. Another soldier comes to his rescue in an attempt to save his life and the dying man yells, leave me here, save yourself. That was me. Leave me here.. I want to die, or at the very least be alone to kill myself slowly as I please. I didn’t think of other people. I didn’t think of how much I was hurting those around me. How devastated my family and friends were as they watched the person they loved disappear.
My family looked me straight in the eye and said you’ll do no drinking here. You’re not going to kill yourself on our watch. To that they were met with a slew of horrifically cruel insults and threats. From telling them they would lose me completely as a daughter to threatening to kill myself if they didn’t let me live my life. I was completely delusional. I was severally angry. I was an alcoholic.
In that month I began the relationship I spoke of earlier. I began talking with someone whose ability to capture me took me by surprise. I was closed off and isolated but with him, I felt like me. He wasn’t near here. He lived away for work, but he felt closer than anyone ever had. I was hooked. It started out light hearted and fun. We would talk on the phone for hours and hours and laugh and share our excitement for our individual future. My drinking started to slow down. I began committing myself to fitness. I even set a date to compete and I worked hard every day towards that goal. I still drank, and when I did it was heavily but it wasn’t a daily thing anymore. My friends and family began to have hope that maybe, I had recovered from the heartbreak I was attempting to outrun and that I could turn this corner. Me and this person continued to talk with excitement and eventually started talking about a future. An imaginary one seeing as he wasn’t here and didn’t intend to be any time soon. It was just fun. It was fun to fantasize with someone I cared for about finally having it all. We were both guilty of playing house and neither of us cared.
Around Christmas time he was told he was granted the job transfer back to Detroit he had tried to get for years. This took him by surprise. This took me to the moon. I quite literally thought God was giving me all I had ever prayed for. Meanwhile, in his head, he had now accidentally set up a relationship in Detroit he wasn’t sure he wanted to begin with. Now it was real. The possibility of me, us, it wasn't playing house anymore. He had a girl here waiting to love him. He didn’t want that love.
I continued to live in this delusion that my dream man was coming home to me soon and I worked my ass off to become the woman he would fall in love with and marry. I bragged of my success and shared with him just how “together” I was in comparison to other women. I lied to myself constantly and praised myself on my success. As weeks went on he became distant and I started to realize that maybe he wasn’t as “all in” as I believed him to be. Eventually, he started to drop off completely. I confronted the situation with him and he honestly told me he didn’t know. He wanted to spend time with me but was not going to jump into anything. I pridefully said well, of course not! I don’t know if I want to date you either (lies) and we hardly know each other. I want to take this slow (lies) so just calm down.
He continued to pull back. I continued to build up resentment and fear. A few months went by. Him still not here, this became torture. I began heavily drinking again. I would do my workouts then come home and drink all night. I would hide this from my family by putting it in different containers or just sitting outside in the cold. Funny how I thought that was hiding. I started to get as drunk as possible on the weekends. That was my day to reward myself! I had lost 30lbs and I was working so hard on things! Life seemed to be together to everyone around me. Inside I was dying. I started sleeping at my empty house. I slept on the floor on an air mattress. There was no bathroom. There was no water. It was a mess, but once again, so was I. We were back here as a family unit. Friends included.
He had began to use me as something that was convenient and I knew it. When he was in the mood to stir up his feelings, he had no trouble talking to me about how “perfect” we were for each other. Add in alcohol on both our parts and we were planning a dream wedding. Other days, he would respond to me with one word messages and at times days would go by with no communication. When we did communicate I was hammered, blacked out, or on my way. He started to be fearful for my life as well. He communicated this to me and I angrily blamed him. I believed it was his fault I was drinking this way again. With hope of a happy life with him I had been healed. If only he would stop being such a selfish bastard I wouldn’t be drunk right now. If only he would stop being so afraid I would be that bright and shiny girl he was talking to 7 months ago. How could he? Where had I gone. Why did he ruin me.
At the end of April, I said I needed time. I needed a break. Let’s start fresh when you get back. He agreed. We together decided that there was nothing to worry about. We had come so far, at the very least we were going to give this a shot eventually. I felt safe. For two weeks.
Shortly after that I drunkenly called him crying. Saying I missed him. I just wanted him home. He cut me off by telling me that he was seeing someone. They were exclusive. She also lived here, in the town where I lived, but she was a better fit. I went numb. I thought I was hearing things, and from then on, I remember nothing of the conversation that followed. I heard only noises. Until I finally hung up the phone.
Within a week of that conversation I was arrested for drunk driving for the second time. I remember the entire thing. I remember getting in the car to get food, and more wine and realizing I was being pulled over. I remember thinking okay, here we go. But that was it. I was truly turned off. I woke up the next morning in jail, feeling so ashamed. I knew I would surely lose my job. I had arranged for my best friend to explain to my boss my situation, and I knew this was the end. I cried and cried to the women who slept under me for the night telling her that most of all I was upset to let down my employers. To let down this little girl. What would they think of me now that I was found out. The rest of the people in my life knew of this problem. They watched it unfold. They were aware and clueless as to what to do, but not my employers. They were sadly unaware that I was a wreck.
Honestly, I am getting carried away. I could go on for hours. I could continue to explain to you the shame i’ve felt over the last 5 months for the awful things I have done when I was drinking and the pain I have caused others, but that won’t change them. That won’t take them away.
I would like to close this post in stead with talking about how different today is.
I didn’t lose my job that day. By the grace of God, these people really meant it when they called me their family. I didn’t lose my family either. Even after this event, I spiraled more and yet, I had them.
I will post at another time about my “rock bottom,” but today i’ve been sober for 5 months.
In 5 months I have battled through the pain from the heartbreak I spoke of above, without alcohol. It still hurts every day. It’s now been 1 year of me and this person talking back and forth. Yes, we still talk, and no, we are not together. In 5 months I nearly lost my Father to a sickness related to years of health problems, and didn’t drink. In 5 months I have landed my dream job, as a personal trainer and with the blessing of my previous employers have started the life I always imagined. In 5 months I have started working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This for me is a big deal as I was very resistant of them for the first four months. In 5 months I’ve gained friendships. I’ve become the friend my loved ones once knew again and the daughter my parents raised. I’ve become someone people are proud of. Someone, people want to be around. I never thought that would be possible again. I live in a clean house. I no longer have a drivers license, but I have figured out how to make life work for the time that it’s gone. I don’t complain about how awful this situation is because I understand I put myself in it. I feel as if a giant weight has been lifted off me. I feel as if the sunlight can finally touch my face and make me feel warm.
I feel alive.
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