THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE, AGAIN. AND AGAIN.
The "Admittance". The truth. And the sting...
Alcohol, as a need for self medication (for anxiety, depression, being miserable in a relationship, you name it,) has completely and utterly ruined my life. I've not been FULLY honest with ANYONE (including me) about how sick I've become. I hide it well. Except for when I really don't, which is most of the time.
Shame. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9xFJ_hqzDQ or Google/Youtube "Rebranding our shame | Adi Jaffe | TEDxUCLA")
Admitting weakness and failure and a lack of self control (esp. to Dad, see Freud) openly (i.e., even though they are ironically plainly -and painfully- evident in my current living state), has been something I have not been able to do, period. I'm already not good at emoting with you two, (I don't know where that stems from?) But I see now I have done everything in my power to avoid it. I can't anymore. It's tearing me apart and causing me to break down, increasingly, every day, as well as probably you. Yesterday, though sober, I completely broke down after a full morning of stress and the reminder of a loss of a friend, of my doing. It felt like an inevitable surge, and I've cried so much in the past couple days I probably have nothing left for this embarrassingly ridiculous but necessary letter.
I've hit the wall at the bottom of the pit.
And yet lately I've honestly thought I was doing better, thinking clearer. I've gotten extremely organized and cleaned up and am moving forward and feeling motivated. Blah blah blah. It's bullshit. I was just telling myself that, and telling everyone. I have a wake of proverbial trash and actual debt to remind me and you every day how I have otherwise failed. I am in denial in the biggest way, as I see it all, oddly, clearly. The organization and cleanliness are just a pretty shell, covering a rotten, self-deceiving core. I am not in control and am seemingly entirely preoccupied with this illness in one way or another. I will never agree with AA in that we are completely powerless and must rely on a higher power (somewhere inside I still have a belief in my potential,) but It has effected every thing and thought in my life, my self efficacy (which was already low), as well as I'm sure everyone who cares about me. And I need to ask for help.
I am so sorry. I mean that, more than you'll ever know. I feel manipulative, dishonest (to everyone including me), reactionary, ill tempered, conniving, and petty. AND I AM. Admitting the ultimate level of selfishness is difficult, because I bend my own narrative in response to my expectations of the negative perceptions of those around me. And I've lost, broken, or given up (many) relationships due to: behavior, dishonesty, and caving to my anxiety which has only been exacerbated in a vicious cycle. (I do have you two and Erica as a support system, hopefully.)
It's all a very bad dream, like an out-of-body experience, watching myself, letting myself drown and I'm just flailing trying to grab any thing or anyone around me to float on, while they may sink and suffer below the surface.
It's all so cliché...
I've lost the war, I concede. (Almost 2 decades?) I have become the person I loath the most. I realized yesterday that I literally, but unconsciously, don't like to look in the mirror anymore. Using alcohol gets rid of the mirror entirely.
BEING COMPLETELY OPEN & HONEST IS GOING TO BE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT, there is so much shame and guilt (and fear of it externally), and unexplainable things I've done or not done. But I owe it to everyone, and I'm ready to try. PLEASE be patient. I am not used to thinking that I care what other people think of me, but it seems I do. I want to regain trust and my own self worth.
Hence, today, because I am pretty sure I'm going through with this, is going to be the worst day of my life. (Honestly, as I write this I'm not positive I can take the leap.) But every day is the worst day of my life, no matter how I distract myself or hide it from those around me, and I need to start learning how to be honest about that, open about it. I'm so shut off and locked up it's like living in a constrictive, steel curtain.
I know this is painful for you to read. It's everything you've been toiling over, whispering about, fearing, suspecting. It's not your fault. Let me repeat that, it's NOT YOUR FAULT AND YOU'RE NOT ENABLERS. I'm doing the same routine of lying to myself. I'm so fucking sorry. It's time to unlock it, all of it.* And I'm not going to kill myself or anything stupid and dramatic, (as long as Sebastian is alive, as I told Ma yesterday,) but I can't go on. Not like this anyway. I am in too much pain.
I can clean up well enough, and (usually) drive my car (especially now that I have a new battery...) and do what I need to do, bare minimum. I can be places, do most things I need to do, meet new people and (occaisionally) make friends, some of which I retain, sober. (Except interviews.) But there is no structure to my life -only the whirlwind spiral of suffering and subsequent denial of that suffering, while using as much as physically attainable and possible to numb the pulse and be able to take a single, long, deep, soothing breath. I don't think life in general is this painful, but my situation combined with chemical imbalances is; I've lived happily before and I know it's possible again.
But I honestly don't even know how I'm still alive. So much poison. (Good genes...depending on how you look at that.) And I'm not pretending like I know what to do anymore. Outpatient didn't help, AA is a joke to me. (See Dr. Marc F Kern), support groups do nothing for me. (I've tried other types.) Please believe that.
I am doing a lot of research but I am also going to be in touch today with someone from Molina, my Healthcare Provider. I needed to schedule a physical assessment, a standard routine for new patients. But I am going to be up front with them about where I am at with all of this (alcohol, anxiety, depression, adult ADHD,) and explore whatever options are available. I've never been fully open with ANY doctor (just as I have never been fully open with you....or anyone,) and though I loath every idea that comes to mind for treatment, I am open and submit to what they recommend, because I do not know best. Hopefully I can get a good therapist who can also prescribe me what I need while transitioning away from alcohol, as I am done going to my psychiatrist in Seattle. (Maybe one last visit will be required.) And whatever else. I don't know.
I don't know how to ask for help because I don't know how to fix myself. And next to telling you all of this, that is the hardest thing I've ever had to admit in my entire life. I have failed everyone, including me.
I'm not giving up. I was dead to the world (save for my boy, I think he is a singular source of light in my life,) and I am starting to feel again and that feeling is dread, and fear and loathing. (To borrow.) I think it's important and perhaps even beneficial that I recognize this and face the pain. Medicine does not heal, time and wisdom heal. I want to be at least at square one again.
Thank you and I love you both. Your support has been invaluable, and again please don't think you did anything wrong because of what I have become in your stay. I promise you I wouldn't let you help me until now, and have fiercely stuck to that ethic, all the while taking and taking and taking, believing it was just enough to get by (not even) and that every time was the last time -and not knowing how I was going to pay any of it back. I cannot take anything from you any more without feeling horrible.
I don't know what I need yet. I will let doctors/professionals decide.
Selfishly, I am hoping this will result in the eventual lifting of a lot of weight off of my shoulders. I only hope it doesn't cause the opposite for you. I don't want to be a burden and if you don't forgive me I fully understand. I need to move out and it's all driving me really quite mad. Me, me, me! So sick of me that I've let me go, for too long. But for now.
Please, just listen, do not feel sorry for me; in return all I can offer so far is transparency. I hope but am uncertain we can be a symbiotic unit again. I am, however, hopeful there is, (and trying to manifest toward), the faintest possibility that today could also be, the best day of my life.
Q.
*No, not all of it, I actually think we need to lock the booze up and hide the key....
#alcohol #alcoholism #alcoholic #stigma #detox #soberingup #sober #iquit #Abstinence
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