Late at night, after admittedly too many drinks…I feel everything.
I feel everything I’m afraid to feel during the day. I feel what I hide, what I shut down, what I convince myself just isn’t worth feeling.
But it’s there. And it is worth feeling. It demands to be felt. It resurfaces constantly. Every single night. Alcohol or not (though alcohol makes it easier), the thoughts are there. The feelings don’t go away just because I wish they would.
I don’t know what it is about nighttime. Whether it’s the fear of nightmares, the alcohol, the time when my kids are in bed so my mind actually has the space to wander… it’s just brutal. Every night.
It’s worse when life is heavier. When I have to face someone who assaulted me. When my kids have a significant event medically coming up. When I’m stressed about…any of the heavy things that exist within my life.
When I feel less supported, that makes it worse too. When I feel like I have to take care of absolutely everyone and there is no room for me, when there is no one around who makes me feel safe.
These are the nights where I just want to (and have done way too many times) drink myself into in unknowing oblivion. Just fucking drink it away. Black myself out, forget what feeling feels like.
But that really does not work. It makes it worse. The feelings exist through that. Trust me. I’ve had way too many “should be dead” nights trying to accomplish just that…. Trying to accomplish the “avoiding” rather than the feeling. It backfires. Every time.
Lately I’ve felt lost. I’ve felt lost in my thoughts, and therefore lost in my writing. I never know if I quite make sense, if I’m conveying my thoughts exactly as I hope to. Maybe it’s relatable…or makes sense to someone, or maybe not.
But for now, for this evening, these are my clumsy thoughts.
That I just absolutely fucking feel everything. Every night. Everything I hide, everything I try to tuck away during the day…it just jumps back out at me every night.
I can’t blame the alcohol. This is how it got started. This isn’t the chicken or the egg. I know which came first.
I felt too much, and I hated it.
I tried to drown it with alcohol.
That didn’t work…so, logically, I tried to drown it with more alcohol.
Shockingly, that made it worse.
Now, I fucking feel everything and am dependent on alcohol in more ways than one. Go me.
To be fair, I’m doing so much better than I was. I’m terms of drinking…I can’t begin to tell you how much better it is. A year ago today I was probably inebriated 80% of the time.
Today is nowhere close to that. I have come a long way. And I know I have so much more to do. I just don’t know how to feel.
I don’t know why feeling is just so terrifying. It has never been safe for me to feel. It’s always been punished, or otherwise negatively reacted to.
I’m trying to learn how to feel safe with all of this. It’s an incredibly long process, and I’m proud of how far I have come with it.
This will never be easy, and I have to relearn basically everything that I should have learned early on in childhood. But I will get there.
I want to. I want the good, I want the better. As long as I keep fighting…I think I can do better.