The nights end where the mornings begin. Once again, I find my will to be inferior to the demands of alcohol.
The constant pull, the alluring nature of its false promises…
I know this will help. I’m sure this will take the pain away. This will make it better.
I know I’m lying. Alcohol is nothing, if not a liar.
I hate myself for failing. I hate myself for falling back into this bullshit.
If you had asked me 2 months ago, I’d have told you I was at least somewhat proud of myself. I could recognize and appreciate the fact that I was actually drinking less. And if felt so fucking good to not need it. After 2 years of withdrawals after…what…3, 4 hours? After 2 years of drinking just to survive. To avoid the withdrawals….drinking to avoid the pain that drinking caused.
I pulled myself out of absolute fucking hell. Out of waking up at 6am, and already desperately wanting something then.
But here we are, and I already know I’m a failure and a fuck up.
Now I count down the seconds until 7pm… the “acceptable” time for a first drink. Because anything earlier is just…dangerous. Now, I wake up in the morning with the intense desire to drink. Right then and there…at 6am. Who cares. Numbness is numbness, no matter what the clock says. I’m fighting it SO incredibly hard. I don’t want that life again. It is too hard and too exhausting. It doesn’t help anything.
It doesn’t help anything, and I have no idea why it seems so fucking desirable…
The only thing that I hate more than this feeling, is knowing that I was better.
I got through the worst of it, and it took me years, and so many hours of therapy, to get even an ounce back to whatever “normal” still had a chance of existing.
It took me so long, and so much hard work to get to a better place.
A place where I was proud of, that actually felt fucking good. Of course it wasn’t perfect. And anyone else might still consider it to be massively problematic.
But it was so much better.
And how dare I even think about fucking this up for myself.
These feelings of failure and fear only make me want to drink more.
I can’t even describe to you how desperately I DON’T want to go back to that place. That place is ugly and scary and….the daily life of someone who is fully consumed with thoughts of drinking and desperately avoiding being sober…
I recognize that this place is shit. The nights spent alone with nothing but bottles of alcohol and my demons threatening to consume me…
It’s not a version of me that I envy. It’s not what I want. It’s literally fucking terrifying to even consider.
Yet….this is the road that I’m on. This is the road I’m heading down. I see it, I feel it, I recognize it…and yes, it terrifies me.
But, yet, it seems that the fear of revisiting this very recent past…isn’t quite enough to keep the fear of pain from controlling my actions.
Shit hurts. My life has become nothing short of unbearable. The very logical part of me KNOWS that increasing my alcohol intake will only directly increase that pain.
But…I suppose there is a very desperate part of me that is convinced that this is just my fate.
And if I’m forced to sit in the pain….why can’t there ever be an escape from the pain?
The logical part of me knows that alcohol isn’t an escape.
But the emotional part of me is absolutely convinced that this is a better fate. Because anything other than sitting with this pain…it just has to be better.
Even though it very clearly isn’t.
I think this post shows me that you’re acknowledging that you’ve been able to get out of your downward spiral before as you’re realising your cravings. I also feel finally you know yourself that you don’t want to go back to that place. Maybe you’ve not heard yourself?
Maybe you could read this post back to yourself but pretend it relates to someone else?
Maybe then you’ll realise what a long way you’ve come and how you do have the strength to get back up and start to move away from where you don’t want to go back to? …
I hope I do have the strength to keep going forward and not back. I know it’s not ever going to lead to good things
I think the strength and the work you did to cut down your drinking isn’t lost, and it’s still possible to change the direction of the road you’re on. Maybe right now the fear of revisiting the rape trauma is overwhelming the fear of revisiting the place where alcohol sucks you in.
That sounds about right.
It took so much work to get here, and where I am is definitely not anywhere close to good enough. But I definitely want to change the road I’m on before I get lost in it again.
I really just wish I knew what to do, or how to even talk about any of it.
The fact that you’re writing about it seems like a good start. Have you ever tried doing any sort of narrative exposure trauma work?
About a year ago I think we started doing that for a little while, but we stopped pretty quickly I think? I know one if her goals is to get me to the point of doing EMDR, but it’s all been such a slow process. Because I really suck at vulnerability and literally everything turns into sarcasm or I just immediately shut it down.
I really hate that. I seriously have no idea how to feel things or sit with it other than drinking.
❤️