After my experience yesterday and taking some
time to just sleep on things, it has helped to clear my head a little bit. Lord
knows I can use some free space up there. However; it wasn’t until a friend of
mine shared this link with me (http://www.oafnation.com/musings-of-a-grey-man/2014/4/21/hammers-and-nails)
and I read it. Actually, I read it a couple of times because the second time
around I read every word carefully. It was a reminder that I needed.
Just keep putting one foot in front of the
other.
Simple. Right? Well, no…not exactly. I know
not the author, but I know the lessons he speaks of, and some of them I know
very personally. It made me stop for a moment and take stock in a few things.
The things I have survived, the things I have lost, and the many blessings I
have now. Let’s list a few (because I like making lists).
Things I have survived:
Birth – there’s a story that’s almost
unbelievable, however; it did happen. My mother had extremely high blood
pressure, so labor was induced – which is normal, but let’s remember this was
1976 (a lifetime ago for some). I don’t know what happened exactly but I have
been told that I was “drowning in the womb”…think about that…you’re not even
out of your mother yet and you’re drowning. One emergency caesarean section
later and viola, I was alive. They told my mother I had red hair and she said, “God
anything but red.” Maybe not the best way to come into and be welcomed into the
world, but this is my life and that’s how it happened. I firmly believe that
this entrance into this great big, wide world is the largest contributor to the
fact that I would choose to die in any fashion as long as it doesn’t involve me
not being able to breathe, whether its suffocation, drowning, etc., makes no
difference. I want to breathe freely until my last breath.
Sexual abuse – It’s my first memory and a
hell of a lot of memories I don’t want, but alas, they are there and for now,
they are compartmentalized into a bazillion different places within my head,
safely locked away for the most part because I am emotionally not ready to “deal”
with it. I could almost easily say it was for a complete decade of my very
young life, but let’s give or take a year or so, just to be closer to accurate.
Three different abusers, that I can recall, and I’m hoping that there aren’t
more that my brain dredges up one day and makes me more ill.
Suicide – I attempted suicide seven different
times…7…and only mostly succeeded one of those times. There are STILL moments
today when my head gets the most of me and screams, “Sheesh…what a LOSER! You
couldn’t even kill yourself correctly!” I’ll be even more blunt and say that
even as an adult, I have had to make a call to a friend and have them talk me
off the ledge, because I was so very, very close to just ending it all. Hell,
as an adult, I have a bevy of things available to me now that would do the job
efficiently. However; after a good, long cry and some really wonderful best
friends, I managed to be able to see past what was dragging me down and, at
least for that moment, I could deal just enough to push through and keep going.
Drugs – Snort a little cocaine here and there
as a teenager, just make you forget whatever the heck it was you wanted
forgotten. Drop some acid with some friends and NOT have a good trip on the
first try will make you never do it again. I know this. I watched my nose jump
off my face, run into traffic, and down the road. All the while, I’m screaming
with my hands covering my face, my friends keeping me from running into traffic
after it…it was not a good thing. Never did it again. A little weed here and there
just to take the edge off and make you mellow. I blame that one for my divorce
later on, but we’ll get to that. As an adult, prescription pain pill abuse. Oh
my, how I love a really good narcotic. It was the greatest high of all. No
pain, just mellow out, sleep a little…or a lot, and wake up when it was time
for another…but take 2 or maybe 3 to make sure you weren’t in ANY pain.
Alcohol – Oh there is my poison of choice,
right next to the narcotic pain killers. I’d take the pills WITH the alcohol,
just to make the buzz higher and greater. Forget the warning label on the
bottle of pills…what did they know? I did them together and was just fine. I’d
drink from the time I got up until the time I went to bed. I just made sure to
never wake up before Noon, because if you drank before noon then you were an
alcoholic, and I was not alcoholic because I didn’t have a problem with it. I
was not a mean drunk. I am that “WOO! LET’S DO SOMETHING FUN” drunk OR when
drinking at home alone, I was the mellow “I don’t give one rat’s ass what you
do” drunk. I preferred drinking at home, alone, at night, after everyone went
to bed. I hid the bottles so nobody knew how much was in the house and I would
EASILY clear a bottle of Crown and half a bottle of Rum before I passed out in
bed. I always made that last run for alcohol on Saturday before I was
completely wasted because on Sunday you can’t get the good stuff. God only
knows the number of times I drove drunk, the number of blackouts I had but
still did things with people. I’ve been told the things I have done and I didn’t
believe them because I have NO memory of it. So I don’t even know what all I’ve
done.
Domestic Abuse – Oh, my former husband, he
was an expert at that. It starts out with small things like belittling me for
something I liked. Then it was a smack on the leg or on the hand. Then a smack
to the face. All open handed. Then it was closed fisted hits. I’ve been hit so
hard in the head that I have seen stars flash. I’ve been hit with chairs, a
hammer, a car, and any other object he could get his hands on. I’ve been choked
until I passed out. I’ve been in the courtroom begging for restraining orders
and then having them revoked because of whatever. Spit on, thrown through a
wall, head smashed into whatever was available. I became an EXPERT on
SURVIVING. I could take a beating better than any man…and I might crawl away,
but damnit, I lived one more day. I said earlier that I blamed the weed for the
subsequent divorce from this monster. Here’s why. The day he showed up on my
parent’s doorstep to ask me out, I was in my bedroom lighting up, and I just
thought it was the coolest thing to have a football player be interested in me.
As I look back, I kind of wish I hadn’t smoked that day, but I wouldn’t have my
girls if I didn’t. At least something good came out of it and that’s all I can
say.
Death – I buried a fiancé at the ripe age of
26. I relate to those that have lost a significant other. I know their pain on
a very personal level. I, at least, was given the opportunity to be with mine
when he said his last word before he slipped into a coma, when he took his last
breath before they brought in the machine, and I was BLESSED enough to hold his
hand as his heart beat for the last time, I FELT his soul leave. You want to
talk about being leveled and having your teeth kicked in, there it was for me.
I watched, almost as if it was an out of body experience, as they attempted to resuscitate
him and I was there when they called the time of death. My mother was at the
hospital that night, she was with my daughters as they slept in the waiting
room on cots they brought for them. She was in front of the doors to the
waiting room as I turned and walked out of the ICU. It was her who caught me as
my knees gave and I fell to the floor. I don’t know what all she did, but it
was her that held me as I cried like no other time before. I can put it into
words now how that emotion felt, but at the time it was just a void. Now, I say
this: Imagine the largest, strongest person on the planet has walked up to you
and punched you as hard as they can straight in your gut, and as you’re bent
over gasping for air, they reach inside and RIP EVERYTHING OUT, leaving nothing
but a gaping wound that you don’t know how to close. Then they just turn and
walk away leaving you a shell of your former self. You operate on auto pilot
and you crave routine and you stay in that routine for however long you need
until you can start to learn how to live again.
I’ve lost a lot of things over the years.
Friends mostly, but I’ll own my part of the blame on that front. I’ve lost
children and I’ve lost pets. I’ve lost family members dear to my heart. I’ve
lost trust, respect, honor, integrity…I’ve lost everything. I’ve had NOTHING.
But I lived.
The BLESSINGS in my life:
My daughters, biological and non-biological.
Some have strayed, as a couple are now, but we got one back alive and well and
we are loving it. She’s living her life as well as she can and that’s all we
can ask.
My family – as dysfunctional as we are – I still
love them. Even when we don’t speak.
My husband – He is my anchor. I think we saved
each other, slowly over time, when we met. His story is his own to tell. I will
just say that it was 15 months after I buried James, he had just returned from
a deployment in Iraq, and he was going through a divorce. Not that we forget
what we went through, but I truly think we saved each other. We learned how to
smile and how to laugh again. We learned how to live again.
There really are too many blessings in my
life to even begin to count. I just have a tendency to dwell in the negativity
surrounding events coming up and allow it to suck me in and keep me there. I’ve
allowed other people to live rent free in my head because of grudges kept and
it’s time to just let it go. I’ll never forget what was done, but for my own
sanity, I have to move forward.
Because it’s what I have always done…sometimes
against my will…I always, ALWAYS just keep moving forward. One foot in front of
the other and just keep pushing through. There is an end to the crushing pain
of whatever, you just have to push through it. I’ve learned to take things one
day at a time, or if that was too much, take it one hour at a time, or a minute
at a time and EVEN just one second at a time, one breath at a time…whatever you
have to do to just keep moving in a forward motion. I don’t quit on things
easily, it’s just not in me to do so, but sometimes we have to quit to save
ourselves. And that’s okay. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Because sometimes the quitting IS your step forward.
My name is Dee. I’m alcoholic and an addict.
And I am 23 months and 7 days SOBER.
That’s my story for today.
Thank you Bryan for sharing that link with
me. It helped more than you know.
