Putting one foot in front of the other and keep moving foward

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.