There is a predominant voice in the mind of an addict that supersedes all reason, and that voice WANTS YOU DEAD.
- Russell Brand
Last week on Spotify, I stumbled across Tove Lo's 'Stay High.' I listened to the groove and then gave it a second go before I realized my mouth was hanging open like an idiot because I heard my whole drinking life in the span of one song in her lyrics.
I eat my dinner in my bathtub
Then I go to sex clubs
Watching freaky people gettin' it on
It doesn't make me nervous
If anything I'm restless
Yeah, I've been around and I've seen it all
I get home, I got the munchies
Binge on all my Twinkies
Throw up in the tub
Then I go to sleep
And I drank up all my money
Dazed and kinda lonely
You're gone and I gotta stay
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Spend my days locked in a haze
Trying to forget you babe, I fall back down
Gotta stay high all my life
To forget I'm missing you
Pick up daddies at the playground
How I spend my daytime
Loosen up the frown, make them feel alive
I'll make it fast and greasy
I'm numb and way too easy
You're gone and I gotta stay
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Spend my days locked in a haze
Trying to forget you babe, I fall back down
Gotta stay high all my life
To forget I'm missing you
Staying in my play pretend
Where the fun ain't got no end
Can't go home alone again
Need someone to numb the pain
You're gone and I gotta stay
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Spend my days locked in a haze
Trying to forget you babe, I fall back down
Gotta stay high all my life
To forget I'm missing you
What I mean by this is, the last 12 years has gone a little something like this.
I met the man I thought I was going to marry in freshman year of college. We were both young and dumb. I fell in love instantly, but for him, well...must have taken a bit longer. He had a girlfriend going into college (in another state, we know how that goes), but it wasn't until (supposedly) the summer before our junior year that he was hostel-ing his way through Europe, sat on a beach one day and realized he loved me. We started dating shortly after and fell deeply, madly, unhealthily in love.
And we drank. A lot.
And we drank. A lot.
When I say unhealthily, I mean mainly myself. I can't say fully how the relationship was for him. I gave in utterly to being his everything. We loved, we fought, we drank, we made love. We BBQ'd oysters in the backyard during the last days of summer with our friends and set enormous piles of wood on fire, managing somehow not to burn down the entire neighborhood in fits of drunken glee. We'd take shots of every liquor known to man in dive bars and his parents' lakeside home. We'd sip champagne and Chardonnay (and most of this all taking place before we were actually of legal drinking age.) We lived together, had a dog together, stayed for 4 years together. I would be sleeping and I would know he'd be watching me. He used to gently play with my hair and whisper to me that he'd marry me when he thought I couldn't hear him (heartbreaking, right?). We lavished attention and gifts and piles of disgusting love upon one another until I didn't know how to be...to just BE...without him.
Cut to....
After 4 years and some time after that together, he told me one day he didn't love me anymore. Granted, by that point, I was also treating him like shit, taking him for granted and fairly unpleasant in general. I am not without fault. But....it hurt, like nothing ever had or has since.
...Did I mention even more of this happened after that?
Cut to....
After 4 years and some time after that together, he told me one day he didn't love me anymore. Granted, by that point, I was also treating him like shit, taking him for granted and fairly unpleasant in general. I am not without fault. But....it hurt, like nothing ever had or has since.
...Did I mention even more of this happened after that?
I should clarify, my drinking didn't have to do with just my heartbreak and loss of someone I loved. What I am and will be was always lurking below the surface. I mourned the loss of MYSELF by medicating and shutting off my growth as an adult since age 18. There are certain parts of me that are very far behind in maturity for a 35 year old, such as sometimes being unable to maintain a good relationship with anyone or being confident enough in myself to say no when treated like dung underfoot. Mostly though, I have endangered myself to the point of near death and am amazed that I'm even alive.
I've fallen head first into walls after drinking too much for no reason other than I seemed to have lost my balance and have no recollection of why the day after. I've done things with people I regret. I've had blow out arguments and destroyed friendships and relationships with significant others. I've thrown up in my own bathtub. There are a few nights where I can't recall how I got home. I've blacked out whole conversations and parts of evenings. Three weeks ago, I momentarily gave up on sobriety, went out to happy hour with my coworkers and got blitzed out of my mind. I had a total of 10-11 drinks in a span of 5 hours of varying degrees of alcohol percentage, including a few shots, got into a verbal altercation with a bouncer and STILL managed to run across the street to my gas station after I got home to buy more cider. Finally, after making my way home, I decided to draw a bath, relax, then make my way to bed. That was at 1 a.m.
I woke up partially submerged in my bathtub almost 4 hours later.
I'm scared. I'm scared I will drink again. I'm scared I will die. I'm scared I will never be fully the person I know I can be: a talented writer, photographer and artist. It terrifies me, the idea of not waking up and be gone. As fleeting and temporary our impermanence in this universe, I am (truly for the first time) scared because I'm not done with living. I'm forming healthy bonds with people for the first time. I'm going to travel and experience things outside my bubble. I'm clear headed and strong and determined. I can write, and sleep, and plan for my future. I share my fucked up stories because each one of us has our own personal struggle, a war within ourselves regardless of what it may be. We can only learn from each other if we share our darkest times and admit our humanity, that we are not held together by perfection.
Those are my mistakes. And I wouldn't want any other.
“My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.”
― Steve Maraboli
