Sunday, November 8, 2015

Go Ahead, I Dare You.

I do understand this whole movement to change our language and how we identify ourselves, it makes perfect sense on an intellectual level. It's easy for the layman to digest and it helps to make a difficult subject matter and conversation a little lighter and prettier for everyone. Even more than understanding it, I appreciate the effort put forth by those at the helm of this movement. That said, and with all due respect to them, I'm just not buying it....

Thursday, January 8, 2015

In Yo Face

There are few things in my life that I don't question (I second guess myself A LOT), but I do not waiver in my understanding of addiction. Had I not lived it myself, I would question it all, but I am a survivor of this illness and so I know--I know, what it's like to be totally and utterly powerless.

Living with addiction is scary. It's sad and lonely and it causes us to loathe ourselves--it causes us to really and truly believe that we're bad. Living with shame is not living, it just isn't. Living with shame, is like living without hope, and a life without hope, is simply not worth living. When living a life that is not worth living, there is no reason to fight. When living a life that is not worth fighting for, there is no reason (and no way) to ever get better--ever. Even if we can find a reason to live, we already know that we're terrible people who do terrible things and no terrible person could ever perform the miracle of sobriety--so why even pretend to try?

And so we live in our shame. We live with our self-hatred and fear and sadness and anger and we do everything we can possibly do to relieve ourselves of that pain. I stuffed more and more drugs, whatever I could find, into my body and I learned to live for those fleeting, but oh so blissful, moments when everything would just melt away....those moments when I no longer had to care and nothing else mattered and I couldn't feel the pain or remember why I even felt it in the first place-- when I was relieved of it all. Those moments may have averaged out to be minutes counted out on one hand in the matter of a week, but they were so profound. It is those moments that we strive for, that we will stomp over our loved ones for. Because ALL we want, is to feel that peace inside our hearts, one more time....