Will I truly arise from the ashes? I'm alive, that means there must be hope left for me, right? There's a reason I'm not dead, that much I know for sure. But what is that reason? Some days I think I've pinned it down, but some days I wonder if what I believe is the reason I'm here is really the thing I hold back the most, the progress of what I started and maybe now should hand over to someone who can guarantee they won't dip out for weeks to feed a raging fire they set themselves. I've been handed an out and a plan of how to do it gracefully; there's always that option now to bow out and let myself be fully consumed. To just lay down and die, or whatever else it is life has in store for me before then. But could I really turn my back on those I can't make understand?
Will I ever truly rebuild without the flames close at hand, without being one dropped match away from burning myself to the ground again? Thinking of sobriety is terrifying. Of a life with no opiate influence, not smack, not orange-flavored sublingual medication that keeps me well physically and keeps some of the cravings at bay. With nothing. No buffer. Just me and my thoughts and my demons. My history and memories and hopes and fears. The whole package that is myself. I fluctuate on that package of self idea- some days, I know it must be so much worse than it seems through the haze I keep between me and the truth. Others, I think maybe what I'm running from isn't actually that bad after all and maybe I should let it catch me and find out.
It doesn't matter if it's heroin. If it's suboxone. Vodka or Benadryl or Dramamine or whatever it is. It all does the same thing, it's all a buffer. It's all a shield I can hold up when I've poked at a sleeping bear and woken it up again and am being charged because of my own choices. It isn't as simple as putting down the shield. I also have to stop poking the bear I need the shield to protect me from. But I'm beginning to see that first, I have to set down the shield in order to be able to get a good look at the bear and figure out what it is about it that makes me keep prodding at it. And that is scary. Nothing on earth scarier, not death or terrorists or centipedes, all things that have had a very real presence in my life. The idea of facing myself with nothing but what I was born with in my body to help me through is absolutely bonechilling to me.
But what scares me most about sobriety is that it gives me something huge and life-altering to lose. I know how fragile it is. I threw away over two years sober, I know how it feels to go back and look back from this side and wonder, which choice was it I made that finally sent me on a spiral I was powerless to stop? Which moment in the months before was it that I made the wrong move, the wrong choice, which landed me flat on my back in a dopehouse so literally? I look back and I truly had it all. I had it all and then I gave it all away. If I had it all again, I'm so terrified I'd do the same thing again. I know that pain. I feel it still today, of knowing what I had and gave away. There was an offer on the table as of a few months ago for my oldest sister to pay my way through vet tech school if I could get it together and get there. All I have to do is enroll. But if I enroll and then screw it up, it's over. Never another chance. So I don't enroll because of fear. Fear that again, it will be thrown away by my idiocy and refusal to face myself. Now that offer, it's gone with the relationship we still maintained even as of so recently. Now I hear her voice and feel only shame.
I'm scared of what addiction has done to me. The ashes it has reduced me and so many better, stronger, smarter people to. I'm scared of what it has in store for me yet. I'm scared to start building anything or even to hold onto what little I have built that still stands because of how those flames consume once I set them. I feel so much fear, so I run. I hide behind lotto wraps and foil suboxone packets and glass bottles and anything, anything I can take an overdose of to get a high. Because a high for me, it has nothing to do with fun. It is all about escape and numbness and just not feeling anything for a time.
I'm afraid, I'm hanging by a thread I have attempted and failed to cut, I'm losing my mind bit by bit, but still, I'm not done here. I know that because I am alive.
That means there must be hope left for me, right?
Yes, there is so much hope. I'm so glad you wrote again, and can tell that you still have some hope left, too.
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