I like my chair
About this time I moved out into my own house. Almost immediately after moving out my boyfriend Eli moved in with me. Eli loved to drink and so did I. Needless to say we spent a lot of time drinking with his friends. Since we were both drinking and partying my habits didn't stand out to anyone and it was again easy to hide. Alas Eli and I didn't work out and he moved out. I found myself alone. This was so new to me. Being alone made drinking so much easier, especially since I had the worlds best fake ID ever. I would go out drinking with my cousin and then come home and pass out. I would wake up feeling like shit and have a morning drink to take off the edge. It was starting to take a lot more for me to get a buzz which is why we always looked for ladies drink for free clubs. That way I could get way wasted all for free. However being alone gave me a lot of times to come head on with the things I had always dealt with. One of them being depression.
This part is still the most frustrating parts to me. I hate when people think you need a reason to be depressed. Or when they think, this girl had everything, was pretty and nice and got the things she wanted, what does she have to be depressed about. Depression, often is purely mental. Thats the form I had. The kind of depression where you wake up one day and the world is too much to bear. You feel like your sitting in a black room and can't see anything but the blackness closing in on you. You can't manage simple thoughts or tasks and you don't know how or why this is happening again. The hardest part was being able to know that what I was feeling wasn't right but not be able to change it. I stopped talking about this or reaching out because so often I heard, "You have nothing to be depressed about, your life is perfect, you just want attention." When these times came I drank even more. I would find reasons to make myself sadder and just drink and drink and drink alone. I can't count how many times my friends would come over and find me with a jumbo glass of alcohol and I would lie telling them it was my first one. At the same time I can't count how many phone calls my cousin Lisa got from me drunken, rambling, crying or yelling making no sense at all. She would just listen to me and let me ramble.
Anyway four months after Eli moved out my grandma died. This was and still is the hardest thing I have endured in my life to date. I can't think of her with out crying and I think about her a lot. It was April 23rd which also happens to be my then "best friends" birthday. To give you an idea of what kind of people I had in my life at the time that friend told me I had to go out for her birthday. Rather then just be there for me and comfort me, or even let me stay at home to grieve she guilted me into going out with her. Telling me she would never forgive me if I blew off her birthday. So I went. I got to our destination first and I got drunk before they even got there. I was really drunk, and it was amplified by my sadness. I spent the entire night crying and when I finally made it home I cried even more. After that I think I kind of went off the deep end. I spent so many nights just crying in my kitchen. I stopped going anywhere and for about 9 months I didn't see anyone or date anyone. My friends would come over and try and get me to leave but I didn't want to. I would go to work and just go home and collapse in my sadness. I started walking at night in the dark and leaving my house unlocked and generally not really caring what could happen to me.
Keeping friends like I had at that time didn't help. I was friends with a group of drunken college guys and an equally manic depressive maniac like me if not crazier. We were feeding off each other. We were getting drunk and going out walking and depressing each other. I just got worse and worse and worse.
Finally after about 9 months I started dating a friend and while that was happening I met Rob. Things with he and I were, intense from the start to say the least. Alcohol was involved from the start. In fact the first time we went out of town together and I realized I would be alone with him and stuck in a car I freaked out. When we stopped at a gas station to fill up before leaving town and I ran in and bought about 4 mini bottles of liquor. I picked nonsense fights and pushed him as hard as I could. I pushed and pushed and pushed and he just stood strong. I remember the first night I went to the dark place in my head. We were hanging out at his apartment laying in bed and nothing really triggered it but away I went. I was lost in the dark place. He had no idea what happened. He had seem me be a jerk but he'd never seen me basically disappear. Then the strange thing happened. He handled it. He stuck by me and just let me go there and was cool while I was there and basically just waited for me to come back. At that moment I knew he was the one. He may not have known yet but I did. 6 years later and he can tell ahead of time when I'm going there.
Years went by and I would go in and out of my dark place. A few times my doctor would try and put me on medicine and I would try (I will address this later in my 1000 post because Shawna asked me) but I always went off. I knew that no matter what this was something I had to deal with on my own. I also knew that I wanted kids and I didn't want to go on a chemical crash while I was pregnant. I started being excited to go to bed because that meant I could wake up and have a bloody mary. And then I got pregnant. Surprisingly I made it though the entire pregnancy without fading away. But after I found my way back to the bad side. I spent the entire pregnancy being mad that I couldn't have bloody marys. I remember being so happy when I could finally have one. Even though I had Brandon I would still drink. I never drank alone with him because I still had to be a mom. I also rarely got to get drunk because I was nursing. But something about even having one drink made me happy. It made me okay knowing I could have at least one. I realized there was a problem when my one glass started getting bigger and bigger and I was just drinking alcohol on the rocks no mixers.
The final breaking point was when my parents had Brandon on forth of July and rob and his friends wanted to go somewhere. I was way drunk and I lied and said it was okay to drive. We drove around the block and came home (that was where they wanted to go, around the block). Immediately I felt regret. Not only had I just driven but I had driven with Rob in the car. If I wrecked Brandon would have lost both his parents. The next day I went to the Verdi picnic with my grandma. I had an Amaretto on the rocks and that was the last drink I ever had. I stopped. I realized that in order to be the best mom I could I could never drink again.
However. While I've never taken another drink, not even eating candy with liquor or deserts with wine or liquor for accents I will never stop having depression. That imbalance in my mind is always there daunting me. I've gone there a few times since Brandon was born. Once Rob found me curled up in a corner in our room crying for no reason. Since Codi has been born it's been a huge struggle not to go there. I'm halfway there. I feel as though I have one foot in and one foot out. The constant struggle of parenting two kids and hoping I'm parenting them equally weighs so heavy on me. The struggle to do right by these kids. To not let my faults bring them down is so hard. Knowing that there are times when I snap at Brandon and I'm aware I'm doing it but I can't stop because my mind won't let me. After those times I seems to fall the fastest. I fall closer and closer to going black. I'm trying the hardest not to this time because I know that I won't be able to spread myself thin enough to still parent both kids efficiently while I'm lost in my own bad place. I can only expect my husband to pick up so much of my slack before my kids resent me.
I talk about all of this, not to put the people in my life down. Not to place blame. Because no one has ever been to blame for this but me. I am the one who chose to drink. I'm the one who chose to be bulimic and do all of the other things I have done. I made the choices. When I say that no one knew what was happening I say it to help people understand that even with out medicine it is very possible to hide your crazy. To cope with it just enough to hide it. To seem functional to the outside world. You know how they talk about functioning drug addicts, well I'm a functioning "crazy." I wanted to write this so people understand why I some times seem extreme, or like I'm over thinking things. Why I'm afraid to be alone and terrified of the dark now. I want people to know that it's okay to have these feelings. It's even more okay to verbalize them. It's okay to be depressed with no reason other then you woke up that morning and felt different. I also hope everyone knows that I am very loved. I am surrounded by great people and its probably those people that have kept me from drowning in my darkness every time. I weeded out the bad, like the friend whose birthday was more important then the saddest day of my life. I've weeded out the people who couldn't understand that I can't ever drink again. I can't ever have one drink. I can't taste it. I've weeded out all the people who make life hard to cope and I've tried to surround myself with only good people. I really hope that when my kids grow up they see a functioning mom. They see someone who loves them unconditionally. And I hope that even if I have to go outside and shout at the moon to prevent myself from shouting at my kids, I'm able to do it. Or, maybe I'll just come shout here instead. The good thing is now that you all know about this, I can come here and vent. I can come here and say, I'm there, I'm in the dark place, and you will all know what I mean. It will be kind of like cheers, where everybody knows my name, and you'll always be glad I came, no matter what kind of shit I'm spewing here.
Like a very wise blogger once told me, don't let the ones you actually know in real life know about your blog unless your ready to be censored. Now a lot of my every day friends and family know about my blog and because of that there is a lot I can't write about. And I mean A LOT. Not because they don't know, but because it involves them and my family has a tendency to not want the things they said to be repeated for fear they will look bad. My take on that has always been, if you think it will make you look bad if it's repeated then maybe you shouldn't say it. Back to the actual point of this blog, that is going to be long, and probably I won't finish until much later after I get off work tonight. This week I had one of those days. You know the days that push you to the extent of your sanity. Not in a funny ha ha way, but in a way that made me actually want to come home and take a drink for the first time since July of 2006. Yes thats right, since I quit drinking I have never once looked back. Until yesterday. Yesterday I didn't just want a drink, I wanted to open my fridge take out the ice cold bottle and drink it until I was puking drunk. Instead I at a sandwich with calorie laden mayo and called it even. Why? Because I have kids. Because I was an alcoholic. And because I never ever ever want my kids to see me as anything less but the best mom I can be. So that is what todays blog is going to be about. The fact that for almost 8 years I had a full blown alcohol problem and not one single person close to me ever knew. Along with the fact that I don't even want to know how much hell I'm going to catch for writing this post.
I've always had mental issues. From a pretty young age I realized I had been blessed with "the crazy". I also realized that medications weren't for me**. I was okay with all of this until I was about 17. Around this time I had gone through the normal high school relationship bullshit, but at the same time there was so much other stuff going on. I was surrounded by people who never wanted to hear what I had to say, instead they wanted to tell me. I wasn't being allowed to choose my own destiny I was slowly being told what it would be. I had went away to a church camp and after being given a date rape drug a guy had sex with me when I didn't even know it was happening. I didn't talk about this for years because I knew that in the world I lived in, I would be blamed. I was right about that too. When I finally admitted it I was blamed. I was having serious body image issues and I never felt like I was small enough or thin enough. I was taking diet pills and puking and working out all at the same time. No one was seeing this (ginger and lisa knew about the puking but they didn't say anything because i asked them not to). At this point I was kind of at a loss so I started to drink. I didn't just drink socially I drank all day long. When I got to school I would grab a bottle of vodka and pour out 2/3 of a Snapple and refill it with vodka. Off I would go to class. Studying was easier, listening was easier and everything was easier. At my first break I usually switched from Snapple to a soda with flavored vodka in it. I almost got caught once when a teacher out of the blue opened a snapple bottle and sniffed it out of the trash, but she couldn't place whose it was. At lunch I would have something else and then I would try and stop before school was done and I had to drive to work. At night I was almost always drunk. I have insomnia and when your up all night drinking is a good way to pass the time. I tried taking prescription sleep aids and nothing helped. On the nights I really needed some sleep I would take two 10mg Ambian, drink a half bottle of Nyquil and take a shot of Jaegermeister and that would provide me with a few hours of restless sleep. I thought that maybe if I joined the Sexual Assault Support Services and helped others like me who weren't to afraid to speak out that it would help relieve some of my anger. Instead I was made to feel bad for helping them and not one single person respected the hours I put in with them. It was as though I couldn't win.
I started this a few days ago and its a lot of memories to bring up. So I'm going to stop here and I'll write more tonight. Please know there is about five more years worth of stuff for me to write about so I may not finish it all tonight but I'll post as I go. Also keep in mind when I say that people didn't notice this or blame me for stuff that I am surrounded by a lot of people in my everyday life and I am not singling out any on person or placing blame, in the end the things I did we my fault only!
** I think medicine is fabulous, and I respect anyone who takes it, I think I just realized my environment would never change and I needed to learn to deal with that on my own since medicine wasn't going to make the difficult things in life go away. So that being said, please don't think I'm some anti medicine person because really, I'm a huge advocate of people who are brave enough to step up and realize they have a problem and its better to handle the problem then to continue to lash out at those who support you. Because you're too embarrassed to admit maybe your a little crazy in the head.
I'm coming up on my 1,000 post. I had been thinking of something cool to do and then I was reading Cakerwakers blog. It made me go back and look at my old posts and comments. Want to see the first comment I ever received way back June of 06 when I started blogging?
Just want to let you know if you want to compile your wedding photos into a nice video montage for free, just drop by My Wedding Memoirs to take a look!