I know what you mean. The more I have reflected upon my life over the past few days (something oddly I've never done) I've come to realization that even though I may not have been an addict of drugs or alcohol in the past that I was an "addict" of self hatred in several different ways.
Sure, growing up I had my "wild times" yet they ended quickly. "Booze parties" in the mountains in my area were an "everybody thing" in which I sure wasn't absent from. Yet I could do it every Saturday for 6 months, get sh*t faced drunk and then not go for 2 months. I also experimented with a few drugs. Yet if I did one once and I REALLY liked it? I would never do it again since all of my much older then me siblings were all addicts and I swore I'd never be like "them".
Upon thinking hard though, my biggest addiction has been wanting to be "perfect" no matter what the "cost" for being "perfect" might have been.
Again, I spent all weekend just thinking and thinking (sometimes in which can be a bad thing yet in my case it was a good thing).
......since upon much self reflection I've learned that I have been an "addict" all of my life.
As a young child I NEEDED my hair to be "perfect". I NEEDED my room to be in full "order" at all times and would cry if it wasn't.
As an adolescent, I NEEDED to have perfect grades, NEEDED to wear perfect clothes, NEEDED to be adored by guys yet was so "picky" wanting to wait and someday meet my very own "prince charming". Still needing everything else in "order".
Between the ages of 21 and 31 I went off and on between being anorexic and bulimic. I wouldn't even have a sugar free cough drop if I had a sore throat because there may have been a calorie somewhere in that damn thing hidden that might have made me gain 1/10 th of a pound on my severely malnourished body. Plus, everything still had to be in "order".
I also had to ALWAYS be the queen savior to other people. If someone needed help? By all means I tossed on my invisible "cape" and was there within a lightning bolt flash!
When my dad (my best "buddy" in the world) was murdered by my brother when I was 32? I changed. I became a hateful person. I did things I now regret such as leaving the one and only man who never layed a hand on me and who loved me so much. I began going to bars (something I'd never done) and met abusive man #1.
2 years later after breaking free from the 1st, I met the 2nd one but I "deserved" it by then. I hated me by this point and he "loved" me. After I moved in with him for a while my mom then became gravely ill, I quit my job, and we moved in to care for her (I'm within the medical field...no longer though due to my health).
As she layed dying (a woman who loved me so very much), she also had to hear me being beaten yet did I make him leave? No. If he stopped smashing my head off of walls, that meant his love for me was gone since of course, my life was still in full "order".
She then passed away. My best friend. I began a tiny bit of oxys here and there to dull my pain, (but a lot of alcohol was mixed in) and I swore.....as I've said a few times on other threads that I'd never use more then 2, 5mgs per week. I remember times when I had 100 "saved" because I kept getting them for free (yet to this day I must wonder why I kept accepting them when I wasn't even taking them). A fully organized "addict" I was.
Fast forward two years later and I was a full blown addict. The order disappeared fully for the 1st time in my life.
A year later I needed them for pain and they did nothing besides kept me from being "sick".
In between all of these years the biggest times I was REALLY happy was when I worked because my "job" really wasn't a job at all to me. Being a nurse "allowed" me to help others for a purpose and for a good reason (yes, the money was good yet meant nothing to me and as I recently said I also did nonprofitable work in which I wasn't payed a penny in money yet I was payed a FORTUNE in smiles, thanks and love). No dollar amount can be placed on that feeling
So, Captain...as much of a "downer" post as this may be...I so much understand self hatred. Yet I'm trying to figure out why it took me so long to figure out that I've always obviously hated myself since I've either always either abused my own self in some way or else allowed others to abuse me. Oddly it took me being a drug addict and then wanting to get "clean" to realize that I've always been this way which is something that I can't for the life of me figure out.
I have learned one thing though at the beginning of this new "journey" that I've begun and that is that self hatred for one is an addiction in it's self plus that self hatred can lead to addiction and that addiction can lead to self hatred. Something I had never thought of before and never had thought I'd need to think of.
So enough sad talk
, A new day: over the weekend and up until my appointment yesterday I did "use". Not much at all yet the #'s don't matter. Since my appointment I haven't. Do I feel well? No. Do I want to go to my appt this afternoon? No. Will I go? Yes. Do I know this is going to get worse before it gets better? Definitely. Am I willing to give it my all? Absolutely. For me though? I'd never be able to take it day by day. Maybe
not even hour by hour. Yet I don't care if it's minute by minute or second by second, I want this change and want it so badly. Not even just the change of being sober but also the change of what I now realize has been a lifelong addiction all in its own: my own self hatred.
I hope your day begins well and I also hope that you always keep in mind one very spectacular thing about yourself; daily you make a huge impact within other people's lives. You've done it for me and you've done it for many on here. On days when you may be feeling it or even feeling down and depressed (as every single person feels from time to time), try to keep in mind the smiles that you bring to other people's faces when you're offering up your time, your kindness, your support and your love. Sometimes I feel like if I were able to go back to work that this would all be much easier for me. I wouldn't even care if it would be working for nothing. Yet even if I were physically able to I'd be too afraid to at this point since I'd fear I wouldn't be reliable.
To end for now (finally, right? And it killed me last night when I wrote a long post and one person made a rude comment and another said "well I hope she was at least on drugs while writing all that" because no one is forced to read what I write and I only write what I fully mean so if my purpose was to be bothersome or rude? I could find much better ways within my life to do so
), I want to say that I'm looking forward to you hopefully creating an "November sobriety thread" and by the end of it? I'm hoping to say: "I'm 30 days clean!!!"
....much love
