Jesse I just wanted to tell you I can tell you have a lot to offer the world. You type super honestly and you know yourself well and you understand your situation even if you can't escape it right away. I feel like I'm similar and I just wanted to say how I feel about it lately, regarding myself, might not apply to you. When I'm fucked up and indulging we are not pleasant to be around and not productive, but we finally feel alright and can just be alone a while. I look clearly edgy and a bit sketchy and odd and it's not a good look, but there's a relief that comes from entering and exiting a bender and remembering that I have this as something to fall back on when I am at my wits end with things in general. When I'm not fucked up and I'm trying harder I'm still not that pleasant to be around because I'm feeling a bit emasculated and like I'm faking it somewhat, and I start to get a bit overbearing and talk a lot and I feel awkward. But people actually like being around me and they feel comfortable and they open up to me more and in that there's potential to love and be loved by others truly, to relate and talk about something and say something actually valuable. That can happen on coke too but there are undoubtably times where I have basically been a wolf in sheep's clothing pretending that I give a shit about life while others think, "what's wrong with him? He seems off and it's a bit strange and maybe worrying". Same with family connections, I hung out with family sober for a weekend recently, and there were times where I just felt like there was nothing to do with them and my fake interest bored them and I think we all felt a bit lost, plus the sobriety just hung over the whole weekend as I knew they were thinking about how I was thinking and vise versa. It was a weird white washing of life, as though I had training wheels on and everyone knew it but we had no way of acknowledging it. But then there were moments where we actually laughed together or made light of it and I remembered what it was like to dig deep into the day and find something worthwhile in it because I searched hard for it, rather than abandoned hope and gave up on the day.
But I have since relapsed a few times and it's the same as always, I binge till its gone and it gets in the way of finances friends family and work, and I become a weird stranger that these people are wary of because the me that they know has gone away and this druggy version has replaced me. I like myself like that sometimes, I can be weirdly honest and blunt and intense about things when I'm coming down but when I'm still high I can barely talk and I look like a crazy person at times and see people giving me looks and I just look physically rough. Relapsed right after a two week break (enforced, dealer respected my request for a break and I texted him damn near every day of it) and now the next day I'm already buying more and probably going to do it all tonight. So I have no room to talk, I am lately just weighing my two options:
Feel like I want to feel but people don't understand me or like me or want to be around me
Don't feel much of anything at all and have to work my ass off to become happy for a while but people want to be around me and respect me and opportunities for growing as a person abound.
Philip Seymour Hoffman basically said this in this interview. either he was going to do drugs, or do the things he wanted to do his entire life leading up to that. Obviously he chose drugs at the end and probably throughout his whole career but it is a big question to ask myself. Do I want drugs or everything else? Am I even imagining the possibilities of "everything else", are there things I want to do badly but feel I can't or don't deserve and therefore choose drugs? Or is it something else?
These are the questions I ask myself lately. I have gotten into the stage of disappointing friends and family and have cut it close with work but have been forgiven a lot. But forgiven enough that I have seen the distrust and disappointment and hear myself saying things I have said probably 5-10 times before, totally sincerely every time, about how I would never have to say them again. And I've seen the love others have bend and bulge throughout this, as they start to consider the possibility that I just can't do what I say. I know I'm preaching to the choir this is mainly a rant for myself. I appreciate this thread so much man and you have given me so much through it.