Time to Stop but Can't imagine stopping...
Hi folks,
A few years ago I posted on here as error745, but it'd been so long since I've spent any time here, that whatever password went with that is gone from memory forever. Anyway, badnews seems to be pretty fitting these days.
This is going to be a long intro, I will try to keep it brief as possible. Doing so requires me to ditch a lot of details which aren't all that amazing anyway.
In Life V1.1, I'd been a child drunk, teenage heroin addict, and spent a few years of early adulthood in prison. I'm not trying to lay myself out there as some hardcore badass, more like someone who didn't handle limits very well at all.
I can read people just well enough to usually figure out what they want and get along with them. I try to relate but sometimes just can't get where they're coming from. I've been shocked and heartbroken by how cruel we can be to each other. I never set out to intentionally hurt anyone, but inflicted enough pain on my most cherished humans, that shame and regret, FAR more than an interest in self preservation, led me to meetings...
They helped for a while. I stayed clean for over a decade and a half. Completely re-invented myself more than once or twice. I stopped going to meetings 7 years ago when I left the DC area after getting laid off, & I'm a pain patient which I'm certain was how it all started up again, although until this last year I'd been able to "white knuckle it" and function pretty well.
This post has the potential of becoming unreasonably long so I'll attempt to wrap it up: Today I've re-committed myself to cutting it all out again before I lose my girls forever. At some irrelevant point in time for some irrelevant reason I started getting fucked up again. I've hit the point where it seems impossible to stop, which means that if I don't, I stand to inflict serious damage on the people I love the most.
To my wife I'd always been the strong one, while she's dealt with depression and other issues I was able to hold things together. Today she asked my permission (basically) to talk to her stepmother about the situation because this time I am the problem, and therefore no support.
I have not done anything to put my daughter at risk of harm, not yet, but especially during this last year, I just haven't really been around. We would be a lot closer but I've allowed my addiction to come between us. There's no way to put into words how shitty it is to admit that. I could compare myself to an abusive Dad and look great, but compared to what I have meant to her before, I've let her down.
I let everyone down. I let myself down. There are a lot of people I'm going to have trouble looking in the eye. I've basically been lying by omission to just about everyone. Of course just because I've been able to keep the job going and the bills paid, I've let myself think that I've got this thing under control, but it has me by the balls. To a lot of people it will probably just explain why I've been so "off" for so long. There is nothing to do now but face it head on and take my lumps.
Thanks for reading through all of this. I think what I'm really looking for here is hope. That strength my wife misses is still a part of me, but it's buried under a lot of bullshit right now. I don't want to be a fucking addict, but I am... so there it is.
) and various forms of anxiety
