So I have been taking this trip down memory lane - and it is, well, it is acutely painful. I keep reading these old emails - we are talking hundreds of emails - daily emails recounting every detail of the journey. I can't stop reading them. It is fascinating. It is just fascinating to feel what I feel at the moment, which is raw, and to read this story of my life. And it reads very much like a story. The honesty strikes me because I am not all that honest of a person, or I wasn't - but I am in the privacy of these emails. I am incredibly honest. I always find the truth there.
Anyway, when I read this below, I thought - some things never change. Some things, like the fear, the loneliness, abandonment, the self-hatred - mostly the fear, running, from yourself. I stayed sober for 35 days initially, and the last time I drank was December 13, 2005. What I included below is what I wrote to my friend just hours before I walked into the hotel bar. I feel it all, right now, with the same intensity. These are the things I still write about - the things that I am afraid of, the things I seek relief from.
December 13, 2005
“I think my panic about this is mostly over going out tonight. Plus I haven't seen this guy in 2.5 years - and we dated twice, so that will be weird. It's incredibly powerful fear. The thought that I am going to drink coupled with the feeling that I can't stop myself - it literally scares the absolute shit out of me. It is terrifying in a way that I can't even explain. I hope that I get it this time and I stop making plans like this. It is this kind of fear that finally got me to get powerlessness in the way that I think is actually required in order to give into to this program.
That night before Thanksgiving when I thought - I'm going to drink and I don't want to, and if I can't drink and I can't stop myself, I would rather die - I had new found appreciation for this. Until that night I was not sure. I mean, I believed I had a problem, but I didn't understand. Yet I still can't seem to get the choice part. Of course I'm choosing to drink tonight. I've set myself up to do it and to be able to blame it on the circumstances. And that's just a completely alcoholic way of doing it though isn't it? It's too easy, cause I can blame it on someone or something else. The thing is, I don't want to drink tonight. I've never not wanted to drink so bad in my entire life.
I'm scared I think. I have been for days. It's why this past weekend was so hard. I usually don't identify fear like this. I hate admitting this kind of thing. I hate admitting to being afraid. But I'm afraid to let go of this. I liked that numb feeling more than I realized. I'm afraid to live without it. I mean, I know I've been managing so far, but I've also been stuffing a lot of my feelings from the past. And I am afraid to feel any of them. I'm terrified of it. I just remember that when I was feeling some of it, it was so bad that I thought it could kill me. I'm afraid to even try. I'm afraid of being alone when it happens. I scare myself when I'm alone.
I'm afraid that I'll never feel okay about myself as long as no one else wants me. I'm afraid I'm always going to feel bad about myself in that way. That whole, what's wrong with me? What's so horrible about me? I'm afraid of not being me and afraid of being me at the same time. Of never being able to connect with anyone. I'm afraid that my attachments will always be what they are, which is non-existent and that I will always be running so that I don't get left. Always running, always leaving, always detaching. Because leaving is not like being left. There is something different about it.
I have a surface kind of closeness with a lot of people. At a glance I have really close friends but I am not intertwined with them. There is a serious disconnect between me and other people. My friend Andy – the friend who told me 3 weeks ago that he didn't care about me and wasn't going to be my friend anymore - guess how much I cared? Not at all. I was angry for a day because he made that decision not really understanding my circumstances - and then once the anger dissipated, I had no reaction. I literally didn't care and this was a person I had known for 8 years - we were really pretty "close." It is like I said - literally as if he was never in my life at all. Like he slipped out unnoticed and there isn't anything left behind. I have everything and everyone neatly compartmentalized - safe in their own box. Now I just need to stuff you into yours and I'm good.”
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
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