I wrote this a few years ago, but someone asked me to repost.
Greetings from the Bottom.
My entire life has been a cycle of wanting to live with vengeance and needing to numb the constant pain I feel. Pain that I found unbearable. Numbing entailed irresponsibility. Denial. Aloofness. Any way to keep myself from feeling fledging terror and anger has been my modus operandi. The hurt. The pain. All these things exist in depression.
So, I began the arduous task of researching the label for this pain I have been feeling since I can remember:
Adversity, anguish, calamity, cross, crux, difficulty, disease, disorder, distress, grief, hardship, illness, infirmity, misery, misfortune, ordeal, pain, plague, plight, scourge, sickness, sorrow, suffering, torment, trial, tribulation, trouble, woe
It's astounding that all of the aforementioned synonyms can be applied to an emotional process. Some of you think of it as drama. I think of it as my daily existence. I cannot distinguish between what is truly detrimental and what simply exists as life. I cannot express my anger and rage towards the people who cause it. Instead, I have turned inward. What you see when you are hurt is what I see each hour of my day. The sense of impending doom hinders my ability to live in a moment. I retreat. I create fantasies to ease my sense of reality.And in doing this, my life illustratively becomes vast acreage. A pliable bit of earth in which I call home.
I live on my expansive piece of proverbial property and see the many holes I have dug over the last thirty years. The holes I bury my emotions. The holes I bury the hatred and anger that I am afraid to set free. The hole I must dig to feel protected from my own enraging heart.The holes in which I dig are not unique. They are the same holes you may dig when you feel panic. Or grief. In your world, these are smalconceiveses. The difference is that I live in these holes. I rarely find myself on the outside looking in. Instead, I am constantly on the inside looking out. Watching lives being led with true zeal for happiness. While I sit underneath life, enveloped in angst.
Three weeks ago I dug one of my holes so deep, I thought I might not make it out intact. I was in such conflicting darkness that my eyes could barely distinguish any light. When I dove in, I forgot to bring my tools. My flashlight. My shovel. I simply dug and dug with raw, aching fingers. And this is where I remained. Time passed so slowly, I was unable to calculate just how long I had been underground. Nothing sustained like the darkness I felt. I withdrew from reality and sat in a quiet numbness that only one suffering this affliction can feel. I mourned. I grieved. I panicked. Yet these feelings seemed to pass in front of me in those shadows. I was unable to feel anything but my own self-pity. My emotions so raw that I worried that I may bleed to death. I was a product of my own rigorous self-deprecation. Constantly berating myself for feeling so deeply.My hand reached out. My raw, tormented fingers barely reached out of the hole.
I found a sliver of light that was able to help me regain some awareness. Suddenly the darkness became scarier than the life that was waiting for me. I reached and reached. I was waiting for someone to grab my hand. And, someone did. He inadvertently put his hand out and I grabbed it. I used it to hoist me from deep within the confines of my misery. A tiny move upward saved me from burying myself completely. I was given the opportunity to start the climb back up from the bottom.And this climb entails a considerable amount of recognition. Recognizing that this darkness is a disease within itself. That the feelings I possess are not simple figments of my overactive imagination. They are real and validated. What you feel is different than those feelings I have.
I walk along life scared. Scared to feel. Scared to be hurt and rejected. I tread heavily on my property, searching the parameters for a way out. A path. An exit. You may or nay not live near me. You may have holes, but they are not similar to the deep depressions in life.So, I say: Greetings from the bottom. Where I have begun to unearth those emotions that have been buried so long. I am no longer digging downward. I have begun the laborious task of filling in the holes that are no longer part of my present. I move dirt to make way for acknowledgement. I find that I am throwing seeds over to begin the new growth. I am extending my hand to those who will take it. I am the caretaker of my property.
www.kjpartstudio.freeservers.com copyright, kjpartstudio 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Questions
Do you have a topic or question you would like to see addressed here? Please send me an e-mail at kjpartstudio@hotmail.com
Monday, October 15, 2007
Emotional Responsibility
One of the most difficult facets of being sober has much less to do with not drinking, I've found, and more to do with taking responsibility for our emotions.
After almost six years of not drinking, the need to drink has subsided substantially. I rarely have moments where I found myself with an uncontrollable urge to wash away my fears and problems in life.
What I do find, however, is that I struggle with the very real need to be emotionally responsible. I have spent years learning how to contain the emotional outbursts and avoidance that I have lived with most of my life. And even with all the practices of being sober and living in a new life, it can sometimes take ONE emotional trigger to push me to behaviors that my drunk life afforded.
The one difference that I see now, however, is my ability to rectify these behaviors and be truly aware of those trigger points. Drinking for me was mostly about avoiding a lot of pain at life events that had transpired. Drinking allowed me a moment's reprieve from the clutter and noise that filled my emotional void. And getting as drunk as possible, my thinking was, allowed me to cry at those memories and hardships that I had never fully dealt with.
So, today, I take all of the aforementioned drinking behaviors and thought patterns and I work tirelessly on rectifying my emotional patterns. Not an easy task, especially since it's not the most comfortable place emotionally.
For instance, my reaction to someone who may be critical in the past would to IMMEDIATELY take it personally and lash out defensively. This is a tough one for me and I still have to stop and take a breathe before I react. One of the reasons I turned to drinking were my emotional insecurities. I had a difficult time regarding myself as anything but worthless, even if I did step through many impressive and worthy milestones in my life. Today, I am consistently working to understand that criticism isn't necessarily personal, it is essential to looking at a situation objectively and allowing another perspective to come through.
Another challenge I find is maintaining an even keel of emotion when things don't go as planned. The other night, I was lost in Albany and late for an event where I was scheduled to receive an award. I was driving with incomplete directions and my frustration level kept rising to the point that my significant other was getting uncomfortable with my grunts and tsks. Instead of getting frustrated at his reading of the incomplete directions, I had to stop for a moment and take responsibility for the fact that I had actually not printed out the correct pages. So, I pulled over, called the venue and the situation went from full Kim crisis mode to manageable.
But, these triggers and our ability to pinpoint the source of frustration, hurt or anger is perhaps one of the biggest challenges one faces in sobriety.
The one exercise I have learned is to list every single trigger that I have become painfully aware of in my journal. I have a page called "Triggers". It's a long long list that I review everyday....and every once in a while I succeed in keeping my emotional trap door shut when I feel it necessary.
After almost six years of not drinking, the need to drink has subsided substantially. I rarely have moments where I found myself with an uncontrollable urge to wash away my fears and problems in life.
What I do find, however, is that I struggle with the very real need to be emotionally responsible. I have spent years learning how to contain the emotional outbursts and avoidance that I have lived with most of my life. And even with all the practices of being sober and living in a new life, it can sometimes take ONE emotional trigger to push me to behaviors that my drunk life afforded.
The one difference that I see now, however, is my ability to rectify these behaviors and be truly aware of those trigger points. Drinking for me was mostly about avoiding a lot of pain at life events that had transpired. Drinking allowed me a moment's reprieve from the clutter and noise that filled my emotional void. And getting as drunk as possible, my thinking was, allowed me to cry at those memories and hardships that I had never fully dealt with.
So, today, I take all of the aforementioned drinking behaviors and thought patterns and I work tirelessly on rectifying my emotional patterns. Not an easy task, especially since it's not the most comfortable place emotionally.
For instance, my reaction to someone who may be critical in the past would to IMMEDIATELY take it personally and lash out defensively. This is a tough one for me and I still have to stop and take a breathe before I react. One of the reasons I turned to drinking were my emotional insecurities. I had a difficult time regarding myself as anything but worthless, even if I did step through many impressive and worthy milestones in my life. Today, I am consistently working to understand that criticism isn't necessarily personal, it is essential to looking at a situation objectively and allowing another perspective to come through.
Another challenge I find is maintaining an even keel of emotion when things don't go as planned. The other night, I was lost in Albany and late for an event where I was scheduled to receive an award. I was driving with incomplete directions and my frustration level kept rising to the point that my significant other was getting uncomfortable with my grunts and tsks. Instead of getting frustrated at his reading of the incomplete directions, I had to stop for a moment and take responsibility for the fact that I had actually not printed out the correct pages. So, I pulled over, called the venue and the situation went from full Kim crisis mode to manageable.
But, these triggers and our ability to pinpoint the source of frustration, hurt or anger is perhaps one of the biggest challenges one faces in sobriety.
The one exercise I have learned is to list every single trigger that I have become painfully aware of in my journal. I have a page called "Triggers". It's a long long list that I review everyday....and every once in a while I succeed in keeping my emotional trap door shut when I feel it necessary.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Physical Angst
This week, I was making stew (the fall is definitely approaching in NY) and I was pouring in a can of Guiness to be cooked off after nine hours. I realized that if I took one sip, no one would ever know the difference. I stood there for a moment, justifying all the reasons for one ridiculous sip of beer. And it hit me, all over again. It didn't matter that I have been sober for almost six years, it still felt like day one of not drinking. It was an occurence that is so infrequent, it took me by surprise.
Of course I never took the sip, but I was reminded of how close one must keep sobriety within their reach.
So, I pulled out this article I had written a few years ago to remind myself of how often the past comes into the present looking for a quick fix:
October 2002
Though not drinking for me has been relatively easy in the last eight months (I eventually cut out most of the activities that were conducive to my drunken behavior), I had a very scary episode a few weeks ago. In the middle of the night, I woke panicked from a dream. I got up, went into my kitchen and had this incredible urge to drink. So incredible, I shook. I opened the refrigerator out of sheer alcoholic habit. I paced. I ran through every life event in a matter of three minutes or so. I was angry, hopeless, sad, and enraged all at the same time. It was horrible. It was so real and present in me.
So, I stood there. And decided that I was just going to let it all go through me. Almost like going through a tunnel, seeing all of these people and places go whizzing by. And man, did it hurt. But I felt it all. I refused to just try and forget about it.If you were to visualize this whole incident....it would have started in my head, gone through my heart, and out my toes. It was emotionally draining in one sense and refreshing in another. And the moment passed.
So, I used this the other day (to speak of your foreboding emptiness). I was driving down the road with the leaves changing colours on either side of the road. I was listening to Les Miserables on the stereo and I had this overwhelming sadness. I missed my ex husband. I missed being irresponsible. I was mourning everything. I felt so so sad (of course, the music didn't help). So damn melancholy. I decided instead of changing the music to some happy yappy station, I would let myself feel all of this again. Feel it right through to my heart. And again, it hurt. Pain is remarkable in that aspect. But,in doing so, I was so much happier that I was capable of feeling deep emotion. That I had worked so hard over the last months to be able to be in touch with these emotions---sad, angry whatever. And I cried....and the tears came out like crazy. Cried so hard that I had to pull over with my Les Miserables blaring the most sappy song and just weep.And then?
It was over. It passed. And I found my resilience to the situation enlightening. I had released so much....and that is something that I had never been able to do in the fourteen years I had been drinking. So, to sum up....the feelings of sadness, the need for alcohol haven't gone away. They are still present in some capacity. The tools that you have within yourself just get more refined and stronger to deal with these situations. You become more aware of your emotions and strengths...and pull them out when needed. And that, I suppose, has been my on-going method.
Of course I never took the sip, but I was reminded of how close one must keep sobriety within their reach.
So, I pulled out this article I had written a few years ago to remind myself of how often the past comes into the present looking for a quick fix:
October 2002
Though not drinking for me has been relatively easy in the last eight months (I eventually cut out most of the activities that were conducive to my drunken behavior), I had a very scary episode a few weeks ago. In the middle of the night, I woke panicked from a dream. I got up, went into my kitchen and had this incredible urge to drink. So incredible, I shook. I opened the refrigerator out of sheer alcoholic habit. I paced. I ran through every life event in a matter of three minutes or so. I was angry, hopeless, sad, and enraged all at the same time. It was horrible. It was so real and present in me.
So, I stood there. And decided that I was just going to let it all go through me. Almost like going through a tunnel, seeing all of these people and places go whizzing by. And man, did it hurt. But I felt it all. I refused to just try and forget about it.If you were to visualize this whole incident....it would have started in my head, gone through my heart, and out my toes. It was emotionally draining in one sense and refreshing in another. And the moment passed.
So, I used this the other day (to speak of your foreboding emptiness). I was driving down the road with the leaves changing colours on either side of the road. I was listening to Les Miserables on the stereo and I had this overwhelming sadness. I missed my ex husband. I missed being irresponsible. I was mourning everything. I felt so so sad (of course, the music didn't help). So damn melancholy. I decided instead of changing the music to some happy yappy station, I would let myself feel all of this again. Feel it right through to my heart. And again, it hurt. Pain is remarkable in that aspect. But,in doing so, I was so much happier that I was capable of feeling deep emotion. That I had worked so hard over the last months to be able to be in touch with these emotions---sad, angry whatever. And I cried....and the tears came out like crazy. Cried so hard that I had to pull over with my Les Miserables blaring the most sappy song and just weep.And then?
It was over. It passed. And I found my resilience to the situation enlightening. I had released so much....and that is something that I had never been able to do in the fourteen years I had been drinking. So, to sum up....the feelings of sadness, the need for alcohol haven't gone away. They are still present in some capacity. The tools that you have within yourself just get more refined and stronger to deal with these situations. You become more aware of your emotions and strengths...and pull them out when needed. And that, I suppose, has been my on-going method.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Sober Madness
Hello,
I apologize that I have been remiss about posting but wanted to let you know that's all about to change.
Very soon, Sobriety Girl will be syndicated by the Poughkeepsie Journal, a Gannett newspaper.
The good news? I will now be posting four times a week about all things sober. Stay tuned.....things are about to get really cool.
Kim
I apologize that I have been remiss about posting but wanted to let you know that's all about to change.
Very soon, Sobriety Girl will be syndicated by the Poughkeepsie Journal, a Gannett newspaper.
The good news? I will now be posting four times a week about all things sober. Stay tuned.....things are about to get really cool.
Kim
Monday, July 23, 2007
Another word for Sober.
There are many times in the last five years that I find myself trying to define the word sober.
Sober. Sobriety. Not drinking. Recovery. Change in life.
The dictionary defines sober:
* Habitually abstemious in the use of alcoholic liquors or drugs; temperate.* Not intoxicated or affected by the use of drugs.
* Plain or subdued: sober attire.
* Devoid of frivolity, excess, exaggeration, or speculative imagination; straightforward: gave a sober assessment of the situation.
* Marked by seriousness, gravity, or solemnity of conduct or character. See Synonyms at serious.
* Marked by circumspection and self-restraint.Self restraint? Devoid of excess or speculative imagination?
The question arises in my own head....have I become boring and morose in my sober life? Have I become plagued with seriousness because I have chosen this path?In the last three years, I have also found myself having to defend and define my sober life. "Why don't you drink?" "What happened to make you stop?" "Are you WEIRD?" "YOU DON'T GO OUT?" "Have you no fun in your life?"Well, I think to myself tirelessly, life is just different.What happened to make me cease drinking habitually for the majority of my young adult life? Well, I guess things were just not working the way I wanted. Nothing significant happened, per se. Yes, I hit bottom, but not in any spectacular fashion. I just got sober. I simply took out an element of my life that caused me pain. And now, I find that people have a difficult time grasping the concept.
And when did I become so concerned about what people think? Years ago, I could get drunk, stand on a bar and proclaim my love for Jimmy Buffett in song without skipping a beat. I could fall down the stairs at a restaurant and simply smile and say, "oopsie". But, we live in a world surrounded by alcoholic intentions. It's part of our society and part of the way we chose to socialize. Not a day goes by that does not include a reference to alcohol. And I accept that with the grace of a woman who has made a choice. But, damn it, it's still frustrating as hell. I actually watch people watch me at parties. I see them double glancing at my martini glass making sure that there is nothing stronger than Diet Coke in my glass. And these people never knew me BEFORE! If they had, the would know that I rarely drank martinis. I play the part with little fanfare. I participate in the charade of the drinking world with my own sober theatrics. And when I arrive home to my bed, I collapse with the exhaustive sigh of someone in recovery.
I have worked to make everyone feel comfortable for the choices I have made...and for a moment, I wish I could replace the word sober with some amazing adjective that would wipe away the stigma of my decisions. The stigma of all my past mistakes. . And yes, I wish I could replace sober with just about any other word in the English language.
And in all of these quandries, I sometimes find myself questioning my motives. Why am I really doing this? Meeting people that I never knew existed. Constantly searching for my own soapbox to stand on. My purpose. My MO. When before I was simply a woman with a drinking problem. I did not publicize my life on such a vehement scale. I was never a hippie, cause- related type of woman. I drank. I got drunk. I caused some drama and then went home to pass out.Now, things are different. I have made a choice that has changed my life. I will not change the fact that I am sober, so sober it is.
So, I have taken the liberty in redefining the word sober in my own glorified dicitonary.sober (adj.): respect for one's own self. Self assured, self-aware and unconcerned with those people who just don't get the reasons for this journey.
And for those of you who drink, life on the other side is not bleak and weary.
Blisters do not appear when in the presence of someone sober.
Sober. Sobriety. Not drinking. Recovery. Change in life.
The dictionary defines sober:
* Habitually abstemious in the use of alcoholic liquors or drugs; temperate.* Not intoxicated or affected by the use of drugs.
* Plain or subdued: sober attire.
* Devoid of frivolity, excess, exaggeration, or speculative imagination; straightforward: gave a sober assessment of the situation.
* Marked by seriousness, gravity, or solemnity of conduct or character. See Synonyms at serious.
* Marked by circumspection and self-restraint.Self restraint? Devoid of excess or speculative imagination?
The question arises in my own head....have I become boring and morose in my sober life? Have I become plagued with seriousness because I have chosen this path?In the last three years, I have also found myself having to defend and define my sober life. "Why don't you drink?" "What happened to make you stop?" "Are you WEIRD?" "YOU DON'T GO OUT?" "Have you no fun in your life?"Well, I think to myself tirelessly, life is just different.What happened to make me cease drinking habitually for the majority of my young adult life? Well, I guess things were just not working the way I wanted. Nothing significant happened, per se. Yes, I hit bottom, but not in any spectacular fashion. I just got sober. I simply took out an element of my life that caused me pain. And now, I find that people have a difficult time grasping the concept.
And when did I become so concerned about what people think? Years ago, I could get drunk, stand on a bar and proclaim my love for Jimmy Buffett in song without skipping a beat. I could fall down the stairs at a restaurant and simply smile and say, "oopsie". But, we live in a world surrounded by alcoholic intentions. It's part of our society and part of the way we chose to socialize. Not a day goes by that does not include a reference to alcohol. And I accept that with the grace of a woman who has made a choice. But, damn it, it's still frustrating as hell. I actually watch people watch me at parties. I see them double glancing at my martini glass making sure that there is nothing stronger than Diet Coke in my glass. And these people never knew me BEFORE! If they had, the would know that I rarely drank martinis. I play the part with little fanfare. I participate in the charade of the drinking world with my own sober theatrics. And when I arrive home to my bed, I collapse with the exhaustive sigh of someone in recovery.
I have worked to make everyone feel comfortable for the choices I have made...and for a moment, I wish I could replace the word sober with some amazing adjective that would wipe away the stigma of my decisions. The stigma of all my past mistakes. . And yes, I wish I could replace sober with just about any other word in the English language.
And in all of these quandries, I sometimes find myself questioning my motives. Why am I really doing this? Meeting people that I never knew existed. Constantly searching for my own soapbox to stand on. My purpose. My MO. When before I was simply a woman with a drinking problem. I did not publicize my life on such a vehement scale. I was never a hippie, cause- related type of woman. I drank. I got drunk. I caused some drama and then went home to pass out.Now, things are different. I have made a choice that has changed my life. I will not change the fact that I am sober, so sober it is.
So, I have taken the liberty in redefining the word sober in my own glorified dicitonary.sober (adj.): respect for one's own self. Self assured, self-aware and unconcerned with those people who just don't get the reasons for this journey.
And for those of you who drink, life on the other side is not bleak and weary.
Blisters do not appear when in the presence of someone sober.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
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