Part 3 - 'I'

This final letter I wrote earlier this week as I prepared to leave treatment after 30 days of inpatient. Time for the next phase of this journey, wish me luck.

Part 3 – ‘I’

I met you when I knew no better, walk out my life, yes I let her, you helped me then now I’m your debtor, with sadness I write you this letter.

My mind seems forever tainted by you, disease. I know not how to leave you. You are everything negative in my life. Will positive choices put distance between us? This ongoing duel, a chess match in my subconscious, seems a forgone conclusion. You possess control of what I think, intuitively knowing what lies ahead as I plan each attack. I try to make positive choices, but you cloud my judgement and pollute all moves forward with fear. Contradictions, like a cancer, multiply, confusing all reason.

I thought my decision to move away from where we met would help, with fewer reminders of you around the place. But you tell me we came here with other motives – cheap dope, warmer climes if homeless, freedom from isolation if we use.

I thought I wanted to be happy, I thought I despised this life of misery. But you tell me to hope for misfortune, loss and death in my life, as this will excuse my return to you.

I thought I wanted to love those in my life, as I would want to be loved back. But you tell me the only love I need is yours, fuck the lot of them, all they’ve done is interfered in our relationship and tried to control me.

You and them are one and the same, conspiring against me to determine the direction of my life. But they are the white blood cells attacking you, their intentions are good, but allowed to run riot they can be a disease of their own. As your presence subsides, these cells form growing resentments inside of me. These fuel your regeneration.

For the first time now things feel different. I’ve run away from both of you. That freedom I’ve sought since young is beginning to fill the gaping wound inside my chest. This feeling drives me forward seeking new opportunities, friendships with those who support me, those who pick me up when I feel down, those who bring me joy, things that take me out of myself.

I see now that you will haunt me forever, and to move forward we cannot be together. So from myself I must escape, alone with you we isolate. Your voice grows louder and louder until I can take no more. When in times gone by I might concede defeat, follow your instructions to bring relief, I will now choose a different path, I will suffer you whispers only so long before I seek distraction. Music, friendships, writing, laughing, even just talking silences you. All I need do is repeat your whispers out loud to weaken their grasp of me.

Loneliness and boredom, I know you cling to these knowing that I cannot tolerate these feelings, thinking these will always find a way to reunite us. I have some news for you, milady, I laugh at your pathetic attempts steer me off course.

Boredeom, a bore no more. Lonely, not a feeling, but a choice. Check, mate.

....

Restore my life I’ve tried before, but this times different there are no more,

Things I value, you’ve taken all, I break your shackles and halt my fall.

Only in my dreams do we still meet, you drip-feed drama and deceit.

From scratch I now begin again, with freedom fueling fires within.

_________________________________________

Why?

I got side-tracked the other day. What I wanted to write about was my journals. They’re bullshit. I write in them, 90% of the time, in the hope that one day I’ll have been someone important so people will go back through my journals and give me bucket loads of posthumous sympathy. A journal is not a journal if it is dishonest. Just like this blog is ineffective in its purpose if I cannot write with complete honesty.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this since that first post. Why am I writing this stuff? What’s the purpose? What’s the meaning!?

On the positive side, it helps me a bit, I suppose. It certainly gives me something to do. I enjoy writing. Every second I spend writing is one less second I spend trying to score. Double thumbs up.

But admittedly it’s hard to write an honest account of my feelings and actions when I know my words are certain to inflict pain on others. Surely, I’ve caused enough pain for one lifetime? Maybe I owe it to those close to me to just zip it, zip it good. Keep my sharing to meetings, behind closed doors, as so many others do.

Does it help others? Probably not. I’m not exactly in recovery (although I am clean just for today whoopdidoo!) and as such I don’t have magic answers for anyone seeking them.

Finally, what employer doing basic due diligence will overlook these posts? I, like many addicts, find myself completely broke and in need of work. Who’s going to hire the author of these posts who so clearly lacks the commitment required to achieve long term sobriety.

Therefore, at the crux is one question: why go public? And I think I know why. Pride, arrogance, showing off. I still think it’s cool. The junkie subculture. It sucks me in. And it’s completely insane. When you spend time with career junkies, in their late 50s, shitting their pants every other day when they can’t get together the money for a fix (honestly I’ve given away 3 pairs of undies in the past month to those in need, junkies you get what I mean), clucking out on the streets, in the freezing cold. 

Please someone tell me – where is the appeal?  What is so attractive about that?

Good times fellas...

It’s disgusting, degrading, demoralising and yet so damn deceptive. How can you package up one of the most lonely, miserable existences into something so appealing? I want it. Now.

It’s this heroin chic shit, Kurt Kobain, the troubled soul, misunderstood, turned to substances when life got unbearable. I bought into that a long time ago. But my life has been great. Yes, I’m a seriously troubled soul now, but that is a consequence of my using, and not the other way around. I find it so easy to understand why people turn to heroin if they have had difficult upbringings, experienced traumas, rape, domestic violence. I cannot imagine how those sorts of events impact the developing adolescent mind, but I do know that no matter what that feels like, heroin is probably an excellent solution, it will make you forget the pain, and it will work. Temporarily.

Then you have the people like me. I’m just an asshole, I manufactured the circumstances in which I would be able to use and simultaneously receive sympathy for doing so. The truth is - I like to get high, it was fun for a long time! The euphoric recall, those are the good times I remember and hold on to. Since trying to put drugs down, I’ve also noticed this complete emptiness inside of me. This hole in the soul. It’s been there forever, but drugs fill it up. Love fills it up. Without either of those things, life becomes unmanageable very quickly, for me.

A spiritual solution – that’s what I believe in. Maybe writing some of this stuff down will help.

When I see people with good recovery I don’t see arrogance, I see gratitude, humility and above all, serenity.