Fucked up sober…fucked up high…

Today was a struggle for me in more ways than one. Winter is here and it kills my body! My brain ALWAYS goes into the thought of how I feel on narcotics, but it only focuses on the good parts of narcotic use, like pain relief, bringing me the ability to do what normal people do with no nerve pin, bone pain, and the satisfaction that I can do things without struggle. My brain also wants to focus on the emotional high I get when I take them. The beautiful feeling of truly not caring where I fit in because the pills give me the ability to fit in anywhere when I take them. I have to remind my brain that the pills also create a crash in depression when they wear off. I have to remind my brain about the pills creating a dope sickness in me that is hell on earth. I have to remind my brain that I always end up taking so many I’m nodding off or passing out in my kitchen. My daughter deserves better and so do I. This will be a lifetime of struggle for me. I wish every single day that I would have never smoked heroin, or opium, and I wish I would have never taken OxyContin. It isn’t easy living with a monkey on your back every single fucking day. It is exhausting, it is so fucking exhausting.

I’m exhausted from chronic pain, my job makes me exhausted, and fighting my addiction daily makes life even more exhausting. Only the troubled understand what I struggle with. The untroubled are exhausting too. They throw around advice when they know nothing about my struggle, or my history that brought these struggles on, and who wants to explain their trauma to every person they interact with? I don’t have the energy to do that. Also, I am not a fan of handing out my bullets to people who may shoot them back at me when I don’t meet the expectations they place on me unfairly. Majority of people in my life know just a few layers of who I truly am, and though that can seem lonely…I like it that way. Enters the other problem I struggle with, healthy attachment! I don’t let people know me fully because basically I don’t want to be hurt anymore. I’ve had enough hurt that it will last a lifetime. I can’t take anymore hurt. If I keep people at arms length I’m safer. I like feeling safe. Isolating myself isn’t healthy though. It is another struggle for me. When narcotics collide with a damaged soul it starts out like a marriage made in heaven, but ends up being the most toxic relationship you could ever have. In the beginning pills make you open, social, euphoric, and artificially numb in the honeymoon stage. They make you feel safe, but it’s all an illusion. When they wear off you are right back where you started….lost, guarded, isolated, and trying to find a way to end yet another toxic cycle because you’re fucked up sober, and you’re still fucked up high. I need to practice acceptance of who I am…a struggling addict with lots of past trauma….and that is OK as long as I keep moving forward in self growth.