I have warred with myself over my food, my size, my physical (dis)abilities, my (mostly self-imposed) limitations, my sense of worth, belonging, and love. I have been terribly lonely. I have hated myself and my behaviours. I have stewed in toxic emotions, unable to see anything else but fear, shame, anger, and disgust. I have lived broken. I have made myself broken. I have contemplated suicide.
My birthday is a month away. I will be 45. What made me cry this morning was the realization not that I would be 45 and my life is most likely more than half over. What made me cry is the recognition that I never expected to live this long. Or I had never wanted to live this long? I wanted my pain to end and I thought only death would bring that peace.
I came to search for peace in my war on myself when I realized I showed no signs of dying anytime soon. I thought of it, I wished for it, but I did nothing to pursue death other than the inexorable path of binging, sedentary, willful living. I was too afraid and ashamed to actually kill myself. And I was too afraid to actually live as if my life was worth living. The depression is a deep chilling fog of unusual weight, bogging me down in its poisonous blanket.
These bindings, of depression and then addiction trying futilely to feed the holes in my soul depression mines, felt absolute. And yet things got worse. I got heavier and my body hurt more. Car accident was #1. Broken leg, #2. Another car accident was #3. How much injury could my body sustain? Apparently a lot. I have sought a lot of medical intervention. And much of it was needed and helpful. But the work of regaining my health is ultimately mine. I know what to do; this program is it.
There is a chapter in the Big Book called Empty on the Inside. This is a fair statement of how I felt, depressed, desperate and terrified things will just continue to get worse. The author writes of her early recovery:
[My mother] deposited me at the local detox center, where she told me I could go in or not but that she was done with me. I was on my own. Detox gave me the same message. I thought they should send me on to a treatment center -- thirty days of hot meals and rest was sounding pretty good to me -- but they told me I already knew everything treatment was going to teach me, that I should go do it and save the bed for someone who needed it. I have been sober ever since. I was finally accountable for my own recovery. I was responsible for taking the action. One of my favourite games had always been making it someone else's job to see that I got my work done. That game was over.
...I knew in my heart I would live whether I drank or not, and that no matter how bad it was, it could always get worse. Some people get sober because they're afraid to die. I knew I would live, and that was far more terrifying. I had surrendered. [Big Book, p.548]As I work my program, I am less and less at war with myself. The threat comes and goes; I greet each with equanimity. My pain at my internal conflicts is still there. But I am starting to ease it. I see the battle and I am starting to choose to sit still instead of respond.
As my head clears -- sometimes for days at a time -- I realize that if I continue as I have in the binging and depression, it is only a matter of time before one of two things happen: I will succeed at suicide or I'll continue the life of the living dead. Neither outcome is what my spirit longs for. I seek the on-going work of being happy, joyous and free [Big Book, p.133].
"Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by." Carl Sandburg
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