I thought I was OK today. And I was, but it's still Christmas and I'm tired and lonely. I miss BA a lot tonight. I miss how things used to be. Mostly, I miss how I used to be. I've been thinking about that saying, "ignorance is bliss" off and on lately. The ways I used to act and the things I used to do for comfort when I was lonely don't comfort me much anymore. This is the double-edged sword of recovery. It offers freedom from a certain kind of pain, but does not offer freedom from life. There was an innocence, a comforting ignorance about myself that recovery has largely erased. I used to be able to claim I didn't know any better (I didn't, really), that I didn't understand that everything still has to be paid for, one way or another.
Like Joni Mitchell says, you don't know what you've got until it's gone. The ignorance of addiction was, if not bliss, then certainly a weird kind of blessing that I was ignorant of until I became more fully aware of the consequences of my choices. It makes me wonder what blessings I'm overlooking right now. But now I know, am acutely aware of, the price I will pay if I choose addiction.
When I first started my life in recovery back in Narcotics Anonymous, someone told me that a little bit of recovery really fucks up the rest of your using. How right he was, and not just with drugs either. The main manifestations of my addiction are drugs, food, and sex. But really, it's ALL drugs when it comes right down to it. It's ALL using, all about numbing, checking out, not feeling, shutting down.
The Holiday season is fraught with opportunities for addiction. Everyone does it. Everyone eats too much. Everyone spends too much. Many people drink too much. Some people fuck too much. This is a lonely time. A time of supposed "comfort and joy" that actually offers little of either, despite loads of gluttonous overindulgence and crass commercialism. Numbing out with addiction has been my comfort and joy, not just on Christmas, but every other day too.
What I really want for Christmas is not money, or new toys, or more stuff. What I really wish I had was someone I trust who would just hold me, you know? They wouldn't have to fuck me, just hold me, and soothe me, and tell me everything's going to be alright.
What mall, what store, what after-Christmas special can I go to to buy that?
If my addictions had continued to work for me, I would certainly still be practicing them. Why else would I recover? That's the shit about my addictions. They loved me until they abandoned me.
ReplyDeleteI feel you. When you abuse narcotics it is all very easy to see the addiction. It is illegal and discouraged (in most countries) after all.
ReplyDeleteSome forms are very much encouraged by various people though. Now there is even the word shopoholic around too. I cannot help but believe that the world would be a better place if just marketing would just vanish from the face of the earth. Leaving a kind of new silence in our cities. The absence of voices that affirms that consumption makes us happy, and lack of it makes us unhappy.
1 + about being held too.
I couldn't put it better myself. It does feel like a kind of abandonment.
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