bliss-sad's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - It's been a weird couple of months, but I'm finding balance. I turned 35. I can run for president now. Crazy to think it's nearly been 21 years since I started writing here. So much of my core is still the same. I wonder a lot if I'll ever be happy, if anyone is ever happy, if I have the capacity for happiness. I feel so empty most of the time. I spent such a long time trying to fill that hole with all kinds of different things. For a while it was alcohol, then green, then alcohol, then psychedelics, then pills. If given the choice between sitting with uncomfortable feelings or oblivion, I would choose oblivion EVERY time. My husband had a heart to heart with me several months back and confronted me about the pill use. I was so sure that I had him fooled, that nobody knew, that I'd done a great job of keeping my secret. It was tough to hear (and had to be tough for him to say), and woke me up. I've been off them ever since (save for a very small handfull of times when my menstrual cramps got so bad I literally couldn't handle the pain). I still don't trust myself with pills the way I can with alcohol, so it's probably good that my old source dried up shortly after the confrontation. I still crave that feeling of numbness---of nothingness. We haven't really talked about it since. I have such deep, intense feelings of shame around the whole thing. Not so much for using, but for being so certain that I was pulling it off. I feel so ashamed that I counted my husband out that hard, but I also hate that I was down so bad and couldn't share it with him. I put a lot of blame onto him for checking out of life after his dad moved in, but, in truth, I did the same thing. I might've showed up and gotten shit done and kept things going, but I was just as checked out. I see now that we both did exactly what we needed to do in order to survive that time. It was easier for me to point fingers at him than admit that I had my own problem. And again, I really thought I was maintaining. My career took off, I was (and still am) making more money than I'd ever fathomed without a degree, and I had everyone else fooled. Our bills were paid, our credit was great. I really thought, "Well shit, if this is how things are going, then I can't possibly be fucking up." Right. When my dad was my age, he was downing bottles of cheap whiskey and going on weeks long benders. He was cruel and unrecognizable. I promised myself that I'd never be that person. I thought the pills made me better; more patient, more kind, more understanding, more chill, more happy. I thought I was a better version of myself on them. I genuinely enjoyed who I *thought* that I was on them. I like to think of myself as someone with a greater-than-average amount of self awareness, but this was a fucking blind spot. I wonder how much damage I've done to my brain chemistry. I wonder how much of my depression and emptiness is related to mental illness and how much is related to the massive dopamine dumps I would give myself on the regular for years. There are moments where I'm so glad to have some clarity, but mostly, everything just feels too loud. It's been like 6-7 months since I gave it up, and the world still seems too bright, too noisy, too much.
9:32 a.m. - 05.10.24 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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