It's just so sad...

I feel like my posts lately have all been pretty dark...and depressing...

I'm sitting here feeling like I have been hit by a mac truck and realizing that my brain is kind of like that right now too. What's the deal?!

I know part of it is because I'm still recovering from the weekend...Tuesday's for the last several years typically feel a little foggy. Monday isn't enough of a rest.

It used to be days that like this I would go home and drink. I mean, I drank every day, but on days like this I would say "man, it's been a rough day...I need a fucking beer"

I suppose on good days I would say the same thing...

I wont today though.

I also know I've been eating like crap. Haven't been exercising. Just been dragging. I even took a pregnancy test (or 3) to see if maybe that was what was wrong with me. 

I think I'm just good old fashioned run down.

I know as part of getting healthy. Part of recovery, I need to take care of myself. Not just eliminate alcohol, but really, truly focus on getting healthy. Physically, Mentally, Emotionally.

For so long I've been a self medicator.

When I was a teenager with low self esteem...I learned I could drink more than other girls and keep up with the boys. 

When my mom was battling cancer...I learned I could make the worry and the stress go away for a little while.

When my addiction started to really get bad and I was doing every drug you can possibly imagine and putting myself in terrible situations...I was so fucked up I really didn't care.

When I was 19-20 and my circle of friends was literally dropping like flies, dying from drug overdoses...I hoped I would be next so I wouldn't have to go through this anymore. I kept doing it though...I didn't die.

I got pregnant.

My daughter saved my life. I have said it before and it is the absolute truth. Saved. My. Life.  My now husband and I were both sorry excuses for functioning adults. I stayed up all night...pretty much every night...put beer in my coffee mug and went to work. I was only 20 at the time. He wasn't much better, although he was older...and growing tired of that whole cycle.

He told me he knew I was trouble and he knew he needed to back away from the relationship we were establishing.

Then I got pregnant.

Without missing a beat I quit everything. Including my job - which in retrospect I needed to do so I could process the fact that I was going to be a mom and I barely knew the man who would be her father.

I know everything happens for a reason. There is no logical reason why...9 years later...my husband is now my husband. We have 2 beautiful kids, a beautiful home and a pretty enviable life by most standards. 

It makes zero sense. But it works for us and we love each other so much...because we both know what the alternative is and what we both were at one point.

But isn't that the problem in some ways too? We both know eachothers deepest, darkest demons. 

While we have pulled ourselves out of the darkest points in our life...some things haven't changed so much...we just hide it behind our beautiful life.

For a few years while we were busy having babies we really did keep it together. A couple nights a year we'd go out and drink with our friends, do lines and hate ourselves for days. But we would enjoy those nights to "get it out of our system". We really really were so much better off in that aspect than where we've ended up. 

At some point though things changed. Another time Ill process the ascend back into daily drinking and weekly drug use...as I mull it over in my head, it's so predictable and and in retrospect so obvious. 

We never got as bad as we "were" but we were much worse than we should have ever been. And it's been this way for at least 5 years.

How sad. 

My daughter saved me the first time. Now I want to save them. I don't want them to think this cycle is normal. No matter how much I try to tell myself they don't notice...of course they do. 

It is all so sad. No wonder my sober mind keeps getting more and more cloudy. 

I just want a happy life. I have a happy life....I want to live it though. Not go through the motions.

Writing this has reminded me just how complicated this disease is. My story is textbook in so many ways. Writing this helps keep me in check....I have been struggling for SO long, it's time to make it right and make myself healthy.

I just wish I could shake the feeling of how sad it is to be this way though. To have lived this life. I guess I never ever want my kids to go through this and I am so scared I have passed this along to them and they will. It is just. so . sad.

I started writing this today with every intention of writing a happy post. Full of hope. And rainbows and butterflies and cliches. If you're ready this...I'm sorry...I don't think I'm ready for that yet.