Been a While
WOW.
So much has happened!! Um, well, first things first, I'm single again for the first time in years. I'd tell you all about it, but... honestly, I think I'm finally over re-hashing the whole mess. It's done. Other things have moved into the foreground of my life.
For instance! I'm moving again today. Since May, I've moved too many times for any human being to possibly be able to handle, lol! In the first week of May, I moved to my Mom's (her way of supporting me in my utter heartbreak was to recruit me to come babysit her two youngest for 5 weeks while she went to Egypt to get married, calling every couple days to gush about how amazing he is, blah blah blah... my mother is NOT the embodiment of sensitivity). I also quit drinking for the first time... but that's another post for another day. Suffice it to say, I quit, slipped after 3 weeks, quit again, slipped BADLY after 2 weeks, and quit again and I've been sober for 67 days.
Anyway, in June I moved back to the old place I'd shared with my ex, so I could torture myself sorting through all the crap we'd accumulated over nearly 5 years together (4 of which had been spent living together). Jesus, I don't think we threw away a single scrap of love note of shred of sickly-sweet adorableness in all that time. Predictably, I ended up in the hospital with a suicide attempt. Less predictably, that hospital visit put me in contact with the 2 most important organizations I could have possibly discovered: AA and Tracom. I don't think I have to explain Alcoholics Anonymous - since I started there, I haven't slipped, despite having ample reason to. Tracom is a crisis centre and follow-up service. I thought they must be new, since in all my time of clusterfuck crises in Montreal, I've never heard of them. But they've been around for ages! They're wonderful people and I can honestly say they've saved my sobriety and my life on many occasions.
At the end of June I moved in with 2 roommates to a darling duplex for dead cheap ($290 a month including Internet!). Sadly, the drainpipe from the roof had been leaking for years, causing severe water damage and mould. The kitchen ceiling kinda collapsed at the beginning of August and we were evicted so they could rip out and replace the kitchen, bathroom, parts of the hallway, and parts of my room and one of my roommate's rooms. I got some great nude and seminude shots done in my demolished bathroom though! :P
All lighthearted kidding aside, though, this pushed me back into full-crisis mode... so I went to stay at Tracom for 3 weeks. I had access to 24-hour counselling there, and it was a safe place. I feel homesick right now, even though it was never my home. *sigh* The important part is, with everything that's been happening, just this constant wave of hell, I've kept alive, I've kept sober, I've kept some small scrap of sanity. I don't take small vistories for granted, lately... I woke up this morning before 8am, a remnant from the crisis centre's 7:30am wake-up call. I made my bed as soon as I got up. I grabbed a newspaper and flipped through it while drinking water. I came across here to check my Internet things and grab my yoga mat. I'm learning how to live without leaning on people quite so much. Ironically, the only way to learn that is to lean heavily for a little while. But I feel that gut-plummeting thrill I remember from when my Dad first took his steadying hand off the back of my bicycle seat, and I was flying along on my pink and white bicycle, plastic streamers fluttering from my handlebars. I crashed the first time, sure. Just like I've slipped with the drinking, and the men, and the self-injury. But I keep trying again, and asking for help if I need it, and I'm making it further and further every time.
So that brings us to my current move. One of my roommates didn't work out, but one of my roommates ("D")is a gigantic sweetheart, so we're sticking together. He and I found a new place just across the street. We found roommate #3 to complete our little housing experiment yesterday, and today the three of us are moving in! I sincerely hope this is the LAST TIME I'll be moving for some time. D and I spent a few days painting our new rooms, and a friend of mine came over and helped as well. This is new for me, all of it. Having friends, having boundaries. I have roommates, which isn't new by itself but is new in this context. In this context, it's ALL new.
Oddly enough, despite feeling depressed and suicidal and wanting to drink more than I want to breathe sometimes, I know this is good. Like a massage that hurts, I know it'll feel so much better when I'm done. I went through my binges - drinking from dawn 'til dusk and beyond, sometimes not sleeping at all, sometimes only sleeping a couple hours a night, not eating or only eating the bare minimum, losing and gaining huge amounts of weight, sleeping with just about anybody... but I can feel a shift. It's like those binges were, in actual fact, purges. I needed to go through that, to get to this.
Now I'm sober (I can't possibly convey how important that is, I know I'm saying it over and over, lol). I'm eating a healthy amount, beginning to exercise again, and beginning to feel comfortable with my body in small increments. I've been celibate for almost a month. Not to say I haven't flirted -- OH have I ever, lol!! -- but I'm trying this new thing where I get to know a person before I hop in bed with him/her. Crazy, I know. :P I was just looking for comfort, looking for someone to love me again, looking for safety and trust... but sex isn't the source of any of that, it's the product of it. At least, good sex is. And the longer I go without it, the less I want it. I'm content as I am, in that respect... single, unattached, free to wear whatever I want, associate with whoever I want, come and go as I please and be as inconsistent as I need to be in order to discover who the hell I've been silencing all this time.
I know this so far: she's impossibly naive, this person I've been crushing inside myself. It's kind of endearing. She's also incredibly tough. She's been though a lot, and something in her keeps kicking out to survive. She's dying to live, this person. She's like a pre-teen girl: idealistic, passionate, a little silly, and with plenty to learn... but she's also pure potential, despite all the mud she's been dragged through. She chose green for her walls, because it's stimulating and soothing. She gave a massage to a boy she likes yesterday, and realized it's okay if that's all that ever happens, because she's not sure what she'd do with a boyfriend right now if she had one and she knows she doesn't just want a fuck-buddy. She swallows her ridiculous pride to walk to the nearest payphone and call the crisis centre's number if she knows the alternative will be to take a drink or to cut herself. She has no idea what's going on half the time, but it's not because she's stupid - it's because she's trying to take it all in, to absorb and process everything that's happened since she was first packed away in her cage 12 years ago. She's being kind and forgiving with herself, as much as she can, because she knows it's the only way to do this right.
Anyway, I've carried on enough here... It's been a long time coming, this entry.
So much has happened!! Um, well, first things first, I'm single again for the first time in years. I'd tell you all about it, but... honestly, I think I'm finally over re-hashing the whole mess. It's done. Other things have moved into the foreground of my life.
For instance! I'm moving again today. Since May, I've moved too many times for any human being to possibly be able to handle, lol! In the first week of May, I moved to my Mom's (her way of supporting me in my utter heartbreak was to recruit me to come babysit her two youngest for 5 weeks while she went to Egypt to get married, calling every couple days to gush about how amazing he is, blah blah blah... my mother is NOT the embodiment of sensitivity). I also quit drinking for the first time... but that's another post for another day. Suffice it to say, I quit, slipped after 3 weeks, quit again, slipped BADLY after 2 weeks, and quit again and I've been sober for 67 days.
Anyway, in June I moved back to the old place I'd shared with my ex, so I could torture myself sorting through all the crap we'd accumulated over nearly 5 years together (4 of which had been spent living together). Jesus, I don't think we threw away a single scrap of love note of shred of sickly-sweet adorableness in all that time. Predictably, I ended up in the hospital with a suicide attempt. Less predictably, that hospital visit put me in contact with the 2 most important organizations I could have possibly discovered: AA and Tracom. I don't think I have to explain Alcoholics Anonymous - since I started there, I haven't slipped, despite having ample reason to. Tracom is a crisis centre and follow-up service. I thought they must be new, since in all my time of clusterfuck crises in Montreal, I've never heard of them. But they've been around for ages! They're wonderful people and I can honestly say they've saved my sobriety and my life on many occasions.
At the end of June I moved in with 2 roommates to a darling duplex for dead cheap ($290 a month including Internet!). Sadly, the drainpipe from the roof had been leaking for years, causing severe water damage and mould. The kitchen ceiling kinda collapsed at the beginning of August and we were evicted so they could rip out and replace the kitchen, bathroom, parts of the hallway, and parts of my room and one of my roommate's rooms. I got some great nude and seminude shots done in my demolished bathroom though! :P
All lighthearted kidding aside, though, this pushed me back into full-crisis mode... so I went to stay at Tracom for 3 weeks. I had access to 24-hour counselling there, and it was a safe place. I feel homesick right now, even though it was never my home. *sigh* The important part is, with everything that's been happening, just this constant wave of hell, I've kept alive, I've kept sober, I've kept some small scrap of sanity. I don't take small vistories for granted, lately... I woke up this morning before 8am, a remnant from the crisis centre's 7:30am wake-up call. I made my bed as soon as I got up. I grabbed a newspaper and flipped through it while drinking water. I came across here to check my Internet things and grab my yoga mat. I'm learning how to live without leaning on people quite so much. Ironically, the only way to learn that is to lean heavily for a little while. But I feel that gut-plummeting thrill I remember from when my Dad first took his steadying hand off the back of my bicycle seat, and I was flying along on my pink and white bicycle, plastic streamers fluttering from my handlebars. I crashed the first time, sure. Just like I've slipped with the drinking, and the men, and the self-injury. But I keep trying again, and asking for help if I need it, and I'm making it further and further every time.
So that brings us to my current move. One of my roommates didn't work out, but one of my roommates ("D")is a gigantic sweetheart, so we're sticking together. He and I found a new place just across the street. We found roommate #3 to complete our little housing experiment yesterday, and today the three of us are moving in! I sincerely hope this is the LAST TIME I'll be moving for some time. D and I spent a few days painting our new rooms, and a friend of mine came over and helped as well. This is new for me, all of it. Having friends, having boundaries. I have roommates, which isn't new by itself but is new in this context. In this context, it's ALL new.
Oddly enough, despite feeling depressed and suicidal and wanting to drink more than I want to breathe sometimes, I know this is good. Like a massage that hurts, I know it'll feel so much better when I'm done. I went through my binges - drinking from dawn 'til dusk and beyond, sometimes not sleeping at all, sometimes only sleeping a couple hours a night, not eating or only eating the bare minimum, losing and gaining huge amounts of weight, sleeping with just about anybody... but I can feel a shift. It's like those binges were, in actual fact, purges. I needed to go through that, to get to this.
Now I'm sober (I can't possibly convey how important that is, I know I'm saying it over and over, lol). I'm eating a healthy amount, beginning to exercise again, and beginning to feel comfortable with my body in small increments. I've been celibate for almost a month. Not to say I haven't flirted -- OH have I ever, lol!! -- but I'm trying this new thing where I get to know a person before I hop in bed with him/her. Crazy, I know. :P I was just looking for comfort, looking for someone to love me again, looking for safety and trust... but sex isn't the source of any of that, it's the product of it. At least, good sex is. And the longer I go without it, the less I want it. I'm content as I am, in that respect... single, unattached, free to wear whatever I want, associate with whoever I want, come and go as I please and be as inconsistent as I need to be in order to discover who the hell I've been silencing all this time.
I know this so far: she's impossibly naive, this person I've been crushing inside myself. It's kind of endearing. She's also incredibly tough. She's been though a lot, and something in her keeps kicking out to survive. She's dying to live, this person. She's like a pre-teen girl: idealistic, passionate, a little silly, and with plenty to learn... but she's also pure potential, despite all the mud she's been dragged through. She chose green for her walls, because it's stimulating and soothing. She gave a massage to a boy she likes yesterday, and realized it's okay if that's all that ever happens, because she's not sure what she'd do with a boyfriend right now if she had one and she knows she doesn't just want a fuck-buddy. She swallows her ridiculous pride to walk to the nearest payphone and call the crisis centre's number if she knows the alternative will be to take a drink or to cut herself. She has no idea what's going on half the time, but it's not because she's stupid - it's because she's trying to take it all in, to absorb and process everything that's happened since she was first packed away in her cage 12 years ago. She's being kind and forgiving with herself, as much as she can, because she knows it's the only way to do this right.
Anyway, I've carried on enough here... It's been a long time coming, this entry.