(no subject)
I have this recurring nightmare every now and again that sticks with me like honey on my fingertips all throughout the day after it. (Honey on my fingertips and I'm unable to wiggle them at all let alone move my hands away from the fire ants traveling incessantly onward.) I'm not sure how many times I've had it over the past 4 years, and it's probably not an astounding number. I haven't read much about recurring dreams so I don't know how often other people have them. Even once with this dream was too many times for me, though.
The dream is full of terror, shame, guilt, disappointment, remorse. Sheer helplessness. I almost managed to forget I had the dream by this morning, but it came back to me. Last night's version was the worst yet. The dreams are never exactly the same but the premise holds. Only the setting seems to change. In last night's dream I drank alone. It had seemed as though some unknown force had coerced me into taking that first drink. After that I had no concrete memory of the rest of the drinks. The bits and pieces that manage to sneak themselves through the heavy fog of a blackout were there, but nothing else. Nothing other than the sticky glasses around me. That's when the emotions flooded through the entire dream, through me. I even thought during the dream, of all the other dreams I'd had like this. I was shocked I had let it happen to myself, to really fucking happen.
I always worry these dreams will come true, even while I am still dreaming them. A part of me that is rarely seen by the public in full, let alone in small part, that hides behind some badly rigged facade - that part of me is afraid it will come true and it will be just as horrible as the dreams make it feel. Alcohol controlled me before. I'm afraid it will again. Just being near it I can feel a subtle pull, like there's a puppet string attached from the bottle neck and those beautiful amber contents, to my bleeding fingers or my black heart. Ever had your heart tugged on?
Alcohol is everywhere. The alcohol aisle is right next to the pharmacy in two of the stores I shop in. I try to avoid it but that tug can trick me. Alcohol is on every other television commercial it seems. People drink on television shows all the time. Even the marquee-thing at the convenience store I drive past on the way to work has an advertisement for how much beer you can buy for under ten dollars (fifteen, twenty, I don't know) if you just choose stop on in. It's like every movie I watch has people imbibing copious amounts of spirits. The book I'm reading has alcohol in it. Vodka. Gin. Whiskey. Beer. My family drinks (at the rare event - holidays, of course, so I always seem to be near it when they are - and they hardly drink at all when they do but it can still get to me even being near it). My sister's husband. My sister herself. My brother. His wife. My sister's (grown) kids. My friends sometimes drink, or at least they did when I actually saw them. The old friend I can't let myself see anymore is the worst, though. And I want to see her so badly. She gets me. In. So. Many. Ways.
All of this is like being viscerally torn apart.
It still feels like alcohol would be the superglue to hold me together. Or that a few pills would stop it all from disintegrating completely. There are two phenergan hidden beneath my bed. I forgot they were there for a while. They need to stay here. I need to make myself throw them away when no one's looking.
Self-medicating like that never did me any good. Why do I still want to?