Soul searching is something I do frequently. With the same token, it is something I should seriously consider not doing. Ever again. Leave the searching to my therapist and hang on for the ride. Sounds like a good idea, right? Right? RIGHT? Wrong. Thank God with clandestine blogs, because all that soul searching can now be documented for later speculation, and without the cramping a hand gets from writing so much.
In any sort of Bipolar deal, there are always triggers. Something to let you know (if you're paying attention...) that "Hey. You're probably about to start a cycle. I'm thinking you should quit.
I just recently realized that alcohol happens to be one of mine, which is quite depressing. I love the alcoholic beverage as much as the next person. Unfortunately I was never capable of having just one. One mixed drink. One beer. One glass of wine. One mixed drink always turned into two. Three. Four. Several. If I ran out of that, I moved to beer. I don't keep wine very often, but that usually came first over the other two. Wine is delicious, but only white wines (to include blush wines). Red wines are gross, but that is beside the point.
Usually the motivator to take a drink and then two and then several is completely situational. I see something. I read something. God forbid, I feel something. Whatever it is, it's something I don't like. Not at all. I can try distracting myself from it. Think about something else. Read something else. Feel something else. But now that the signals in my brain are firing at a much more rapid pace (I love metaphors!), I am drawn to whatever it is I've seen or read or felt that's bothering me. I let it in. Hey, make yourself at home. We're all friends here. But the relationship between what I've let in and my own personal self is always toxic. Now it's inside, and all of a sudden, now I want it out.
But this thing doesn't want out. Oh, no. So if I can't use simple distractions to make it go away, surely I can drown it right? Smother it? Throw a blanket over it and save it for later?
WRONG. And that is where I make every single alcoholic mistake in the entire world. "Oh, hurr hurr you've lost a little control. Let's drown ourselves in a high BAC and hope it goes away hurr hurr." No. NOOOO. On a physical level, people's bodies generally tend to react the same, but on an emotional level, everyone is different. In my case, every single emotion that in my waking mind I am trying to smother now gets to come forward and smack me in the face. Oh, you don't want to feel a thing? GUESS WHAT? NOW YOU FEEL EVERYTHING.
And there's the second trigger. CONTROL. If I lose it, even a little bit, my mind starts freaking out. If I believe things are going well and I've settled into a comfortable routine and everything's working exactly how I want it, then I'm good. Happy even. But let's throw in a little chaos and send everything completely shifting in the opposite direction. It's like riding on the top of a train holding on for dear life without knowing if you'll make it or not. Control is actually something that I believe leads to the alcohol malfunction. In fact, I feel like control is at the heart of the issue, if I'm being honest with myself.
The third trigger that I know of is actually a combination of two, and quite common in my emotional make up. Anger and fear. Anger is a response to how I've processed a situation...and processed...and reprocessed...and processed again...to the point where the situation is no longer valid and I'm mad about something that doesn't even exist. Anger's best friend is fear, and my lack of an ability to fully feel comfortable with what I've become and who I am is fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. FEAR. I'm afraid to take the next step out into the world because I'm afraid I'll retreat back into my hole. That stigma? I'm afraid of that too.
I'd love to be the happy homosexual woman prancing around in public clad in a variety of bright rainbow colors. Hey, check me out! I'm gay.
But the notion of doing so is completely horrendous to me, and leads back to fear. And if I let the fear of doing something bother me, fear shifts to anger. Anger shifts to control. Control is drowned by alcohol. Now I've lost my mind. Now I get to fight it tooth and nail to get it back. Now I'm exhausted and tired from battling and I retreat back into my hidey hole. Now I'm disappointed that I lost. Now I'm sad. BOOM. Depression.
Couple weeks of a normal life, and BOOM. Repeat everything I've talked about before.
Now I know what you're probably wondering by now. What provoked the last blog? What bothered me that much to feel motivated enough to drown it in a last ditch effort to get rid of it? It was something I read online in response to something I had said. Something I didn't want to read. I didn't want to know this. What I had done was fall into a new routine upon realizing a truth I've hidden for several years, and just as I was feeling comfortable with who I was enough to consider beginning to tell people, BOOM. I was told something I didn't want to hear. AT ALL. And to save any confusion, it wasn't anything in the form of light conversation where the other party spoke in a hurtful manner toward gay people. Quite the opposite actually. For their sake, I'm not going to say what was said. I'm going to end this blog fairly soon, because guess what's happening now?
I'm thinking about what bothered me. Playing and replaying it over again til it bothers me some more. Til my brain says "Hey, do something about it. I don't care what." If I continue thinking about it, it'll get pulled to the front and will eventually stare me in the freakin' face. So this particular post is over. Pray that I am able to put the exact same thing that drove me to drink myself stupid as quickly as possible out of my mind forever.
Until next time...
-DCV-
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