Unsure about who I am after peeling the onion
In many ways, I don't know who I am.
After drinking for almost 30 years, having a sober month here and there, I have lost touch with who I am and I try my damnest to stay that way.
If I'm not drunk, then I'm chasing something, either money, romance, food, exercise because I feel guilty from eating so much, lol, it doesn't matter. Everything is an obsession with me.
I simply cannot recall a day where I was relaxed and comfortable in my own skin.
I think my problems are much more than just a drinking problem, they lie deeper in the layers of my life, and that's where I get lost. I keep thinking that if I could just not drink, life would be rosy, but it seems more confusing to me when I'm sober, so I drink again to return to the known quantity of misery vs the unknown misery of sobriety. When I get lonely, instead of learning how to relax, I find a lady to call, date, see and ultimately get drunk with. It's another form of escape, and all along I think I'm chasing love. Love's not that way, but I don't know love, so all I know is how to pretend to love while drunk. That's sad and so I watch other people who seem to be in love and wonder why I've never experienced that. Maybe I can't and never will.
When I stop drinking, I'm confronted with life and don't know how to do it well. It's a mystery to me; like love, what is that, how do you experience it, and what does it really feel like? Misery is predictable, but sobriety is like a foreign country and I don't speak the language. It's that I don't speak the language of life, I don't know how to have a "home", nor do I know how to be with someone else 100%, and that stuff scares the daylight out of me. What's frustrating is wanting to live a good life, but not knowing how to do that, how to connect with someone and just listen, how to be a real friend, what does that mean?
I feel like I'm writing a journal or something, but I can't talk of these things, for I know no one to talk with about these issues. I think I need a counselor, but I'm too scared of pulling the junk out of the closet and looking at it. But I know that if I don't, it is only a matter of time till I drink again, and you know what, sometimes we don't come back and that's a scary thing too.
Thanks for letting me share.