***This is REALLY long but please read, I'm in crisis and need help!!!***
Hey, haven't been on the forum for a while. Avoiding it actually. The last time I was on here I was asking for advice about my crack addict dad coming back to town and wanting to see me for the first time in years and my ongoing struggle with alcohol and occasional cocaine use.
Well, here goes...
Dad came out here, contacted me. Everyone on here basically told me to either not see him (b/c it didn't sound like he was really clean and it would be kind of codie to drop everything for him) or atleast manage my expectations. I did neither. I was so excited by the idea of finally seeing my dad again that I did drop everything to go see him like I was 12 all over again. I was nervous the whole drive over to him and when I spotted him waiting by his car, smiling, in the parking lot of a Tim Horton's, I couldn't help but smile and run over and hug him. All my anger vanished and I suddenly couldn't remember why I'd been so mad in the first place, it just felt unimportant. I was just a girl hugging her dad she missed. We had such a good visit, but we didn't talk about anything important. Just joked around, updated each other and talked about mutual people we care about and what they're up to. He said he was going to move here permanently as he was working out here now and wanted to get together with both me AND my younger brother soon. He'd call. I went home, adult-me anticipating he'd fail, but inner-child-me happy and counting how many more "sleeps" till I'd see him again.
End scene.
He didn't call. I don't know where he is. I had to chase him down to get a hold of him again and gave him every bit of contact information I had lest he try to say he lost my cell number or something. He promised to call my brother too and didn't. I tried getting a hold of him on my own (cause im pathetic and I'll do the hunting even though I'm his kid and it should be the other way), but he's no longer at that motel....Hmm.... adult-me was right...
So, fast forward....I am meanwhile struggling with my alcoholism and the odd line of cocaine here or there...pretending to myself that I expected him to fail so I'm not really disappointed and hurt, yeah right. But I am hurt!!!!!!!!! And so is my younger brother. And I'm just gonna say this. I love my mother to death and she's all we had when he left and did her best to raise us right with good values...but both my parents suck! My mom makes bad choices and isn't happy unless she has a man screaming at her and babies to raise. So, I think IM hurt, but my younger brother (21), is hurting and stuck at home with my mom crying poor me, her loud verbally abusive bf and their little ones (our half siblings) running around like hooligans, listening to my mom talk indiscreetly on the phone about how she thinks he's "emotionally crippled" and stunted life skills-wise by the abandonment from our father. So, he keeps running away and getting into physical altercations with my step-dad and scaring the **** out of us by disappearing.
just so you know, i helped raise my brother after my dad and before my step-dad because mom spent a year or two partying like crazy with her new found singleness and another one going to school and working graveyards. then met the step-dad and spent all her time with him till she had two of his kids. So, i not only love my brother but I worry about him and think about his physical and emotionally well-being almost 24/7. I literally give myself anxiety attacks and heart palpitations sometimes when I think about him.
So now for the last few months, I've been less struggling with alcoholism and addiction and more full on embracing and immersing myself in it. There's nothing I feel like I can do to help my brother. I'm hurt by my dad. My mom won't do anything productive about my brother except whine and cry about it to me, further triggering my anxiety and depression. I'm an emotional wreck all the time and sooooooooooo ******* enmeshed and codependent with my family. So I've been full on self-medicating behind my boyfriend's back, at work. Work is my playground. It's a strip club with no rules. The owners are cokeheads and alcoholics who feed me booze and coke while I'm working as a server. Our dancers feed me booze and cocaine. My managers feed me alcohol. The only rule is don't get so ****** up that customers really start noticing and nobody tell on me to my bf cause he works there one night a week.
I've gone so far as to have a dancer ask him questions and distract him at one end of the room so i can discreetly snort a rail on the other side of the room without him seeing. And for the longest time I wasn't buying it. I was using it, let's say, opportunistically, if someone was offering it. Now I'm buying halfs and grams throughout the week, sometimes a few times a week so that I can continue my use at home during the day when he's at his day job. I keep these purchases secret from my coworkers of course so I can still use their drugs for free during my shift and save my own stash for myself. I've actually not even been drinking that much lately because I care way more for the cocaine. It's like an instant anti-depressant for me and makes me feel happy and good and forget about anything that stresses me out or makes me feel sad, guilty, etc.
But I got caught. The other night, I did a gram, had a few drinks and came home with my jaw jerking from side to side when I talked cause I was so high. My boyfriend was awake. He's never awake when I get home which is why I'm cocky enough to go home like that. He had a cigarette with me outside and asked about my night and within five minutes said, "You've been doing blow....." He knows I struggled with it before we started dating two and a half years ago. He's always on my case about my drinking which I promised to stop, then to catch me that high on coke with liquor on my breath....the look on his face broke my heart and he said, "I'm not mad but I am so disappointed in you right now, I'm going to bed. This is gross."
I can't lose him. He is my only emotional support in this whole world. I love him more than I can even articulate. And I know my ongoing, blatant lying and hiding from him indicates the contrary, but I do love him so much. He has helped me through so much and made me a much stronger person in a lot of regards and encourages me to pursue my goals and be the best person I can be. I know it's not fair to say but if he left, I know for a fact that it would be absolutely no holds barred, the biggest **** show anyone has ever seen, I'd be my dad within the year and back to stripping to pay for it.
So i have to stop. Now. But he still doesn't know this has been ongoing. He thinks the coke was just that one time cause I was drinking and that drinking is still just the problem. I'm way too terrified to tell him the real, ugly truth that: all I think about when I'm not with him is how sad and depressing my life is and cocaine. So what do I do??? I need a level of help that I can't justify to him with the "being a bit of a lush" type drinking he thinks I do. So I have to come clean? How? I'm so damn confused and can't believe I let it get this bad that I could lose HIM. If I lose him I truly believe I will get messed up so bad and probably end up killing myself because there will no longer be any light in my dark, lonely life... That may sound melodramatic but that is how intensely awful I feel ALL the time. My family is useless, my brother is so lost he won't talk to anyone including me and leads some sort of secret life. I've been in a long-term relationship and working all the time so long, I don't really have any non-drug using friends left. Things never get better for me. Only worse. Only harder. He is all I have and aside from this, I treat him like gold when we're together. I do everything for that guy. I would never hurt him. I'm really just addicted and always have been since I was a cutter at 12, addicted to hurting myself to escape my reality and the pain that comes with it.
Please help me.
Thanks.