notimetowaste

i joined nar-anon 2 days ago and was planning to go to a meeting tonight. i was in a relationship with an opiate addict and i felt i needed to recover from it. i mean, i just *did* drugs, i wasn't an ADDICT. i've seen the addict in my ex and that wasn't me. so i made my first post.

and by the end of writing my entire story about how he ruined me and i hated myself for letting it happen over and over, and i could feel all the hate as i reread it. and i knew that there wasn't a single sentence in that post that had the WHOLE truth in it. because i didn't know it yet.

it hit me a couple hours later when i avoided eye contact with my roommates as i usually do(do they know? they must know. if i don't look at them it never happened...) i quietly snuck into my room, making sure to not open the door all the way for fear someone would look at what was behind it. i closed the door and leaned back on it and there it was, in front of me. all of the sudden it hit me in the face. this is the bedroom of a drug addict. and the things i've been saying all day are the words of a drug addict blameshifting, and i stayed in that relationship because it enabled and hid the fact that i am a drug addict.

i raced to my phone and read text messages of all the times i had cancelled plans, ignored a friend, avoided a phone call, asked for money, lashed out. all signs, symptoms and behaviors of an addict. reread my post on naranon and saw my words to myself. everything i said about him was really about the demon inside of me that i had been avoiding and denying existed for three years. i had control, i could stop, i had stopped before, i only started again because i wanted to. but why did everything point to symptoms of being an addict? did his bad habits rub off on me?

i needed to figure this out.

and i did. i figured out that i, too, am an addict. i fooled myself for so long and avoided it but joining the nar-anon group gave me the tiniest ounce of strength and selfkindness to give myself enough respect to be HONEST. and it was not what i expected.

it wasn't him, it was both of us. i stayed in the most toxic relationship of my life with an addict who was aware of his addiction because i was an addict in denial. and we enabled each others bad behavior, and we passed the plate back and forth, but at the end of it i could always feel ok because i wasn't as bad as he was so i must be ok. i poured all of my energy and emotion into HELPING and SAVING him, further convincing me that i was the strong one here. he was the weak one.

i used his addiction to coverup and downplay my own. i took his softest spot, cut it open, and used it to save me from the reality of who i had became. to make sure it was KNOWN that i was taking care of him, not the other way around. i used his addiction for my benefit. and that is something ONLY an addict would do.

the lightbulb turned on. i sat for hours and hours and hours coming to terms with it. looking at my life. checked off all the boxes. lost my job of 4 years because of my unreliability due to drugs, gambled away my roommates rent money when i was on drugs, borrowed money from a close friend to pay the rent, never paid him back, and just cut him out, marked it as a 'loss'. lived in 6 different places (3 were mine, 3 were me 'crashing' for a month), 7 if you include the month i spent basically living out of my car because who really needs an apt when you can stay awake partying all night and go to work on no sleep because you have drugs to keep you on top of things. i made my drug use a joke to friends, to ease them into accepting it. to remind myself i knew what i was doing, i was in control. but when i was kind enough to myself to be honest, i could do no more denying.

everything about my life, for 3 years, has been surrounded by drugs. i couldn't remember the last time i went an entire day without talking about it, thinking about it, doing it, asking about it, trying to find something, thinking about NOT doing it. i am addicted. i have been for a very long time. and i was so good at lying to myself, covering it up, changing the story, being the victim, not caring enough to ever hear the concerns because their concerns conflicted to me feeling good. and if they don't want me to feel good they aren't my friend so i don't need them.

i am an addict. i have admitted it. not only to myself, but to my sister, an active NA member friend who moved away to get out of the grips of our addictions, and the NA hotline. someone is coming to my house to pick me up for my first meeting tonight. because i can't do anything alone on my own free will like an adult because the drugs have left me crippled and paralyzed by fear and anxiety.

but i am keeping my momentum up. i am not quitting today. i am not physically prepared. i need help making a realistic plan that will help me get clean and stay clean. i do not know where to start.

i hope this is the first step.

i feel a sense of relief and contentment that i haven't felt in so long... it's almost like a high. i worry it will be fleeting but i want to stay on it for as long as i can. i am 26 years old and i have never lived, just blindly floated convincing myself it was 'the time of my life'. i want to change. i want to start living. i want to know who i am. i want to be a person again.