(((Endgame))). I read your post while walking this evening. I came home restless, irritable and discontent yet again. Alcohol was putting itself back on a table that I had overturned a few months ago.
I really Really do not want to drink.
You all have given me much fodder for thought. I have no desire to go back to where I was 4 months ago. A year ago, two years ago.
I'm in a delicate transitionary period I have never journeyed through before. Primarily because I'm FINALLY doing something about my anxiety and depression medication wise. There is a slight teensy contentment behind the discontent. If that makes any sense ? I can feel a shift. It's small but noticeable when you have spent decades self medicating.
I discovered tonight, through these posts and forced excercise, that the crux of what I'm facing now, is that I feel I have all the responsibility of being an adult, minus the fun that comes with being an adult.
My alcoholism, anxiety and depression rendered me agoraphobic 15 years ago. I have battled that on and off since then. Trauma after trauma, year after year, piled its way into my psyche and left me incapable (and rather undesired) of venturing and journeying out of my bubbles, so to speak.
I have my safe places, my zones which I can travel without completely falling apart with anxiety. But I still rely on a few people to get me here and there.
When you start drinking at 4 years old, and then REALLY hit it hard starting around 15, development is arrested. Most times, I still look at my life and think - how the hell did I get here ? I remember going through this the last time I got sober for an extended period of time. It was like when Homer Simpson starts smoking weed and in a moment of clarity he says "Wait, we have a kitchen ?"
I feel like a child in an adults life.
So much of my adult life, all of it really, has been on this weird autopilot mode. Being forced to act the adult, long before I could be considered one. And then when I became one, suddenly needing someone to drive me everywhere because I couldn't ? I have the big accomplishments on paper. And yet, I can't drive to the store ?
Endgame, you are on to something here with the whole psychosomatic illness thing. My agoraphobia keeps me tethered codependently to those that aid me in my fear.
I have some big things I guess I'm going have to face now if I'm going to truly and honestly move forward.
Huge fears and phobias that have totally gotten out of control.
Things I'm sure most of you take for absolute granted.
Will I do them ? Or will I go back to the unsafe safety of the bottle ?
Sadly, the jury is still out.