thirtybubba

Made 4 days this morning. I was asleep for the milestone.

Then, this... I don't know how to feel. I can't eat candy no more, they hurt. Keep thinking whiskey'd warm up the pain in my tongue and the pain in my self. Keep thinking next that I gotta make it past four days and maybe tomorrow will be better. Then I go back to the first line of thinking.

Well, my check was issued. That's the good news. The bad news is they sent it... somewhere. They're not sure. They didn't send it me, they admitted—I blanked out my address on file. They claim to be sorry. So now, they're going to cancel the check, and reissue another. It should only be 4-6 weeks. What's another month? I've been waiting since May—although they did 'generously' give me a little money in late August. Their delays and excuses and lies have cost me everything I had managed to gather over the course of my life and are probably going to send me to jail. If it weren't for the economy, I'd quit school and just go back to living. It was a heck of a lot easier for my stress level. But now I'm here, and I guess I'll just float along.

A part of me says it can't get much worse. The majority of me knows it will. Sober, this is worse than anything I ever felt when I was drinking. And I have been through Hell before a few times. This isn't even painful like being beaten, this is just some sort of detached powerlessness. I guess to pay for what I've done, I get to watch everything I've ever achieved fall out of my life one thing at a time. I gave up being able to support myself to go to school, and am facing homelessness, joblessness, etc as a result of it. Not to mention school won't be an option, if I don't have anywhere to live. I'd have to leave from the area, they don't allow homelessness around here.

And I'm about to be evicted for lack of health insurance. I guess some people hit bottom and then get sober. Life waited till I got sober to hit me with its next shot. I guess it wanted me to feel it to the fullest.

Today I was supposed to do a lot of things, all dependent on that check. Now I have to go and tell the judge that it was delayed again, and I doubt he'll believe me. To be honest, I wouldn't believe this if I wasn't living it.

The point of sobriety is somewhat eluding me at the moment, I gotta confess. I keep hearing things get better. I'm watching my life collapse in front of me, through bulletproof plexiglass. And drinking wasn't what started all this mess. Going to school was. I had problems before, sure, but not like this.

Am I the only person whose life is getting worse since deciding to quit drinking, or any thing else for that matter? 'Cause I know I only got 4 days, but I been trying for a month or so. Which I know isn't much time, but I don't got much time, I don't think. Or should I just let the school take me down and start all over from a homeless shelter somewhere? I am so sick of starting over from nothing, first away from my family and then away from my ex. Is this my life? Am I bound to work hard to never get anywhere, then fall all the way down again, like snakes and ladders? What am I paying on? Is it trying that's making me fail? Should I have just been happy where I come from? Welfare and pills make for a happier life than mine, it seems. No ambition, no reason to cry.

I'm sorry, but I'm writing this through tears and shaking hands so I can't edit it for clarity or anything else. For a few days now I don't feel like i belong on SR but I don't know where else to turn. Thank y'all.

Anna

You've been sober for 4 days, and that's great, but you can't possibly blame 4 days of sobriety for causing all the problems you have.

If you can't go to school because of financial reasons, I don't see why you have to become homeless. I know jobs are hard to find, but if you are willing and open to moving, hopefully you can find a job that will pay some of the bills.

Horselover

That is a lot to digest for sure. My life didn't get worse after giving up the alcohol and it didn't get better right away. I wish a magic wand could be waved over our lives when we quit drinking and make everything 100 percent good, but it doesn't happen. You will probably hear and I do agree with this line "Drinking will not help. Drinking will make all your problems 100 percent worse." We all have to learn how to now face our problems instead hiding under the blanket of alcohol and it isn't easy. Some try AA to find tools on how to face life and some turn to recovery in different ways.

We are here for you though. As much as we can through the internet. I am very grateful for this connection because SR has kept me sane through the early part of recovery and now too. It has and is a lifesaver.

Keep posting and congratulations on 4 days. It isn't a small victory. Its huge!! The first few days are the hardest IMO.

socialismislost

Ive found out that life is just that. Life. Stopping drinking for me stopped me from having hangovers. Scary part is, life does not automatically get better once you decide to quit. For many people, Im sure it has. For many other, it has not. There is still injustice, broken hearts, violence, anger, hatred in the world. You are doing it sober, clearly able to see it, thats all. I say come here as much as you want for the support. Lots of friendly people and advice.

Dee74

I'm really sorry you're going through all this Bubba. I went through some hard stuff too in my first 6 months - money hassles, relationship hassles, health hassles, job hassles, place to live to hassles.

I stayed sober because I knew it be worse dealing with all that drunk.

In fact I wouldn't have dealt with it at all - I'd have had the worst possible outcomes happen because I wouldn't have done anything about them - and I'd have a booze monkey on my back, and probably messed up my life in a whole other lot of ways to boot.

Stay strong Bubba.
D

bohemianzen

(((((bubba))))
i'm sending my love and support to you. i'm so sorry you are having such a hard time~even more reason to be proud of 4 days. please don't drink, you will have to start all over with the detox and whatever progress you do have (medically/emotionally) i support you hangin in however you can do it. is there anything at all that you can do/think that is positive. maybe if you can find one thing positive you can keep hold of that until some more positive things come along. i think by reading these posts you can know that you are very much an important member of the group. you are ya know! i'm praying for you my friend--may blessings be on their way to you. stay strong bo

Firehazard

I remember early in sobriety repeating over and over "This too shall pass" and

of course the serenity prayer. Guess what it is true for me it does pass

whatever the problem is. Hang in there!

BreakFree

(((thirtybubba))) I'm so sorry things look so hopeless, but you must know...THEY ARE NOT! You have the power to turn everything around...YOU DO! AND YOU MUST! We are here for you! (((hugs))) Please let us know if there is anything we can help you sort out...I'm sure we can help you come up with ideas / solutions to some of these problems. Lean on us and let us help. You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to fix your life and once you are...it WILL happen!

Love,

Pancake

Dear Bubba,

I've been so worried for you since our last meeting. I am truly sorry for the rough and hard blows life is dealing you right now. Please have faith and even though faith doesn't pay the rent or buy food God "Does provide" for us if we trust in Him. Besides, Bubba...it sounds like there is not much else for you to rely on right now but you have TWO important things for sure!

1) God does love you and will see you through this
2) You ARE SOBER and that is amazing and awesome!

I will keep you in my prayers Bubba, my good friend. PLEASE don't give up - stick hear on SR and please keep posting. You can PM me anytime you want too.

Love and Large big HUGS,

Pancake XO :praying

Emily2002

Oh 30Bubba. I'm sorry you're going through all this, but WOW. You've made it four days.

As far as what you've written above about feeling like you don't belong here... You do, and I'm so glad you've shared. Hang in there and please keep coming back.

thirtybubba

Hey y'all, and I thank you all.

First off, I guess I wasn't very clear about one thing: I'm not blaming sobriety for this all. Has nothing to do with alcohol, really. It's been happening since I started going to school. Socialism said it, I'm sober and I can see it clearly is all.

Dee also said something, about probably not dealing with it--that's right. I wouldn't deal with it. And I might not care. Now I care, and I still gotta go through this.

Break, I appreciate it, but I have reached out (long time ago) to various people on campus and everybody just agrees its wrong, and are willing to help me by all sorts of means. One by one, things get 'fixed', months after the damage is done. I'm sort of on top of things, it's just that when dealing with a state--and worse, a broke state--things take time and a lot of connections. And it never goes back to how it was. Just back to where I can breathe again. I take the punches, get back up on my feet and catch another. All I'm doing is fixing things that I didn't cause, and I have no time for anything else. It's frustrating.

And then the cycle repeats.

Once upon a time I was talking to the alcohol counselor guy (court-related), he asked me what problems I was having, and I told him--it was a year ago, but a similar pattern of things out of my control working out in ways that always hurt me. He told me it was my fault I was dui. I looked at him funny, and began to understand that he thought I thought that my dui was the problem. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. See it was in fact my fault that I jumped into that car. I always knew that. It was my fault that I was drunk. I always knew that. It was the most control I had over my fate in years. Empowered. 'I can cause something to happen to me, too.' I almost didn't regret it for that alone.

He never asked me another question past "How are you doing?" again.


Anyways, I'm still gonna try and stay sober through all of this. I just felt like saying it, 'cause it's mostly just repressed in me all the time and I get really frustrated for no reason because of it.

Sorry to bother y'all.

Dee74

That's what this place is for Bubba - you're not bothering anyone.
Keep it up - and keep posting

D

That Dude

In a scene from one of my favorite movies, Facing the Giants, there is this discussion of praying for rain. Shiloh Christian Academy’s football coach, Grant Taylor, is facing yet another losing season and there is talk of him being replaced. He and his wife have been unable to have a child, something they have wanted for a long time. As Coach Taylor is sitting in his office one day, he is visited by Mr. Bridges, a prayer warrior at the school. He spends his days walking through the halls of the school, praying at each locker in the hallways for each student of the school.
Mr. Bridges comes into Coach Taylor’s office and tells him a parable about two farmers who desperately needed rain. Both farmers prayed for rain but only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive the rain. Mr. Bridges asks, “Which one trusted God to send the rain?” “The one who prepared,” replied the coach. “God will send the rain when He’s ready. You need to prepare your fields to receive it,” states Mr. Bridges.
God will send the rain when He is ready. You need to prepare your fields to receive it.

Keep on truckin...Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. Just dont give up 5 minutes before the miracle happens.

Reese321

I feel for you man. I really do. Always to go in circles only to end up at the same place. Or moving through a labyrinth only to end up at the beginning.

I don't know how many times you've gone through sober stints, but I'm sure you know it will get better by leaving alcohol behind.

You sound very hopeless. Hopelessness is not a measurable fact, it's a state of mind. A person can take a million blows, but still get up and be happy. It's about perspective, and right now, yours is very skewed.

In terms of your practical problems such as homelessness, do you have family you can stay with and lean on? Going to school is always a good idea, but its rewards are always future-oriented, and your needs seem to be immediate. School will always be there later.

I commend you on tackling these problems, especially sober. Better people probably would have kept drinking. I probably would have.

Good luck.

BreakFree

It sounds like there is a lot going on in your life where the only thing you can control is your response to what is being thrown your way, huh? UGH. That's frustrating. I know what that's like. Double UGH. I do not know your story, but it does sound complicated. Just know that if you need someone to listen or to help you work through any of it, we are here and we care, okay? :)

anono

hey thirtybubba,

i feel for you... my life seems easy in comparison!

but that is now..... i too have felt as you are....

but remember it wont be like this forever!!

keep going.... and you are not bothering anyone!

take care

Wolfchild

thirtybubba

Well, I guess I'm not bothering anyone online.

Yeah, I know it's nothing to do but keep trying. Been doing that for a couple years now. Off of these particular problems. Been trying most my life.

Yeah, I got family. Nowhere near here though. I left and they are not happy about it, they think I left because I feel above them or something. I really didn't and don't. They'd take me back, with a word or two, but I don't think I'm far enough down to have to return like that. I don't think I could go back there and leave again though. I might not want to, the rest of the world hasn't been very nice.

My perspective is skewed. I agree. I have been watching that happen for the last two years, and have tried to reach out, to no avail. Now I think I may be ruined. I have been literally alone for the last four years. I know nobody in this state, I tried to make friends at first and was turned away repeatedly, several times in a fairly humiliating way. I have grown bitter and I hate it in myself, but even as I reach out again to AA, I find the same thing is happening. People in this area do not want to meet new people, or they don't want to meet me. I don't know. When I leave the state, even to states I have never been to, I find people to hang out with almost instantly. For four years, that has been my only (friendly) human contact. I take a vacation to a random state for a week every six months or so. There, I get to meet people, get invited to places, dance with people, whatever. Feel alive/normal.

Then I come home to a cold, cold world. I have never held anyone's hand in this state, never been asked out (asked out twice in Oregon in June), never had coffee with anybody. I don't know anybody's personal number. I just exist here, dreaming of Oklahoma for no particular reason. It seems like it's not California, and that's good enough for me. I've never even been there. I fall asleep wondering what it must be like.

Few years back, I asked a classmate I had been talking to a lot (in class) if she wanted to go somewhere after class. She started talking on top of herself about how she had to go home for whatever. I said, that's cool. Back then, it wasn't a major concern, I was used to having friends all my life. But after class, I decided to take advantage of the wireless internet, and from where I was sitting in the student union, I could see her and most of the rest of my class in the student lounge. Not only did she feel obligated to lie to me, it turned out after every class, most of my classmates met up there to unwind. And nobody invited me, although before and after class, they talked to me as normally as with anybody else. Something about me, I guess.

So yeah, my perspective's skewed. I was still strong right up until early 2008, when the whole thing ran out of juice. See, I figure perseverance is like anything else, you can't just use it up without replenishing its fuel source.

Gotta go to class now. Be back, got nothing else to do. And I think I'm about run out of whatever little fuel I did have.

ANEWAUGUST

(((Bubba)))

Way to go on the 4 days you have in the midst of all the adversity...

You have made it past the worse part of getting the alcohol out of your
system..

Keep on coming here, and sharing with us...thats what we are all here for.

anono

you seem to make friends other places you go.... it would appear to be their problem, NOT yours..... its all too easy to think there must be 'something wrong with me' when in fact IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU, its them! dont take it on board, you have enough to deal with atm!

my daughter went through it for years.... changed schools now is social director of a large group!

you just need to find likeminded people (no not drinkers )

did they all go to school together previously? have a long history??

how much longer you go to go there until you finish?

take care