Day 564
It’s been a while. There will be a real and actual blog post at the weekend. But until then, a little bit of creativity that fell out of my head. Dedicated to and inspired by my colleagues and friends on the front line every day, bravely and passionately helping others fight their addictions. I’m so proud to be part of the family. So proud.
Stay safe, all xx
Day 468.
This is a dark post. A bit grim and raw. It’s not in the slightest bit uplifting, because it’s the ugly truth. It’s a snapshot of the future if addiction gets hold of you. If you want your day brightening up, I’d skip this post today. It’s not for you.
* * *
The days, weeks, months, and years are so full of time. We continually think of all that time, time and time again. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Addicts can magically erase all that time. Poof!
Once our bloodstreams, brains, and bones are flooded full of our substance of choice – time, no longer exists. It never did – poof! Every day is a filthy, bloodied, tear-stained, non-existent, Groundhog Day. Our next drink or fix dissolves the minutes, hours, months, and years into a liquid and mercurial state.
Addicts exist in a swirling grey fog of nothing. It’s the first wish granted when we rub the magic addiction lamp. Eventually, further down the line, ‘I wish the next drink will kill me’ is the one wish that never seems to come. But give it time. That final wish will come true. It always does. Just give it time.
Every day we hear people say the same thing. Time flies! Where does all the time go? I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed! The time has literally gone! Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
Anything and everything merges into mush. Life (whatever that may be) swirls around us like the filthy blood sloshing around our veins. We have given ourselves a licence not to think any more. Our feelings put on pause. We laugh and we cry but never know why. Some of us cut and slash our sick, yellowing skin because we need to transfer the searing mental pain onto something tangible. Something we can see. There is enough rage and guilt in our bodies that the cuts never hurt. The pain moves a million miles away. The screams become distant echoes.
The dried blood and scars become the addicts Braille our fingertips read when the lights go out.
The door never opens because it’s always locked. The phone never rings after it’s unplugged. The outside world is simply that – outside.
Outside exists only when it must: when we get our drinks, when we meet our dealers, or when we finally have to sleep in it. Life never comes to us because we never let it in. Too embarrassed, too angry, too ugly, too far gone, too paranoid – too dead.
We don’t know where time is anymore. Time rots our food, rots our guts, makes us stink, takes our kids, un-employs us, desexualises us, imprisons us, removes our souls, cages our minds, makes shop doorways our beds. It builds our crosses and crucifies us.
But we don’t care. We never care.
We’ve spent many years re-wiring our brains with poison. We hacked our fleshy, sputtering software so that giving a shit does not compute anymore. We’ve crashed our system – blue screen – error 404. No option to reboot or reinstall. We are totally corrupted. All data lost. Blip! Gone.
Our tiny universe has stopped all the clocks. Nothing revolves around our world – only drink or drugs – drugs and drink. Our weather is toxic; the ground is a waiting grave. One day we will be worm food, plant food, maggot-ridden and fly-blown. It’s then up to heaven and hell to fight over our ragged souls and show us our new home.
I wonder if Jesus still does his water into wine trick! Does heaven have a rehab? Can the biblical and eternal screaming hell that our churches and priests condemn us to, match up to the hell we created for ourselves?
I doubt it. It’ll walk in the park.
Anyway, happy thoughts, eh!
Stay amazing and safe, everyone xx
Day 467
Last bit of noodling for a while until I finish my long posts.
Stay amazing and safe x
465 Days
I’ve been noodling again. Big recovery posts soon.
Stay safe and amazing x
Day 464
Some days, when the going gets tough – you just gotta make a meme to make yourself, and hopefully others, smile.
Real, actual, proper recovery blogs coming soon 🙂
Stay safe and amazing, all x
452 days.
A bit more bored-on-the-bus noodling. An un-edited splurge. A brain-burp. Not really a poem. Not really anything. But might be something to someone. Or not.
* * *
The Past has Passed.
Five years was in the past.
Five months was in the past.
Five days was in the past.
Five seconds was in the past.
*
When you read the first line of this.
It’s now in the past.
This line is in the present.
Now it’s in the past.
All the above has now, passed into the past.
*
Whatever the number.
Whatever we have done.
No matter how bad, or painful.
It’s now gone, and done.
Passed into the past.
*
We drank and we used.
We hurt and got hurt.
But now we don’t, and we move on.
Whatever went on before.
Is now passed into the past.
*
We can’t change it.
Nothing can be undone.
It’s away from now, it’s now . . . then.
Now gone and done.
Passed into the past.
*
The hurt, they can re-join us on our journey.
Or not. They can choose.
As we have chosen.
Wisely and timely.
To put the past back in the past.
*
Live for now.
Enjoy tomorrow.
Rejoice in your amazing future.
Whatever will be bad.
Will be passed into the past.
*
Live.
Be happy.
Take chances.
Love your friends ferociously.
Leave the past.
It’s passed.
Live!
* * *
Stay safe everyone x
Day 446.
I’ve nothing much to say right now as I’m busy with writing projects and work. But I thought I’d at least post something. I wrote the words below today as part of a work in progress. I made a sort of, kind of meme with them. I’ve got something lined up for next weekend, hopefully. Keep your eyes peeled. Or not.
Stay safe and amazing everyone x
397 days
If this week would have happened before April 2017, I would have Sepsis. Without a shadow of a doubt. But the only difference being, nobody would have known about it. Nobody would have been around to call the emergency services. I certainly wouldn’t have called them. No chance. My door would have been locked and all phones un-plugged and turned off. I would have been in a very bad way. I certainly wouldn’t be writing this.
Untreated, life-threatening, conditions are not conducive to the written word. I’ve been reliably informed by professionals that it’s very hard to write when you’re dead. Rigor mortis, and all that stuff.
Corpses don’t blog.
I’m not out of the woods yet but thanks to the expertise and quick-thinking of a fantastic doctor who arranged urgent treatment, I’m now Sepsis-free. I’m also not dead (although my mirror tells me differently).
So, what happened? And what’s this doing on an addiction blog? Bear with me.
Six days ago, I woke up with a painful lump under my ear. As the day went on, it grew. I was confused, feeling sick and peeing razor blades. Hot and cold flushes. I walked like I was drunk. The lump grew and the pain increased. Going against my old addicted nature, I called the doctor’s surgery and got an emergency appointment.
The GP took one look at it and her face dropped. She called in a colleague and they both agreed instantly. Straight to hospital! Right now!
Blood tests, blood pressure, cannula in the arm, and pumped with antibiotics. I’ve been in hospital every morning since then: lanced, drained, cut open, cleaned, swabbed, and dressed. You name it, I’ve had it. But it’s not going away. Samples have gone off for tests to see what variation of infection it is. But I’m not dying and I don’t have Sepsis anymore. I’m sore and very bored of it all. But sore and very bored mean I’m alive and dealing with problems as they arise.
So, what would have happened pre-April 2017?
Nothing. My best guess is that it would have gone like this:
Woke up with a painful lump under my ear – drank alcohol. As the day went on, it grew and grew – drank alcohol. Feeling sick, confused, peeing razor blades, hot and cold, and walking like I was drunk – more alcohol. The lump got bigger and the pain worse – kept drinking alcohol. Go to the shop, get more alcohol. Repeat until blackout.
No urgency there eh! All blotted out until whatever happened, happened. It wouldn’t have progressed much further than the next drink. No doctors, nurses, or surgical teams. No friends to worry about me because they wouldn’t have known. Alcohol was my antibiotic and anaesthetic for everything – my oral Cannula. Extreme pain and increasing symptoms? I wouldn’t have cared one iota. Certainly not with a bottle in my hand. Pain? Death? Bring it on! Sooner the better! Nobody gives a shit anyway. And on with the badly-attended pity-party of one. Rinse and repeat.
But it’s 2019. I don’t have Sepsis. I’m 397 days sober and glad to be alive! I love my life and adore my many wonderful, stunning, amazing friends and peers and (soon to be) colleagues. I love my son so very much. Next month I’ll be employed for the very first time in two years working in my dream job as an addiction recovery worker. I’ve worked really hard for it. So hard! I won’t let anything get in the way of all this love and joy and new confidence. Nothing!
Recovery will always forever be the hardest thing that I’ve ever done, and keep doing. But I have to keep doing it because the alternative isn’t worth going back to. Ever!
Hell’s basement is always open to me to slide or fall into the pit. So, I carefully watch where I walk. Every single day. Because without my recovery I have nothing. Well apart from Sepsis, badly-attended parties, oh, and death.
I’ll keep you posted.
Keep smiling. Stay safe everyone xxx
Day 378
Here is a bit of bored-on-the-bus creative writing. An unedited splurge of – whatever it is.
I wouldn’t get too excited if I were you. No really, don’t.
* * *
I used to think it was life that continually slammed my misery-doors shut, throwing over the bolts and snapping off light-giving keys in locks. Never me, of course. It was never me.
A pity-party of one. I would constantly push at the ungiving doors; granite guards keeping me away from everyone else. They were unyielding and constant, silently holding me in shadows, tears, and poisoned thoughts.
Kicking and screaming until alcohol flooded my bad blood. Then all would be fine – I would calm and numb and cry. Just for a while. Until my body screamed out for more poison, my mind shrieking at the darkness. My knuckles painted the door in red strokes. The constant self-savagery – my dying cycle. A poisoned rabbit hole. Constantly lost and refusing to be found. My death’s daily basis.
Only alive by luck. Luck and more luck. The only lottery I had won was the struggling heart flushing life back into me as I willingly pushed it out. My heart, my nemesis. It fought a life less convenient. At least it fought. I didn’t.
If I’d only known during those years, if I’d only checked my pockets. I would have found the key, shiny and unused. My key! I would have discovered that I was my own the key-maker, capable of unlocking any door that barred my way.
If only I’d have listened to others, and my deeper self. My screams had kept me locked from the arms of the world. I had cried out so loud and for so long. So many years. I couldn’t recognise my own voice or my own barely-pulsing heart. The only thing left was hope.
The hope to live finally won over the hope to fade away. My key flourishes in my chest. Doors are always now open to let the light flood in.
Many others scream into a darkness where nothing gets in. I now give out roadmaps so they can discover their own keys. I can’t unlock for them – but they can. But once I convince them that ‘they’ are the key to their own life – they can begin once again.
No more screaming. No more blood. No more anger – just life! Simply life.
Like I said, nothing to get excited about.
Take care all xx
Day 377
This sketch really knocked me for six when I saw it today (unfortunately the artist wasn’t named to give credit on here). I haven’t been able to take my eyes off it. It threw some big emotions around my head and heart.
The image is how I imagine the how my son saw me not so many years ago. His dad slowly but surely fading away in front of his eyes. Watching helplessly and unable to do anything, no matter how hard he tried. And he really tried.
I like to think of myself now as fully-sketched and visible. As time goes on there may be a bit of colour appearing. We fade away during the fog and filth of alcoholism, we don’t care. We allow ourselves to disappear. Unfortunately, some of us never come back. Thankfully I did.
In a perfect world, every addict would eventually come back. In a perfect world, there would be no such thing as addiction. But unfortunately, the world is far from perfect.
My son can now see his dad. For many years he only saw the fast-fading shadow. My hope is to be the brightest painting I can possibly paint for us both.
Take care all xx
Stumbling Towards Hindsight 