how it all started

Taken from my personal blog (and slightly edited for content).


I spent Easter weekend and the weekdays after in the psych ward this year. That Sunday, they served us dry ham and instant mashed potatoes for dinner. When I got there, I was pumped full of Ativan (2 mg intramuscular and 1 mg oral) and  another mg of Traxene for any withdrawal symptoms I might have been going through (I had been drinking nightly for quite some time at that point).


Yesterday was my mom's birthday and I celebrated it in therapy, talking about when my parents kidnapped me, and when my drinking all started up.


I was 19. My mother manipulated me into helping them move to a rented ranch 4 miles outside of Dove Creek, CO. She promised me they'd send me back to Omaha that weekend. It turned out to be a lie, and her ulterior motive was to pray my gay away, to send me to some camp or go to her church to be "healed". I was there for three months. And after they'd go to bed, I'd drink her box wine, or her bottle of Carlo Rossi. The supply never ended, and she had to have known I was hitting it pretty hard. Basically, I realized in therapy yesterday, they were supplying me alcohol with which to numb myself, so I would be more cooperative. Someday, I'll go into more detail about those three months.


Usually when I tell the story about getting kidnapped by my own parents, I keep myself as far away from the story as possible. I disassociate. I try to keep it light, as if it wasn't a big deal, just something that happened. But I didn't yesterday; I felt it all: I was shaking and crying. It was especially traumatic after I realized that they (my mom and stepdad) were supplying me with something to keep me controlled... and realizing fully, that 12 years later, I'm still that hurt, terrified kid, trying to escape. Feeling things completely is scary.


I got broken up with right before my hospital stay. This is the first break up I've gone through sober. It's interesting... a little less painful, but a little more painful at the same time. I feel less crazy and more in control of my actions, but my emotions, if I don't remember to step back from them, are strong and undiluted. But they are real. They're my authentic emotions - not clouded by the added depression and anxiety, and the distorted thinking that drinking brought me. My thoughts are clear and less cyclical.


I feel more hopeful than I have in years. I'm afraid of failure, of course, but all the research I've done in the last few days on the neurology of alcoholism has pretty much scared me sober. I fear alcohol, now. It was killing my brain. I think, over time, the damage will be somewhat reversed, but I may always have short-term memory problems, and my serotonin and dopamine levels may be permanently affected. They were probably already fucked up by a life of depression (my first suicidal ideation was around 8 years old) and I figure that even if it was originally situational depression, the length of the situation probably did some permanent damage to my developing brain, thus setting me up for clinical depression as a teen/adult.


Something I really need to do is to stop being so hard on myself. Almost every single person that has ever loved or cared about me (family, friends, partners, therapists) has told me this. But I don't know how not to be critical of myself. I just have no idea how to change that. I also don't know how to love myself. Or how to treat myself with respect. I only know how to do those things for other people, which doesn't make sense and is fucked up and often puts me in situations where there is an imbalance in the give/take of relationships. Got any advice? Should I stand in front of the mirror and tell myself that I'm worthy of self-love? I've tried that. My affections are hard to win over.


That's all I've got, for now.