Hindsight

It's been such a long week and I haven't felt much like writing.  Don't worry - I'm not slacking off.  I've felt displaced due to the apartment and lack of access.  By the time I get to sit back and write, it's 9:30 and time for this guy to get to bed.  Not only that, the therapy appointment really wore me out.  I haven't felt this tired throughout my day in a while.  It's persisted since Tuesday evening.

What I find interesting is that I haven't been less angry since the appointment, which was mostly about dropping anger... I've been angrier, if anything!  Though, perhaps anger isn't the right word.  I've been impatient and frustrated, but those may be in large part due to the mental exhaustion that the appointment caused.  I have, however, been made more aware of these emotions.  By making me confront anger with this new therapy, I catch myself losing my cool, causing me to say, "Woah, this isn't right.  Deep breaths."  Perhaps that was the whole point.  It's a real shot to the Ego to be told that you're - aggressive, brooding, volcanic, resentful.  These aren't endearing qualities.  And I think that most people who know me well can attest to these things.  I'm a pretty nice guy... until I blow my top.  I stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, holding things in and then the volcano blows.  My elephant's ass catches fire and there's no stopping it until it's had enough.  If I vented appropriately when things were happening, then I'd save my blood pressure from rising into the two hundreds.

So I've been analyzing my behavior patterns the past few days - what triggers me the most and how I deal with these triggers.  I thought about my relapse pattern (which is no longer a pattern, right?  I WAS a relapser) and it made me go back to some journal entries just prior to November.  Here's a snippet from October 31st:

I’ve been stuck again.  Nothing new.  It happens a lot and then I relapse.  And I have been thinking about drinking an awful lot lately.

You'd think I would have done something about it or talked to someone...

I’m worried if I give in to the feeling of “just one”, then it won’t stop.  It’ll perpetuate again and I’ll ruin everything that I’ve earned.

Yep.  Almost did lose everything.

The past two weeks have been a mess because of ---...

I identified exactly what was bothering me, but I still didn't want to talk about it.

I’ll write more about it… I may have to.

But, unfortunately, that was the last journal entry.

It reminds me of a horror movie.  The kind of movie where someone finds a lost journal and it recounts the final days before the author disappears mysteriously.  It's not close to the truth.  It IS the truth.  This author disappeared, swept away by a sinister force that resides in his own head.

There was more to the days leading up to the relapse, but I'm not ready to expose that to the public yet.  I've shared it with those that needed to know.  While it may seem I'm baring my soul to the world by writing these entries, there are certain events that I like to keep a little closer to my chest.  I was grieving a bit, I suppose.  Also, GOOD things were happening in my life, as well.  Whether good things or bad things are happening in life, they still each produce stress and I haven't done a great job coping with it.

October through November is a tough period for me.  A lot of people have a hard time with Christmas and New Years and I'm lucky that these two holidays typically lift my spirits rather than bring me down.  Some pretty big things happened to me at the beginning of November... a long, long time ago.  One of these days, I'll have to let them go.  I'm not very good at that, either.

Next Halloween, do me a favor... tie me to a fence or something.  Don't untie me until Black Friday.  I'd really like to have a sober Thanksgiving for a change.

"The moment an individual can accept and forgive himself, even a little, is the moment in which he becomes to some degree lovable." - Eugene Kennedy