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8 days sober and I wander forward. It's not so bad.
I had to leave the situation to staunch the trauma. And now I've ripped off the pad that was holding it all in. I sleep badly, with shitty dreams about my ex. Over and over. Exhaustion makes wet tissues of my muscles and crystals of my bones.
My therapist is helping me explore PTSD treatment options.
I took the chemical brakes off my brain and the result is both good and bad. I have a ceaseless stream of creativity - the ideas flow again. But I lie down to terror, and stand up again to pace away the nights.
And to fix that I needed to stop self medicating the symptoms of the trauma I needed to get away from to fix. And then the years of self neglect that got me there. I think I trembled on the cusp of addiction. I hear all the addicts I've known say it's not proper unless you are in pain / go to rehab / hit rock bottom. And I am glad they had the luxury to do all that. I didn't, and here we are.
I no longer think there are nice addicts and nasty addicts, like I don't think there are nice narcissists and nasty ones. The two conditions are often correlated, actually. And I can see that the eternal avoidance of discomfort of each would feed and enhance the other. There are just overt ones, that do what they like and don't give a tiny shit. And there are covert ones, that neg and slide the responsibility away from them across the table.
They are sorry, and talk of excessive self blame. And how awful they are. But they never actual take responsibility for that. They have a wonderful insight for all their nasty little issues, but it stops there and when you push they dissolve into a puddle of poor me.
Which I have done, but again... don't have the luxury of living there. I can see the cusp of addiction and narcissism is when you think you're special and you're behaviour is magical. Someone else always made you do it. You didn't drink at a funeral / snort coke at your gran's birthday / smoke weed at the playground gate. So what you do is a bit of an exception that makes it ok.
It's not. Addiction is just cheating you and your loved ones of yourself.
I had to leave the situation to staunch the trauma. And now I've ripped off the pad that was holding it all in. I sleep badly, with shitty dreams about my ex. Over and over. Exhaustion makes wet tissues of my muscles and crystals of my bones.
My therapist is helping me explore PTSD treatment options.
I took the chemical brakes off my brain and the result is both good and bad. I have a ceaseless stream of creativity - the ideas flow again. But I lie down to terror, and stand up again to pace away the nights.
And to fix that I needed to stop self medicating the symptoms of the trauma I needed to get away from to fix. And then the years of self neglect that got me there. I think I trembled on the cusp of addiction. I hear all the addicts I've known say it's not proper unless you are in pain / go to rehab / hit rock bottom. And I am glad they had the luxury to do all that. I didn't, and here we are.
I no longer think there are nice addicts and nasty addicts, like I don't think there are nice narcissists and nasty ones. The two conditions are often correlated, actually. And I can see that the eternal avoidance of discomfort of each would feed and enhance the other. There are just overt ones, that do what they like and don't give a tiny shit. And there are covert ones, that neg and slide the responsibility away from them across the table.
They are sorry, and talk of excessive self blame. And how awful they are. But they never actual take responsibility for that. They have a wonderful insight for all their nasty little issues, but it stops there and when you push they dissolve into a puddle of poor me.
Which I have done, but again... don't have the luxury of living there. I can see the cusp of addiction and narcissism is when you think you're special and you're behaviour is magical. Someone else always made you do it. You didn't drink at a funeral / snort coke at your gran's birthday / smoke weed at the playground gate. So what you do is a bit of an exception that makes it ok.
It's not. Addiction is just cheating you and your loved ones of yourself.
