Seeds

He plants these seeds inside my brain

He plants them cause he can’t feel my pain.

But, he wants me to feel everything that he feels.

So I water his seeds until their roots are real;

They grow like Jack in the bean stalk, through the roof of my head,

I can feel the vines surrounding me, growing with every thought of the words that he said.

Repeating them, and making them grow,

yet craving sweet release.

Craving him to look me in the eyes with love,

to feel the solid ground again.

To know that the universe is on my side.

He holds me in the palm of his hand, and he sprinkles his seeds inside my brain.

My vines are wrapped around his finger, and even when he yells I linger,

Because my heart is too shallow to stand alone.

I imagine that as a kid he never learned respect.

He never learned how to fix his tone of voice, how to say sorry, or how to ask things nicely.

I imagine that he has never admitted to being wrong,

that he has never looked within himself for the problem, only projected it onto something else.

Who did he pick on before me?

I imagine him yelling at a wall, like he treats me now.

A target for feelings, throw them here, I will soak them in.

Plant your little seeds, and the roots will begin; and they swim through my

veins all the way down to my toes, they control my footsteps, they control my thoughts.

I can hear him yelling at me when he is not even there.

When I can’t find my keys, or when I make these little mistakes,

I water his seeds, and search for a rake to week out the thoughts of me being great.

So, plant your seeds, I say to him.

I’ve got room, and you know I’ll give in.

Cause you know I’ll still be here,

even when your flowers are cut, and it’s time to plant again.

Still Self-Seeking.

I hold this burden like a grudge, feeling like I can never ‘take the edge off’ again.

These thoughts persist from inside my head-

If I drank a cold beer, or some tequila, maybe they would be dead.

Instead, i can not take a drink, I must think on the times that have made me stop.

Waking up to a broken headlight: how did I not get stopped?

Waking up with bruises: thinking that whatever they’re from, I deserved it.

Waking up unable to eat, or do anything else but cry.

Waking up with my car packed, and a hateful goodbye.

Waking up asking why god, why?

The occasions that have forced me into this life of abstinence still feel as if I am a child who died too young.

Will they think I’m pregnant if I don’t take a sip?

Will they think I am an untrustworthy person if they knew the truth?

Learn your limits, why can’t you learn your limits?

You were totally fine, until BAM people would say.

BAM the alcohol would flood my head, drowning, drowning, drowning

They didn’t know that the first one had done my ship in.

Now, the nerves surround my chest where the alcohol once lit me up.

I felt beautiful and radiant with that first glass-

Then radiantly numb with each that followed.

Drink, drink, drink- that’s all society seems to tell us to do.

The allure of letting your hair down, and holding a cool can in your hand.

The seduction of a summertime fire, or a song that reminds you of drinking..

Happy? Get a drink!

Long day? Bottoms up!

The sun is out on a nice day? Fuck it, you deserve one.

No I do not. I do not deserve a drink.

Because as low as  I feel, I do not deserve to wake up in my own personal hell ever again.

Praying that whatever happened was not “that bad”

I do not deserve to drown myself any longer or to watch my loved ones struggle to push my drinking under the rug.

Yet, I also feel I do not deserve to carry this anxiety like a trap.

Stuck waiting for a miracle, stuck waiting for relief.

Save my ship, this isn’t fucking fair.

Perhaps I am still self-seeking.

I am stuck in the mud of my own thinking,

And it could swallow me whole- fears, anxiety, strength and all.

 

Alcohol is a Depressant.

After work last night I stopped at the produce store in my town as I usually do to grab a few veggies for dinner. For some reason I looked at the wine section like I had never noticed it before. I usually can walk right by it and not think anything of it; but this time I had this weird primitive urge to grab the big bottle. It’s a better deal. We have wine at home, if I really wanted to drink it I could.. I’m not sure what about looking at this wine section last night made me crave touching the bottle. My first thought, the first word that popped into my head after this weird impulse like craving, was ‘sadness’. Wine tastes like sadness now (when I imagine how it tastes). It tastes like bringing me down, it tastes like settling for less, and for feeling even lower than I did before the first sip. This was a powerful realization for me.

Riding the Wave.

When I look back on my alcoholism, it feels like it really hit me in waves. In high school, everything felt like a joke when it came to drinking. No one cared how fucked up you got, unless you puked on them, or maybe if they had to take care of you. Still, I can remember being so fucked up at a party, just feeling the cold toilet seat on my face, as an older girl on my field hockey team held my hair saying, “it’s okay, we’ve all been there.” Not everyone gets to where I am now, though.

First wave- breaking up with my ‘high school sweetheart’.. Discovering that he was my best friend, and not my lover, this was a tough cord to break. We went to the same college, desperate to hang on to something that had died out long ago. I lost my virginity to him in my mom’s apartment when I was 15, and when I drive by that second story window I always think of that night. She asked me if I wanted him to sleep over, I didn’t even have to prompt it- my mom drank too. We were together from 8th grade until the end of my freshman year at college. Who the fuck was I without this kid? I searched for that answer in a bottle. However, my drinking got really bad before the actual break up. I have found that my sober emotions are what really affected my drinking the most. When I realized I was not in love with him, I drank instead of saying that I wanted to break up. Once, I had even tried to break up with him, but in all honesty his persistence broke my heart even more, and getting back together seemed a hell of a lot easier than growing up.  So, for that whole first year of college, my drinking got really bad. It started as a weekend thing, and before I knew it I was drinking to calm my nerves before concert band, I was drinking before going to the dinner hall, and I even drank before a focus group meeting about addiction that I only went to in order to get a gift cart to Hannaford. When I finally cut the cord, he was laying in his room with the lights off. I remember walking inside, he didn’t greet me at the door- he knew what I was there to do. I played with his little sister thinking, this is the last time. I entered the room and sat beside him. We laid next to each other and spooned without even thinking about it. Then I left. Crying my eyes out, and chain smoking while singing ‘free falling’ by Tom Petty and ‘How does it Feel’ by Bob Dylan on the radio. Seems kind of funny to me thinking about it now. I don’t smoke anymore, or drink, but those were the only things I turned to at the time.

I spent that entire summer getting absolutely trashed. I can remember my father calling my name asking if I was okay as I sat in my room puking, not wanting him to hear. All I did was play music that summer. I have played flute since I was 10, yet that summer was the time when I truly became great at it. I returned to my keyboard with a bottle of wine, and just numbed everything out. I bought a record player, and woke up every morning singing my heart out. I dated my neighbor, mostly out of convenience, who was a total psychopath, and also an alcoholic. Everything seemed normal if I hung out with people who did the same thing, and normalized my own behavior. My father got really mad at me one morning. I woke up having to clean condom wrappers out of my fire pit because apparently I had been having loud sex outside all night. I never meant to be like this. The only thing I meant to do was drown out my feelings. I rejected the hurt completely.

Second wave- turning 21 at college. I had fallen in love again, something I had prayed and prayed and prayed for. Yet, having to leave my new boyfriend at home in order to stay at school made me extremely sad. He took me out for my 21st birthday, and had to help me walk home. I never knew when to stop. But he stayed, it still seemed normal, and we were (still are) so in love.

Third Wave- becoming a bartender. I felt so attractive and strong slinging drinks, getting compliments, and making money. This was great! I felt an increased sense of independence, and self-confidence. I got half off of all drinks after work, and took full advantage of this. One night I got so drunk after work that I crashed my car into something (still don’t know what), and woke up to a car with a broken headlight and side mirror. My boyfriend, once again, helped me patch up the pieces, but he was getting fed up.

The last time was bad, very bad. I still have not admitted to god the true nature of my sins. The worst part about blacking out is that you feel that you weren’t even there, that you aren’t even at fault. However, losing the love of my life made me stop it all. Not only because I did not want to lose him, but I needed to live.

Rock bottom.

Rock bottom is a tough place to start, but when you’re an alcoholic it takes hitting the absolute bottom to face reality, and to start to change. For me, it was over 90 days ago. I successfully ruined a girl’s 25th birthday party.. the details are honestly too hard to bear, and since it was the last of many ‘incidents’ I will not go into too much detail. It was bad.. Waking up covered in bruises, with my car already packed and ready to go, I felt like the loneliest person in the world. My name is Anna, and I’m an alcoholic.. I say this at every AA meeting I have been to thus far, yet the reality still fucking sucks. No one wants to grow up to be an alcoholic, even though let’s face it, I have been alcoholic all along. It’s like an allergy to alcohol, the second it hits my veins I am done for. The genetic component makes me feel less at fault, yet the more distanced I become from my sobriety date, the more I struggle to face the things I did, and who I was.

It is not easy watching my boyfriend go out for drinks with his buddy, or listening to my old girl friend from high school talk about getting smashed with giggles, and zero regrets. It is not easy praying to a God I have never encountered in my life before, and trying to form some conception of god in order to release my sins, and to come into contact with a higher power.

At one of my first AA meetings I heard someone say, “It’s not rock bottom if you stop digging.” For me, this has two meanings. 1- if you keep ‘digging’ (drinking), you will hit an even bigger rock bottom, and this is something you can not forget as an alcoholic. 2- if you stop ‘digging’ (drinking) then there is nowhere to go but up. When I was drinking, I was digging my life deeper and deeper into a hole, questioning the entire time, ‘why is this so?’ The alcohol, in reality, did it all. Eliminate that, and you’re good to go, I thought. Well, it’s easier said than done.