Life was merely “existing.”
Work, eat, sleep, survive…
Life had turned into just existing. Work, eat, sleep and survival. Morals, gone. Integrity, obliterated. Self esteem, in the gutter. Ego, ironically extremely high. Retaliation, don’t get in my way. Self worth, just let me die.
The values I had always held so dear had disappeared. I was living lie after lie with no way back. It seemed I had run my life into the ground. But how did I get here? I thought I was happily married and suddenly, internally I was dying. Every morsel of my Being was hit by shrapnel. Nothing was sacred. Explosions of emotional and spiritual hell fire.
I didn’t know who I could trust anymore, simply because I had put my faith in those who had taken advantage of that trust, of me. I felt victimized and broken. I was not ready to see the ways that I had gotten here by believing false information in my head. The lie that said I needed external validation. The internal deception that told me I was perpetually wrong, bad, evil. Yet, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, it was within me all the time. I merely had to connect with It/Him/She/Source/The Divine/Creator. I had a God-sized hole within my soul that was literally dying to be filled.
Slowly, bit by bit my spirit was dying. Chipping away, eroding like a rock on the edge of the sea. Every wave dissolving the slightest amount of the deepest layers of me.
My plan was to build a tiny home in the bush and live alone with my dog. Isolated and protected from the world of pain. However, I would not be protected from myself.
There I would be, alone with my destructive thoughts and fears. Alone with the behaviours of self harm that were quickly catching up to me. At least I would no longer have to sneak around, hiding behind closed doors. I could use and abuse in my own home, unapologetically. I could numb out and no one would know. No one would notice. That would be a relief. No more hiding.
The thing was, numbing was no longer working. Destructive behaviours were destroying my life. I was trying to calm the raging storm of emotions, but my life was out of control as a result. So, if I drank or used substances, inevitably it would lead to destruction and despair. But I was in such despair that I needed to drink and use substances. This was the anguish, the torture. How do I escape? How do I live?
I learned to put on the masks. You know the ones. The masks of “I’m ok” and “everything’s great” meanwhile you’re screaming inside your head. I learned to wear these masks very early in life. I’m sure we all know how to put our best face forward. It’s what we do, especially in a professional capacity. I thought that if I faked my feelings long enough, my life would magically become what I wanted. The law of attraction tells us this, however, there’s a lot more to it than that. Deep inside I felt unworthy. I believed I was exceptionally unlovable. I kept putting a bandaid on a gaping wound that required a thousand stitches and wondered why it continued to bleed profusely.
I didn’t need the bandaid, I needed the gaping wound fixed. The wound that had been there for as long as I could remember. The hole where leers of disapproval would sit, where gasps of giggling school mates would land. Deep in my gut telling me I’m not good enough and will NEVER be good enough!
Crushing my self esteem with every blow. Every failure and disappointment lived in that hole.
The only thing I knew to do was pour booze and substances into it. At 12 years old, alcohol became my medicine for a brief and very sweet moment. It fixed everything in one glorious afternoon.