When I was 22 or 23, I had a nervous breakdown. I actually carved a slit in my left wrist with a regular old steak knife. I then walked very calmly into the living room and told my Mom to call 911.
I had gone out drinking the night before, and the guy I was dating at the time ~that I had been in LOVE with for years~ decided to ditch me for one of my whore friends. I think that was the first time in my life that I felt absolutely nothing. I wouldn’t say I was trying to kill myself, I just needed to feel something. And I didn’t even feel that.
I left home about a month later. I found a job online, packed my bags and got on a bus. I ran away is what it boils down to. I should have seen an emerging pattern, but I didn’t. For me, escape was either through liquor or to run away. In this case, running away was a good thing. I escaped my life and straightened out. I dropped all the people who were dead weight in my life.
I came home a new person. Happy, unmedicated (I had been on Prozac for a while before I left). I felt whole. I had my small, carefully selected group of friends, and really only drank on the weekends-like a normal person. Then I made the mistake of allowing HIM back into my life.
HE was a mistake that I kept repeating over the course of several years. Someone more broken than myself, and therefore someone I could try to fix. Except that there are some people who just can’t be put back together again. HE is one of those. HE got me pregnant at the end of 2003.
I terminated, let me say that right off the bat. HE was not someone I could have a baby with, and to be honest, I was in no way ready. It was a decision that I would like to say I struggled with, but I didn’t. And while I have struggled with it since, I haven’t regretted it. It was shortly after that that I started drinking excessively again.
I got my first DUI a month and a half later. I am lucky I didn’t kill someone. I spent a night locked up, I had to go through an alcohol class, pay fines… But, it could have been so much worse. After I got my license back, I behaved for a while.
And then I met my current boyfreind. We have been together for 4 years, and he says we will get married someday. His hesitance/reluctance to move forward in our realtionship has been a cause of sadness for me. I love him dearly, but I sometimes wonder if I will be in a holding pattern for the rest of my life. What killed me was when my Nana died before we could get married. I so badly wanted her to see that.
Hello, Alcohol…
