Today, I'm Not Thankful

Today I'm not thankful, I'm proud. Go with me on this:

I left the warmth of my brother's house with well wishes and invites to future game nights, leftovers in hand the cold and dark of the night foreign compared to previous my environment of games, laughter, and inside jokes. I didn't make it to my car without being consumed by an all too familiar feeling and I began to cry.

As the loneliness set in and the tears started I angerly asked myself: Why? You just had the best Thanksgiving you can remember having (not an exaggeration) and you're crying?But as I put my things away and started my car I realized that it makes sense. As soon as I was physically alone, I felt alone. To some a break from the social engagements would be welcomed, but for someone like myself who suffers from attachment trauma, it is almost unbearable.

This is because all I want is to be loved and to belong--no--to FEEL loved and like I belong. The moment I step away from the reassurance that that's a fact, it slips away from me like the light when I shut the door to my brother's house. The restless yet confined energy starts, I know it well, it's my impulsivity. It's uncomfortable and I can't usually put a finger on what it is at first but I usually don't like it and want it gone.

So I drink. Or I eat. Or I call a boy. Or I do all three in whatever order. I choose what I know how to do to get it to "stop," or what I now know is actually just putting it at bay. My quick fix, my instant relief that leaves lingering affects that sometimes require days of recovery and damage control. But for once I don't WANT to drink, eat or call a guy. However, that leaves me with this uncomfortable, flighty feeling, that steadily grows within me.

My drive home is a steady transition from loneliness to feeling silly to validating my emotions to happiness and back again. I have been in DBT and therapy long enough to know whatever I'm feeling isn't wrong, to not push it away, judge it, try to change it-simply notice. So I do, I get curious. As the city comes into view I am hit with a wave of realization: this is what recovery feels like.

I tell myself, you should write. Or no, it's more like an urge, but one that's uncomfortable since it's not A, B, or C from above. I used to write in here daily, sometimes twice a day. I'd write in meetings when triggered at work, or on the backs of menus in restaurants. I used to have so much in me that it wasn't a choice, I HAD to.

But that was before I started becoming depressed at my last job (which I have since left as it "just wasn't working out") about a year and a half in (just "celebrated" my three years). I didn't know it as it was happening, as often depression does, while it was. I didn't know that I was slowly becoming someone that didn't care, that was bitter, uninspired, lazy, barely got by. Now that I'm free and slowly, ungracefully tangling myself from the routine, thoughts, habits I'd created over the last year and a half, I see me again.

Today I got to see what me, not bingeing, not purging, not drinking (excessively), not craving attention from men, is like. I think that scares me, I think it excites me, I think it inspires me. It feels as though I have a glass ball in my hand and all I want to do is throw it. It doesn't make sense, to self-sabotage, but it's what I have come to know to do.

The idea of being successful, of being happy, of having to hold the responsibility of my life is almost too much for me. The idea of actually being the girl my friends and family and coworkers and even acquaintances tell me they see scares the fuck out of me. My potential, my talents, my charm, hell my looks if I REALLY had all these things that I'm told others see in me: I don't fucking know. I shut down when I think about those things being true.

And yet I am seeing how it is more painful-torture almost-to believe the opposite. I get this crazy idea sometimes, and more lately with this huge fucking (you know I'm getting into it when the only word I can think of is fucking) transition of my life at almost 30, that it could be true. I CAN have the apartment I want, the car I want, the salary I want, the job I want, the friends I want, the guy I want, the lifestyle I want, the spirituality I want, the body I want, the time for traveling I want...the other cat I need :)

I haven't had hope in a while nor the time, space, energy and support to do it in but I do now. And today is just a small yet really fucking big peek into that life and I am so damn proud my work and determination has gotten me here.