With the sepia filter on NYC from smoke in the atmosphere, I was going to write something characteristically cynical and snarky about the climate apocalypse. However, something else came out, something pretty personal. Do I attend therapy? Yes. Do I have numerous trusted confidants I could talk to about things? Yes. Do I know why I choose to broadcast these things onto the internet? Only a little bit.
To catch you up: last year, my whole life burned down again after kind of putting it together (again) over the course of 2020 and early 2021. A lot of it was my fault, but a lot of it wasn’t. I’ve been in a residential program since September, trying to put it back together, and it’s beginning to look like it’s happening. Good things are happening.
I am scared to death. I am a walking bundle of nerves, losing sleep out of the fear of good things happening to me. What is that? That makes no sense.
So, things are starting to materialize as far as another supportive housing situation. I got really stressed out when things weren’t progressing as quickly as I wanted them to, and it lit a fire under my ass to start emailing everyone and anyone that could help me get all of it together. Strangely enough, my efforts are starting to bear fruit. It shouldn’t be too long before I enter the real world again, outside of a facility, where I’m told what to do and when to do it.
I ask myself numerous questions, like: what has changed about me since I burnt my whole scene down last time? Have I grown at all? How do I ride this thing (life) without training wheels? Have I processed any of the traumatic things that have happened? What will prevent me from destroying my life again?
“How do I work this?” — David Byrne
I have a lot of questions, but there is one that is the crux of likely all of the horribly maladaptive and self-destructive behaviors throughout the course of my life: do I even deserve good things? Like, what have I done to warrant anything like a decent, happy life? It raises more questions, even still.
Why am I so hard on myself? Right? What is that? Why does it perpetuate, even though I’m aware of it? I’m a logical person, I have an obsession with the truth, and a very finely tuned bullshit detector for the things that aren’t genuine. Why do I still believe the negative things that my head tells me, if they aren’t true? What the fuck? I was recently asked to list the things I like about myself, and I was stumped. I really do have good qualities, I don’t know why I have such a hard time acknowledging them. Most people like me! I don’t know why I don’t believe all of the nice things they say. It’s this weird “well if they knew who I really was, like I do, they’d hate me” type imposter syndrome.
There are people I was once close to who’ve stopped talking to me, and I don’t blame them or ask them why. I already know it’s because of how many times I’ve gone crazy, what I’ve done in those times, or how many times I’ve relapsed. I get it, it must be hard to watch. I think of at least one thing I regret doing from the past and randomly curse out loud like “oh, what the heavenly fuck?” more than once a day. If you think it’s hard to watch from there, you should see my view. There is seriously nothing negative that anyone can say about me that my inner dialogue doesn’t already say to me in my own voice. I don’t think anyone with addiction and/or bipolar disorder doesn’t have low self-esteem as a core value. It’s a big part of the whole experience. I have heard this reported by fellow addicts in hundreds of 12-step meetings. I am not unique, and there’s comfort in knowing that.
I’m so grateful for the people that still do talk to me, support me, and believe in me. A lot of the time, those things are more than I could say about myself. When I first came back from my last relapse last August, I talked to one of my oldest friends from high school to do what I always do, let them know I was still alive. I think I said “I don’t know why you’re still my friend,” I was feeling particularly bad for myself after a particularly bad summer on the streets. She didn’t really answer why, but she did say that she’d always be my friend. That meant so much to me on that day, and still now. I’m actually going to see her for the first time since 2019 this coming weekend. You better believe I’m nervous about that, even though she clearly loves me unconditionally and has her reasons for it.
I always expect people to be really angry with me for disappearing again, and everyone having no idea if I’m even alive. I’m angry at myself, and I feel I owe everyone a sincere apology for doing it again. My loved ones aren’t angry at me for it anymore; they see it as an illness. As the years went by, people started getting hip to the fact that I didn’t necessarily choose to be as fucked up as I am. Not to totally absolve me of the terrible things I’ve done, I am definitely a selfish, self-centered, and egotistical individual. I will say that I have a hard time seeing my whole world come apart again as 100% a choice that I make. I’m not saying all of it was 100% out of my control, either.
I have a very forgiving “sick people do sick things” policy that I easily hold other people to, even when they’ve literally stabbed me. I’d like to know why I don’t hold myself to those standards.
I’ll paraphrase something I heard Ram Dass say when someone asked him how they could love themselves. He said that very few of us make it out of being socialized as children without a baseline negative self-opinion. We learn that there are parts of who we are that are unacceptable. He said that if we are to love ourselves, the first step is to accept ourselves without judgment. I think I’ve moved in that direction over the course of the past 9 or so months.
So, if I did have to honestly appraise what progress I’ve made since getting out of my last drug-induced death march around NYC, I’ll say this: I’ve made a start at accepting myself. There is a long way to go, but I’ve made the first honest start. A lot of things pushed me in that direction, but I think the most powerful one was the rediscovery of self-expression. For some reason, I operate on some kind of merit-based self-esteem, and when I do good work, I feel good about myself. While running the risk of taking myself too seriously, I will say writing feels kind of like what I was put here to do. The more I do it, the better it gets. It never feels like work, and it comes naturally. I’m not saying it’s all good, but I will say that some of it is. This is me giving myself credit.
I may be low on self-confidence, but right now, I feel pretty confident about what I’m doing inside of this formerly blank Google Doc. The trick is to do it within the window of time when I feel confident enough to do it because in three hours, I’ll likely be unable to stand myself and my writing again. That’s the thing about having a mood disorder too: the polarity of my mood changes way more rapidly than I’d like, and it’s exhausting. These shifts affect my perception of everything, including myself.
I can’t trust my brain. I can’t trust feeling good because it might be mania, I can’t trust feeling bad because it’s depression. How am I supposed to navigate modern life? I wish I could just exist without all of this self-aware existentialism. Go punch a clock somewhere, rinse and repeat, maybe go to Home Depot on Saturday, get a new rake.
Philosophical self-appraisal isn’t exactly the fastest-growing industry to make a good living in these days and times, and computers are probably going to take that over too. In the meantime, I can come over here to Medium and do something with all of these pesky thoughts I have bumping around upstairs and get a little dopamine out of it. I do not intend to stop writing ever again; it’s been too good to me, and I’m reasonably convinced it saved my life. Who knows, if i keep at it maybe something will come out.
I need to have a little more faith in myself. I think the fear is natural and healthy, I think you’d be afraid too. personal growth isn’t linear, and I believe that everything that i’ve been through is a part of where I'm going, and what it’ll mean to me when I get there. I have made strides, and I will be able to handle anything that happens, good or bad.
did you know you could buy me a coffee if you like my writing? well, yes you can, and i could really use the help right now: https://ko-fi.com/evr0ck17
oh yeah, i’m sure you could find a little context in my past work:
