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Saturday
Oct012011
This Is How I Become More Than I Was
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Fall is a tough time of year for me. I feel like a butterfly in reverse, receding into a sticky and slow chrysalis. When you have a seasonal depression problem, it can feel like a regression, a backwards slide. It feels like failure.
This isn't the truth, though. I just have an illness. I can feel like things are backsliding when they are, in fact, moving forward quite tickety boo. I can't feel it, though, at the moment.
It'll come back to me. It always does. Those of you with seasonal depression know what I'm talking about.
This year is harder than other years, though. One year, one month, and ten days ago, I quit drinking.
I spent most of the first year dealing with sweeping lifestyle changes and not getting high. Other emotions? The hard emotions coming out of my real self, the self not numbed by alcohol, were so distant behind the noise of not drinking that I barely felt them. I can see that now.
Upon the first anniversary of my sobriety, a handful of people congratulated me by saying Now you can begin the real work of being sober. I nodded to myself and smiled and hoped that they were wrong.
They were not wrong.
I'm over the hard beginning stages of kicking my old habit of drinking myself into a black hole every other night, but now I'm a raw nerve. I'm all vulnerable and frayed and tired and overwraught and naked and uncomfortable.
It turns out that if you spend over twenty years drinking every time you have a strong emotion, good or bad, there is a lot of stuff to get through at the end of it all. Nothing goes away just because you got drunk enough to forget most of it.
It's still brilliant, though, this having a life I've chosen over one that lead me by the nose, despite the tears and the bad dreams and the urge to smoke every cigarette I see and imagine and remember smoking back to when I was fifteen and learned how to french inhale.
I have to remember that this is how I learn to be free, or at least more free. This is how I become more than I was and more than I am.
Despite these moments of self-doubt and heaviness, I am living a life I love. I get to tell, hear, and help mould stories for a living. This is the seed of fantastic.
I just need to remember that these difficult feelings do not mean that I'm sinking.
This is swimming.
It's just that sometimes swimming is lazily floating around a lake on an inflatable tube with tropical fish printed on it, and sometimes swimming is slogging your way back to hide under an overturned boat in a sudden storm.
In either case, the next day looks pretty good from where you are, as long as you don't drown, and we all know that I suck at drowning.
This isn't the truth, though. I just have an illness. I can feel like things are backsliding when they are, in fact, moving forward quite tickety boo. I can't feel it, though, at the moment.
It'll come back to me. It always does. Those of you with seasonal depression know what I'm talking about.
This year is harder than other years, though. One year, one month, and ten days ago, I quit drinking.
I spent most of the first year dealing with sweeping lifestyle changes and not getting high. Other emotions? The hard emotions coming out of my real self, the self not numbed by alcohol, were so distant behind the noise of not drinking that I barely felt them. I can see that now.
Upon the first anniversary of my sobriety, a handful of people congratulated me by saying Now you can begin the real work of being sober. I nodded to myself and smiled and hoped that they were wrong.
They were not wrong.
I'm over the hard beginning stages of kicking my old habit of drinking myself into a black hole every other night, but now I'm a raw nerve. I'm all vulnerable and frayed and tired and overwraught and naked and uncomfortable.
It turns out that if you spend over twenty years drinking every time you have a strong emotion, good or bad, there is a lot of stuff to get through at the end of it all. Nothing goes away just because you got drunk enough to forget most of it.
It's still brilliant, though, this having a life I've chosen over one that lead me by the nose, despite the tears and the bad dreams and the urge to smoke every cigarette I see and imagine and remember smoking back to when I was fifteen and learned how to french inhale.
I have to remember that this is how I learn to be free, or at least more free. This is how I become more than I was and more than I am.
Despite these moments of self-doubt and heaviness, I am living a life I love. I get to tell, hear, and help mould stories for a living. This is the seed of fantastic.
I just need to remember that these difficult feelings do not mean that I'm sinking.
This is swimming.
It's just that sometimes swimming is lazily floating around a lake on an inflatable tube with tropical fish printed on it, and sometimes swimming is slogging your way back to hide under an overturned boat in a sudden storm.
In either case, the next day looks pretty good from where you are, as long as you don't drown, and we all know that I suck at drowning.
categorized in health and tagged in Seasonal Affective Disorder, alcoholism, depression, health, mental health, seasonal depression, sobriety
health and tagged in Seasonal Affective Disorder, alcoholism, depression, health, mental health, seasonal depression, sobriety 
Reader Comments (22)
I love this post. It's an essay about being where you are. Love love love.
The last couple of paragraphs reminded me of a sign I saw at a pool in my hometown:
"If you get scared, be still and float."
I thought that was beautiful because it applies to life as well as swimming lessons.
When I got sober, someone told me that "we're here to learn how to feel bad not to learn how to feel good." Got that right.
I just realized this week that I've been treading water for awhile - probably since my grandfather (who is the only other person I've know to use the phrase "tickety boo" <3) passed away. Fear and Anger are each tied to ankle and are slowly pulling me under. I've been on antidepressants for a year and 14 days; I'm not sure if this latest resurgence is a sign that the ADs need to be tweaked, or if it is a matter of a seasonal depression as well.
Sending you much love. <3
My personal blogosphere seems full of posts about seasonal depression right now. It made me feel less... lonely. Somehow. I love Christy's comment about "be still and float".
Hold the course big sis, your doin awesome.
I just skimmed past about five blogs in my reader of people who were praising the fall weather. It's a comfort to know I'm not alone in struggling with this season.
Yes. The emotional fallout that makes itself known after the noise of fresh sobriety recedes is an ass kicker. But standing way over here on the other side of eighteen, I can tell you the boisterous burble of joy has a sweet and beckoning call all its own.
The seed of fantastic, indeed.
This is really beautiful. The changing seasons bring out some beasts. xoxo
I'm cheering you on. With much love,
Ingrid
I love coming here. Everything you write is perfect.
I found myself thinking the other day that I used to be 'cool'. Then I realized that by 'cool', I meant a mentally ill substance abuser with great taste in music. It's confronting sometimes to examine the lenses we use when we look in the mirror.
I needed this today. I'm 2 years, 1 month and 10 days in. I had dinner with friends on Friday night and damn if I didn't want a glass of wine. I'd had a really shitty week. It's funny how those old triggers are so, so, so easily tripped. I've been thinking about it all weekend. The pros and cons. There are way more cons. Some times I feel SO strong and then this sort of stuff happens and it honestly makes me afraid. I don't want to succumb.
This is a hard time of year, especially if it's your anniversary-time.
Be kind to yourself. Take deep breaths, eat some chocolate, and dance in your living room.
First it's good, then it's real, then it's real good! ;)
September has hit me hard, too.
Keep swimming, my friend.
"This is the seed of fantastic." :) I need that seed. Listen to your little bro. You inspire, Elan.
I lost an old HS friend to suicide this September. It hit me harder than I thought it would mainly because of the overwhelming sense of guilt. Guilt for not staying in touch. Guilt for not being there to be a life raft of some sorts. Guilt and regret. They tend to act as sinker weights.
I am so proud of you for every day you choose to be on this path. For some reason, it means even more to me now.
@Christy: "We all float, down here..."
Anyway... yeah. Regarding the raw emotions that you have to "get through at the end of it all?" Read David Crosby's autobiography, sometime. He was an interesting fella [and my favorite member of Crosby, Stills, Nash, And/Or Young]. He spent a lot of time with a lot of drugs, particularly freebasing cocaine. In that book, he said, "Getting high doesn't solve your problems. It just delays the time when you have to deal with them." Or something to that effect.
Also, seasonal depression sucks. Winter sucks. It's cold, it's unpleasant in many ways, and it makes the body & brain want to shut down. I swear, if I had the means, I'd hibernate. Eat the big Thanksgiving meal, go to bed. Wake me for Christmas, maybe for New Year's, but other than that, let me sleep until mid-March. Not telling you anything you haven't heard before, but get yourself some vitamin D supplements. It really does help take the edge off of that whole deal. Meantime, enjoy the sunny days when they come, and turn up your collar against the wind.
Much respect,
--jsd
You know what?
I love your posts.
Yes, Yes...I always thought I'd be so good at drowning..
TUrns out I hate it.
Everytime I decide to just give in, My arms start flailing...Guess I don't want to go down.
Yes, it's starting. We'll get through it. Summer will come again.
I am also living a life I love. You'd never guess it, would you? But I am.
I do want to live. It's a strange feeling.
Oh what a beautiful post.
You are doing a goddamn beautifully amazing job ... a lot of people do not do what you are doing. Looking inside yourself, searching and sifting. And changing.
And, the leaves are budding, down here. I live in a cold climate and it is *such* a fricking relief, to feel the warmth again. Just when I thought it was going to stay cold forever.
I'll mind your sun for you, and send it back up when it's your turn.
X
Oh I love this and you so much.
And there is comfort in my heart for you...that I've seen first hand how much that fuzzy faced man LOVES you. How much you love each other.
My fuzzy faced man has saved me more than once. I am so happy when my friends have fuzzy faces to save them at times.
You are wonderful.