Feeling blue

[K9Lover]

Feeling blue

MossRose;1552550 wrote: But it just seems like everyone here is so strong. And I'm not.

Hi Mossy,
This jumped out at me. What comes across on a computer screen may not always be the whole picture. Yes, many members here have A LOT of sober time, but that doesn't mean they don't don't still struggle from time to time too. I KNOW I DO! The thought of drinking still hits me at the most random times. I even think that maybe once in a while it wouldn't be "so bad". But that's just the stupid Beast lying to me....I guarantee it would be "bad...and so much worse"!!

Don't worry about being a pillar of strength, or a role model, or whatever! Just be honest with yourself, and be you...we all benefit from the variety of posts here. Everyone can't be happy and strong all the time, and it's the honest posts that keep us grounded. Express whatever you feel...I promise, we'll still love you! :h

[FlyAway]

Feeling blue

Hooray for you Moss! Hooray for posting!

You said that you were feeling blue. In my opinion a huge part of getting sober is just learning how to "feel" anything and deal with it. As drinkers we end a long, frustrating day at work with a "well deserved" drink to relax. We drink to celebrate. We drink to mourn. We drink to be social. We can find any reason or justification to drink.

But what we don't do is feel. We are used to being numb when good things happen, or bad things, or frustrating things. Then when you try to stop drinking and you start "feeling" for the first time huge alarms start going off. "WTF is this?!? This is too much! This is too hard! I must drink to stop this!" What you really need to do is to let life happen and feel it and keep on going. Whether it's good or bad or sad or boring, it's life. We need to learn what it feels like to live life totally--without being numb. It's scary, but it's real.

I understand your fear of scaring away the newbies. I just went through something sort of similar myself with something I was hesitant to post. But the one thing that has always brought me comfort at MWO was that whenever I admitted something I perceived as awful, there has always been someone else here who says, "Yeah, that happened to me too." I think relaying our experiences, the good and the bad, is what makes this site real. Finding commonality amongst others is such a relief. I applaud you and anyone else who is willing to share the good and the bad. It all makes up the journey. :l

[available]

Feeling blue

Moss glad to see you seem in better spirits (prob not a good word to use lol). My dreams are amazing shame i cant remember them all but i am finally sleeping 6 to 8 hours like a log and although the headaches are still there life is much better.

I think the newbies need to realise that in the first few days it is extremely hard to get out crap together and do Day 1 and its nice to find out that others are going through the same thing. So keeps those posts coming.

I also suffer from anxiety and am a people pleaser but we do have to start thinking of us and maybe now we are grieving for a friend (AL) that we have lost and as we know the grieving process is hard. At the moment i hate AL but i wish he was still here with me but i no in my heart he can never be part of my life again.

No door clawing this weekend for me!

[13sept]

Feeling blue

I'm glad you have posted I also feel inadequate and totally stupid ......why can't I lick this others have no problems but me like you struggle
Please keep posting

[witts end]

Feeling blue

moss I'm glad your hear and still posting you have also helped me on my journey
and would also like to help you
like you never seem to have the right words but just being here helps me to be accountable and staying on track
thats the reason for this site .....some can just do it others keep struggling but the main thing is to keep coming back
I will miss you if you leave and stop posting

[MossRose]

Feeling blue

I am finally calm again. Still battling a few stray blues, but getting better by the minute. Witts - great to hear from you. You have always helped me from the very beginning. Glad you are hanging in there.

Avail - I have realized that AL was like an abusive lover. I protected my abuser, I defended my abuser, and in some twisted way, I loved my abuser, but then one day, I finally found the strength to leave him. But oh, how I missed him at times. So, I would reminisce about the "good" times, and occasionally I would convince myself that he had changed and I would give him another chance. But it always ended the same. He was nothing but a liar and a cheat. So now when I feel weak, I remember how terrible he treated me. How awful he made me feel about myself. And that keeps me strong.

13, I am glad you are here and thanks for joining the conversation. I know in my original post, I talked about how strong everyone appeared. But I needed a reality check. We are lucky that K9 weighed in. She is one of the people who I trust the most - been through this hell - and has made it to the other side. She makes it very clear, and I needed the reminder too, that it isn't easy for anyone. Even those who have weeks, months or years AF still have to be vigilant. I guess that something we need to accept right now. We'll make it through because we have each other.

xx - and have a wonderful night, or day!

[available]

Feeling blue

Moss i love the "i am finally calm again". It gets so like that sometimes and the fight within ourselves is just awful. I totally agree that AL is like a love and the last one i had was an arse so i got rid of him, maybe i should have got rid of AL as well 4 years ago but he became my best friend.

It is encouraging to see other nesters who have beaten AL and it gives us hope to be one of successful ones. I just think it seems so far away but it is just day by day

[spiderwoman]

Feeling blue

HI Moss, glad you are feeling more positive - for now anyway! Your post really got me thinking and it struck me that the process of giving up AL is very similar indeed to profound grief.

When my husband died the grief was all encompassing and relentless, the only respite from it was in my old pal AL (big, big error), AL allowed me to pass out! The grief remained under the fog though however I digress. When you are grieving you go through a process of existing, you function on the most basic level because its a survival instinct and human nature forces you to go on though you don't want to. The difference and its a huge one when you're giving up AL is that AL is only a shop and a few ?s or $s away. AL will take away all those feelings of shock, disbelief horror and hurt, a few (or in my case a few dozen) glasses and all will be well only it isn't is it? I don't know of a single widow/widower who wouldn't sell their soul for that meeting with their loved one only in this case AL is that loved one.

What follows that is the guilt, remorse and regret, just like when you're grieving for whatever reason, all those emotions come to the fore, relentlessly, all day and every day until you get up one morning and your loss is not the first thing you think about but that takes time, in some cases a lot of it.

After about six months or so the mist begins to clear and the reality sets in, just like when you've stopped the madness, you begin to see clearly what the drinking has done to you, it might be the financial implicaitons or the personal issues and it may very well be a sad picture but AL is still there. It can offer you oblivion from your problems again and we are all human, nobody likes hurting so its logical we will feel sad and depressed again, just when everything should be perfect. Its a hard call to stay on track because just like in grieving you miss your loved one (AL) so very much.

Then very slowly but steadily there comes an acceptance and tranquility, unlike anything you've experiencein the past most probably. You hate the situation you are in, what is this "thing" that is controlling every part of your life? Eventually you you cannot change it so in the case of grief so you begin to make a new life for yourself and I think this is cruicial in the AL battle as AL is always going to be there unless the stuff is banned which no government will do. You somehow have to make a final push to reinvent yourself into a life you can grow to love where AL plays no part at all.

I will always love wine and champage but I am rapidly coming to realise it doesn't and never did love me, doesn't provide the comfort and peace it promises and without it I am much better off and that is the only difference between giving up drink and losing a loved one, your loved one would never hurt and damage you the way AL did and will!

I hope I haven't upset anyone with this analogy but just as grief is rollercoaster so has been giiving up drink, days when I've been ecstatic I've stopped, days when I feel angry and depressed but even on the bad days I have never regretted my decision to stop it forever.

Each of us fights a different battle every day and sharing the experience provides others with coping stragegies they haven't considered so each and every post is a brick in the wall to keep AL out, my biggest regret is that I now have so much happening in my life that I can't fit in reading everything

[NoSugar]

Feeling blue

Thank you for that personal, heartfelt post, Spidey. And, Moss, thank you for having the strength and courage to put yourself forward and start this thread that gets at the heart of what we are really dealing with here. The posts by both of you fit right in with the Bren? Brown vulnerability TED talk many of us were talking about a couple weeks ago and that I rewatched with a friend last night. One of her theses is that growth and change can only come about when we are willing to take the risk of being honest and really letting ourselves be seen. :l:l NS

[available]

Feeling blue

Spider what can i say, nothing really, we all have our own stories and i so appreciate that you have given yours. If we could reach out and give hugs and kisses i would be in line but you also seem a strong woman and you are where you are today due to you. I want to be that woman thank you

[MossRose]

Feeling blue

Spidey, your post made my heart hurt. Thank you for sharing your story. I am sorry for your loss and the pain and grief you have had to endure. I have read many times on these threads that a major loss was the trigger - just one more night of feeling absolutely nothing. We all know that AL brings only a temporary and false sense of peace, but oh so tempting when our pain becomes unbearable.

FlyAway said it very well earlier on this thread: "This is too much! This is too hard! I must drink to stop this!" She was talking about life in general and our need to deal with it sober. But it also relates to grief, don't you think? Eventually, as you said, we must stopping numbing ourselves, deal with these feelings of pain and loss, and try to move forward. I know your life doesn't look the way you had expected it to, but I'm so proud of you for finding the strength to reinvent your life into one "that you can grow to love where AL plays no part at all.

NS - I watched Bren? Brown's talk after you mentioned it in one of your posts. I was awed by her message. So much so, that I sent it to several of my girlfriends. I think this is something that so many of us need to work on, whether we have a problem with AL, or not. Being vulnerable scares me to death. But I'm learning that it's the only way to live an authentic life. My biggest problem is determining who I can safely be vulnerable with. During my drinking years, I had a tendency to ignore my intuition (if I could even hear it at all), and trusted people who I shouldn't have. It caused me some real heartbreak. Near the end, right before coming here, I had withdrawn from just about everyone. I was hurting, and my trust-o-meter was broken, so I used AL to numb the pain. But somewhere deep inside, my soul was screaming out for true connection. I was just too scared to give it another try. Until I joined MWO.

When I tell newbies that this place saved my life, I am not just talking about giving up AL. It's deeper than that. I am learning a whole new way to live and interact with others. I only wish I had learned these skills years ago. It may have saved me decades of suffering. But I'm grateful for another chance and intend to use it wisely.

Avail - hope you are having a good night.

[broken halo]

Feeling blue

rose, I just love your honesty. Things haven't been going great chez BH. I have been grumpy, pissed off, dying for a drink. I almost talked myself into drinking and blaming it on posts in the nest, how dumb is that?

I am sober, unhappy and almost back in that place that I hate so much. Your post really helped me, thank you:l