"Pushing Through"

Sometimes I wonder if the reason I haven't relapsed is because I'm so stubborn. Every once in a great while I think that it's more likely that I would commit suicide than it is for me to relapse. No, that's not meant to be funny. In the strangest way, the reason I don't get loaded, the reason I'm such a dedicated member of the 'No Matter What' club is the same reason why I used to be loaded all the time.

When life doesn't go the way I want it to; when it feels like nothing will ever make sense; when it seems as though the world is against me and that I'm doomed to be a piece of shit at the bottom of the ladder my entire life; the thing that I always latch on to is that at least I'm sober. No matter what life throws at me, I'm not going to use. Period. It's not negotiable. Sometimes I need to give myself a pep talk about it. It sounds a lot like this paragraph. Full of bitter determination. No hope. No faith. Just raw, white-knuckle "don't do it."

It reminds me of a time that I tend to think of as the time I truly became an addict. I was pissed off at life, pissed off like a little 2-yr-old because I wasn't getting my way. Full of endless frustration about how life was never ever going to go my way or the way I thought it should. And I said to myself, "well then fuck it. I'll just get loaded all the time." Those close to me know that one of the reasons I was so attached to my drug of choice was because it was the only thing I ever found that made me happy.

And there's the addict, right there. Controlling my feelings. I didn't want to be miserable, so I got doped up to make myself feel something different.

Nowadays, when things are bad, my thoughts are eerily similar. Nowadays, instead of saying I'll just go get loaded, I say I won't get loaded no matter what. I wonder if that might be a bad thing. Because it's still a big "fuck you" to the world. Instead of saying "fuck you, I'm gonna check out," I'm saying, "fuck you, you can't make me get loaded." Lil' Joshua, my inner two-year-old, is in charge. Sometimes I really want to yell at that little kid to take his goddamned hands off the steering wheel before we all crash and burn. He's a terrible driver, ya know. Every bit as bad as Uncle Steve. They have this knack for finding every pothole in the road.

I'm trying to laugh at myself, but it isn't working. It's so hard to not be mad at myself for the times those two run things. And of course, they come out at the worst times. It's when things are bad that they take over--when I take over--and try to run things again. I don't get my way, or I can't accept reality. Whether it's fear, anger, or frustration, my addict self comes out and starts throwing shit. Then I get to clean up after. Those bastards never stick around for the cleanup. They only know how to make a mess.