I write these words from the ashes of a life I ran headfirst into creating without doing very much risk/reward analysis. I chose a path, a person, a purpose, a poison, and it all had to be violently and humiliatingly ripped away from me over 10 of the worst months of my life.
If you have chosen to take the time to click on this link then you probably already know that July 2022 - March 2023 was a series of rock bottoms that humbled me to my core.
I didn't know if I would ever write in public again. I didn't know what right I had to a narrative, until my therapist reminded me that writing is my therapy, that sharing my words is my community, and that my credentials to speak on any of my mistakes is not that I am better than anyone but that I have been far worse.
If I can rebuild from these ashes of my own making, then there is hope for all of us.
For a long time my many privileges of being a polite young white woman meant that I got away with a lot. I was forgiven and protected and treated as someone to save for all of my 20's. I had no reason to get better; my crippling anxiety, ability to function on no food or sleep, messy nights binge drinking (what am I like), and rotation of boyfriends who enabled me meant I never hit rock bottom.
After all, she's been through a lot, give her a break.
Until the universe had enough of my shit and decided that I was no longer getting away with a single one of my bad choices.
My life completely crumbled, I lost everything I thought I could not live without, and I am deeply grateful for the consequences.
Losing everything saved my life, and I don't think that is an exaggeration.
Without those 10 months, I think I would have continued to binge drink and become a person I did not recognise.
I think I would have remained judgemental and critical of people, blissfully unaware of how close I was to being the kind of person I was judging.
I think I would have let others continue to treat me badly because I believed that I deserved it.
I think I would have stayed in a relationship that I knew was not healthy for me because I didn't know how to love myself.
I think I would have continued to not eat or sleep unless I was medicated because the anxiety of letting myself down was unbearable.
I think, eventually, my body would have given up on me.
I think, if I'm honest, I was on a path that was going to end in death.
I either had to die to my vices or I was going to die. Period.
In January this year, I wrote that suffering was too high of a price to pay for content. I stopped writing. I thought that might mean the chaos would stop.
It didn't because I wasn't ready to take ownership of my part in my own apocalypse. Since that post I have had many more losses, I won't share them all here, but I had a bigger heart surgery and I lost my chance to move to Albany.
I stopped posting things about my life on the internet, not because I don't think it can be useful, but because I needed to learn to live without imagining how it would look to you.
I am sleeping 8-10 hours a night. My nervous system has calmed down so much, I feel like I'm catching up on decades of anxiety.
I am in weekly therapy for attachment issues and abandonment wounds.
I actually put my phone down for hours at a time, listen to music, and read books.
I cut up veggies, roast them, and use the fat from the chicken for gravy. I feed my body. I dare to believe that I am worth nourishing.
I walk to the train every morning, find a seat and watch the world go by. I makeup stories about the people I pass on my commute and try to make eye contact and smile as much as I can.
I work with a small team hoping that what we do in quiet rooms with tissues and deep breaths might make some kind of difference to young people.
My life has become infinitely smaller; home to work to friends to home; while at the same time becoming infinitely larger; space to linger, space to be curious, space to say yes to new friends, space to feel it all and numb none of it.
I realise this is quickly sounding like a novel of a life well lived, and that is because it is. I deeply believe that actions come before feelings and I am trying to teach my brain, which is addicted to dopamine, what natural serotonin and oxytocin feels like.
I know that I am happiest when my values align with my actions, I have known that since I was a child, and so I am choosing to live a life aligned with my values, even when it feels like walking in the slow lane toward a feeling that isn't quite as electric as the one my brain knows it can get from its many addictions.
So while the above is who I am choosing to be, and slowly it is becoming more and more natural, there are still days that are hard and lonely and painful and I wonder why I can't just go out and be an agent of chaos.
The difference is that, by grace, I know that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that feeling of ecstasy will become a feeling of existential dread and I will be no closer to having the tools to handle those feelings.
So instead, when I am sad or numb or confused or regretful, as we all will feel at times, I put my right hand on my chest and my left hand on my stomach and I tell the little girl inside of me that I've got this, we are going to be okay, I'm not going anywhere - you're not losing me - I am not abandoning you. You don't have to be scared, I have got you.
And then I cry because sometimes we have to tell ourselves the things we have been begging to hear from others.
Smile often,
Beth