I have been pondering how best to write what I am about to write. It is never easy to sit within the darkness of one’s mind, which in this situation is my mind.

I don’t like it, this darkness. I never realized how dark my mind could be until it wasn’t for a while. It is still dark, but I consider it to be more of a muted gray than absolute blackness over the last several months. Gray at least has the perception of some light mixed in.

This past weekend it was DARK. There was no gray, and there was not even in the perception of light. I was spiraling. Oh, the things my brain came up with, tortured thoughts. Then the inevitable, THE QUESTIONS!

Why Am I Here?

Would it Matter if I Wasn’t?

Why Am I Feeling This Way?

Fuck sobriety! I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t LIKE how I feel right now. So what do I do to stop it? How do I stop it? I can numb those feelings like I have done most of my life. I can throw myself off the wagon of sobriety and simply float again. Ah, how much I wanted to do that. How much I wanted to STOP TRYING.

I almost did. Almost. There is still a draw to stop, a desire to do just that, to STOP.

Oh, I have written how NOT working towards a place of healing is worse than WORKING TOWARDS healing. And my brain called so much bullshit on me and on that this past weekend. Because I didn’t want to keep trying to heal, it hurt too much to keep trying.

And yet, I DID NOT STOP. I didn’t, and I have no idea what force was behind my perseverance.

Perhaps the same thing that stopped me all those years ago when I “failed” to commit suicide? Rooted somewhere deep inside me is a knowledge, a belief, that I am supposed to be here. I clung to that belief, my life raft amid the storm.

I pushed away all of the darkness that I could. I told myself the ridiculousness of the thoughts that were raging. And I fought wave after wave, each threatening to take me down.

What I didn’t fight against were the tears. I allowed those to come in torrents, snot and all. I laid on the couch, curled into a fetal position, wishing the darkness away. I wished for so many things. Not many of those I had control over, but I wished anyway.

I wished that I wasn’t like this. I wished I didn’t have such darkness within threatening to consume me.

I wished I wasn’t an alcoholic. I could go out and have a few beers with my husband like we used to. Truthfully, back in the day, it was never a few beers. Not for me anyway. Sigh.

I wished I didn’t have depression, anxiety, and C-PTSD. I wish so much that I simply wasn’t me.

That is my reality. I am WHO and WHAT I am.

I am WHERE I am on this journey.