Beneath The Bottle

  • When The Day Was Too Heavy

    When The Day Was Too Heavy

    Trigger Warning: This post contains honest reflections on alcoholism, relapse, and difficult emotions. Please take care while reading, and only continue if you feel safe to do so.

    This is a desperate blog. A one where I’ve tried everything else and the futility finally overcame me.

    My plan today was simple: get to a meeting, A.A. Then on to therapy. The therapy was cancelled because my therapist was ill. The friend who’d come with me had to take the bus because the metro was cancelled. I had to walk through town, which sparked my anxiety. Once anxiety rears its head, it’s so hard to crush. It’s the little things that tip you over on days like this.

    I spilled tea down my white jumper. Did it bother anyone else? No; of course not. Was it the end of my world? Yes, of course it felt like that.

    The women’s A.A. group was calm and welcoming. My foot tapped the whole time, my body’s tiny attempt to suppress the fear. One woman even asked three others if they had spare tissues; she’d been watching me and thought I might burst into tears at any moment.

    A.A. is different from anything I’ve known. After a share, when someone tells their story, everyone goes up to hug and thank them. It felt alien. Not because people weren’t kind, but because I didn’t come from a place where kindness, togetherness, and mutual respect were taught. I sat there frozen, knowing I looked isolated and ungrateful for the courage it must have taken to share a story of alcoholism in a room full of people. In my head my expression read as disrespect; in my heart there was warmth and gratitude, but I couldn’t bring myself to show it. I was stuck. Not because of her, but because of me. I was so scared to move, to be seen, to be noticed. I wanted to be invisible. I’m not sure A.A. has a practice for not being seen. As I stood to say thanks, my only thought was: she’ll think, who the fuck is this person? And that thought is a recurring habit.

    The day folded in on itself and I found myself doing two A.A. meetings. Was it enough? No. Honestly, I could’ve gone to several more and still not felt like it was enough. My sobriety has been on and off since July 1st, 44 days. It hurts that I made it to 44 days before I crumbled. I was that person who thought, “I’ll just have one.” One never stayed one. So many more followed. Since August it’s been sporadic, leaning back into dependence rather than occasional flirtations.

    We all have a realisation moment. Last week, before school runs, I drank seven pints. Armed with chewing gum and mints, I hid the trail of deceit and lies. My kids believed I was sober. I hid a bottle of gin under my desk, bought a pretty pumpkin glass with a lid and straw, two bottles of lemonade, and drank the full bottle of gin over the evening pretending it was lemonade. Nobody knew, nobody guessed. My tolerance and need to hide it mattered more to me than anything visible.

    As I drained the last dregs, the sudden urge to be sick crept up. The next day I woke with severe anxiety and shaking hands and I knew I couldn’t go back to how it once was, repeating the cycle, building an unforgivable tolerance. That was my lightbulb moment. I had to really try. I needed something to make me stick to sobriety, something I’d never found before, something that would challenge me beyond all I’d known.

    After the gin, deep down I knew. Google showed me a local A.A. meeting and whatever fear I had, I knew this was my last chance to try something different.

    But heaviness stubbornly creeps in. Meetings filling me with a fragile hope that this self-sabotaging habit could become the past, but with that hope came the reality: facing the feelings that made me drink in the first place. By this evening there was no escape. Day slid into night and with the darkness came a pain that couldn’t be explained, pinpointed, or medicated away. A numbness that felt like my whole self was heavy and hollow. There was no energy for distractions and none of them would have taken the feeling away. How do you treat a sense of loss when there’s nobody to see you fall, when you can’t articulate how intensely sad you feel about simply existing?

    Then the tug of war begins: the voice telling me to drink; it will change how you feel, even after a few sips you can feel it change your brain, and the other voice saying stay abstinent, sit with this nameless pain. There is no winner. Drink and you re-enter the cycle: guilt, deceit, shame. Don’t drink and you are left with unwavering desolation, your body feeling heavier than before. Exhausted yet unable to sleep, menial tasks become impossible.

    An evening filled with my disabled adult daughter’s meltdowns made the desire to not exist stronger. I found myself praying to be rescued but knowing only I could do it. I didn’t drink. I chose to write instead. To try to make sense of it, or at least to be honest about how I was feeling.

    If parts of this feel familiar, you’ll know that feeling that has no name. Drowning without water. For anyone who feels the tug of war; you are not alone. Knowing others recognise the indescribable things we feel can be a comfort in uncertain times. Giving ourselves time to heal, space, and self-compassion to respect what we’re going through all play a part in the process.

    If you’re struggling right now

    You don’t have to go through this alone. If you’re in the UK, you can call Samaritans at 116 123 (free, 24/7) to talk to someone right away.

    For support with alcohol, you can reach out to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) at 0800 9177 650 or visit www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk.

    If you’re elsewhere, please look up local crisis lines or AA services in your country. And if you ever feel you’re in immediate danger, call emergency services right away.

     

  • The Courage To Begin-part 1

    I have often thought about starting a blog; somewhere to offload unforgivingly into an abyss that feels safer than the confines of a personal therapy session, where you have to make eye contact and actually accept the uncomfortable situation. But as I sit poised ready to write those nerves are still creeping vehemently across all I had hoped would be different. 

    Wondering why I now feel intense anxiety sat behind my keyboard ready to unravel a tangled story of emotion, the realisation is that it has never ever been about the situation I’ve found myself in, whether that be sat in a therapy room or now alone, in the safety of my own sitting room, on my own comfy settee. It’s to do with the deeply raw, honest, painful things that have and still consume me. I can’t promise to write articulate, perfectly grammatical blogs because I don’t have that skill but what I can promise to do is give an openly honest, hopefully relatable account of what it feels like to have gone through things that I never asked for, experiences that were undeniably wrong, and untangle the messiness of life’s events. 

    A lot of what I carry comes from childhood, those ripple effects from parents that were quite frankly, emotionally, physically and sexually abusive. Those experiences have shaped me in ways I am still now, even at the age of 45, trying to understand. Some days it feels like my past is right there like the shadow that doesn’t quite go away. It shows up in the way that I think about myself, in the heaviness that I sometimes feel and the constant ruminations of past memories. 

    The hardest part is coming to a realisation that the echoes of the past have shaped the very person that I am today. The quiet habits, the hidden words that are not spoken because of the swell of fear that sits in the pit of my stomach. Some days pass unremarkably and they are a small mercy but others I feel like I’m right back where I started. The child that is scared and unsure…but I’m not that child and writing this is my key to not being there anymore. That unlocking my story is allowed. Perhaps I’m allowed to take up space to tell my story, and untangle what has happened.

    Maybe you have felt this way too or something similar. Carrying the weight of a past you didn’t choose. The need to heal from the things that you never asked for. Wondering whether there will be a time when things will become lighter. If so then you are not alone. I believe so many of us keep these things quiet for fear of judgment or misunderstanding. When all we really want is for someone to say the words…me too! 

    I don’t have all the answers, and I’m certain I never really will. But sharing this feels like a step in a more positive direction, one that leads away from the darkness of hopelessness and towards the light of change, no matter how small that may be. If any of this resonates with you, I’d love for you to come on this journey beside me, even if it is just reading.