let go...

I guess there probably aren't that many people reading this anymore, so I am going to try to quit treating it like an emissary to the world, and I am going to try to start treating it like the journal, self-analysis thing it started as.

I still miss Josh a lot. I just miss talking to him. So that's always there. And then I went to Canada with Erin, Siobhan, and JoAnna. One night they told me I make them feel stupid. So I tried to quit talking, but I ended up pushing them all away, or maybe they pushed me away, so by the time I got home I felt completely unwanted and unlovable. It hurt the most coming from Erin. There was this wall between us.
Then the night I got home Pat and I broke up because of some difficulties Pat has been having in his own life lately, and that made me feel unwanted and unlovable as well. When Pat walked out the door that night, I felt the most alone that I have ever felt in my life. My friends were gone. Josh was gone. Pat was gone. Everyone was gone. I felt like there were no longer any strings, any reason to keep from hurting myself, to keep going.

I had to go rafting the next day. I felt empty and numb. Brittany came, but I didn't treat her fairly because I was lost in the chaos in my own mind. My life felt like it was over. I was thinking that I'll never have friends again, never date anybody again, never trust again, never be safe again, never be loved again. At first I really mentally tried to fight it. I felt despair. The first few days of rafting were pretty rough. The whole time rafting I really just didn't want to be there, and it was exhausting having to act and put on a show for everybody.

I kept talking to Pat though, because I still cared about him a lot obviously, and because I felt like he was all that I had left, and he's the only person I can really talk to. I think that that kept me a little bit sane. I dreamed about smoking marijuana, and I decided that I would get drunk when I got home. A bunch of people from Utah in their twenties came rafting from us, and they had the lives that I want. But I felt this strong conviction that I would never have the life that I want, because my life is over. All of the love in it is over, friendship over, relationship with God or happiness or anything, over. I know that getting drunk is against my religion, and I think that I do believe in my religion. I don't feel close at all to God right now, though, and I felt like it didn't matter if I drank, because I was already lost, and nothing I could do would ever make God love me enough to give me the life that I want.

I felt okay for a little bit every morning when I got up, but over the day the disillusionment always set in, coated in intense self-hatred, and by the end of the day I was again resolved to do anything, including drugs or alcohol, to escape the loneliness, abandonment, and despair that I felt. I didn't want to feel anymore. I didn't want to care. I wanted some numbness. I felt like I would fail at college, and the inevitability of it dulled the panic a bit, but I needed, somehow, to forget, even for a night, the certainty of that failure.

I drove home today in that fog. I put the bottles of wine that my mom uses to cook in my purse. I knew that my mom would eventually see, but I had a stort planned to tell her that would worry her for a while, but that she would get over. It could all work out. It would all work out. I went and sat in my room. The real estate agent came. My parents sold our house, the house I have lived in since I was five. The world turned. I stared at the bottles of wine.

I hit a wall. All I wanted was to drink those bottles, to let go. I dreamed of getting drunk, of feeling okay and blurred, of forgetting. I felt suffocated by the absoluteness of all of the despair in my future. I knew that all of my friends were gone, and those that loved me had turned away from their love. I knew that I was completely alone in some things, in many things, standing alone in the blackness of my mind. And all I wanted was a short respite, a night away from the terror, a padding for the sharp edge of loss. I wanted desperately to fall apart, to let go in the way that I have never been able to let go, to give up, to drown all of my obsessive, self-defeating thought in that alcohol. All of my life I have held myself so perfectly together, and for once, I just wanted to be like Craig. I was sick of being the good child. I wanted to do something wrong. I wanted to drift away. I wanted to crack open irredeemably and fall apart.

But I stared at the wine bottles, and I hit a wall. Some part of my mind kept fighting the soothing thoughts of getting drunk. Something inside of me was fighting. I tried to smother it, and I couldn't. I was so angry at it for disrupting this evening, this event I had planned for all week, this anticipated relief. I couldn't fall apart. I couldn't let go.

This furious battle inside of me ensued between this idiotic aspect of me and my entire mind of despair and negative emotion. I knew that the second I reached out to somebody else, the battle would be lost. I knew that if I told somebody, there would be no getting drunk, no going back, becaus I would have given that aspect of me enough levrage to do what it always did: get me going again.

I lost. I say I, although both parts are me, because the dominant, conscious part of me tonight really did want to fall apart and drink those bottles of wine, no matter the consequences, no matter the significance. I just wanted to escape the way that I have been feeling lately, the loss that has been aching in me.

After dropping Brittany off, driving home, I thought, 'you drive alone, you love alone, you cry alone, you lose alone, you fight alone, you live alone.'

But in the end, I conceded to the possibility that maybe I don't have to be alone. I thought, 'I want to fall apart, but I don't want to drink.'

So I texted Pat, and he called me back, and we talked for an hour. I think that it made me remember what has always been in the way between me and falling apart. I just can't fall apart. I can't give up, because some part of me that I quite often hate refuses to capitulate. It keeps fighting, even when I feel like I have absolutely no energy left. It struggles against all of my decisions to self injury, all of my unhealthy coping mechanisms, all of my desires for apathy. It wants to live. It wants to feel. It wants to be happy.

Tonight, I hated it. I wanted to rip it out of me so I could get the relief that I needed. But I couldn't. It was in me, beating, kicking, struggling. And I knew I couldn't drink the wine.

Pat came over later for a while, and I feel a lot better now. I still feel in despair, like almost everyone has left me, like I am somewhat alone, like I will not have the life that I want, like I will fail in college, like nobody will love me or be my friend. But some part of me is still fighting for an alternative that my consciousness refuses to admit. So I guess I haven't given up yet.

I put the wine back in the fridge. I don't know what I'll do with myself now, but I hope it's a step in the right direction, in the direction that the optimist in me advocates, and not a step deeper into despair.