Day 140: Coping Mechanisms

They are circling.

I made an emo post on IG and now the boys are around me. I don’t think they saw the post but they are circling regardless. Ryan just got home from checking the status of his facility from the storm.

The 5 of them are my angels. (husband, son, son, dog, dog). With their incessant circling I got rid of the 2 elder humans (listening to music in my airpods and pretending I couldn’t see or hear them) with urgency because I need to write now before I get too drunk.

The 2 dogs have curled up against me. As long as they don’t start barking, I’m good with their presence.

My kids are extremely private. I blame myself for this. When I started my first anon blog back in 2012 the highest of my priorities was protecting my loved ones. My husband, my kids, my birth family, my family by marriage. I’ve written before about how comedians/authors freak me out when they use their real life humans in their work as “bits” or “stories”. It feels so degrading and exploitative. And one sided.

With that said, my personal experience right now, and for the past 8 wks, has felt extremely stressful. But to protect my beautiful family, I will be vague. As I have been. And will continue to be.

After a very jam packed morning and multiple phone calls scheduling things for the end of the month I decided to start drinking after I picked the boys up from school.

It’s 100% a coping mechanism, and I’m ok with that for now.

Lately I’ve been cutting back on drinking, which is helping my mental health alot.

But today’s different. It’s too much. And not like we got devastating news or anything. It’s literally just the exhale after getting everyone back to routines and being sick.

Did you know I was sober for almost a decade? I started drinking again when I started working full time. I don’t want to blame the role I was in but one of the most beautiful things i’ve written was for a child that was died of cancer. I’d started drinking a couple weeks before his passing while on vacation and haven’t stopped.

It wasn’t him that made me drink though. Or the job. Or the pandemic. Or any one thing in particular.

The thing with alcoholics and addicts is that they feel like they can feel more when they imbibe. I’ve been there and done that for the past few decades so I know what it is. Intimately.

When I pushed the kid aside just an hour ago, it was because I knew that with my current buzz: I’d reached a spot in creativity that couldn’t be missed.

I needed to write just then. The thoughts and beliefs were spinning and made so much sense in real time that I had to get them down “on paper” before they disappeared.

ADHD, alcoholism and addiction. From my experience (without calling anyone out because what I said earlier). They are entwined.

We feel so deeply. We see truth. We know reality.

We want that for others.