This Blessed Mess » we’re all sick sometimes

Just like a cancer.

Mrs. Messiness — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:24:47 +0000

It’s like you have a cancer and I’m the only one that can see the rot.

It’s like all the sudden I can smell the disease coming back and I go into panic mode – I know that your job, as the diseased one, is to hide the tumors, and mine is to find them . . . → Read More: Just like a cancer.

Tomorrow will be day one, again.

Mrs. Messiness — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:21:54 +0000

I was at work today and he called to tell me he was not ‘ok’.

After ‘yes that’s all there was’ and ‘no there is no more anywhere in the house’ there were two more bottles under the bathroom sink. Empty, now, obviously.

I tell him that if I have to be the sane one in this, he is going to just have to deal with me being half fucking crazy too. I tell him that no, I will not help him figure out how to tell his boss he can’t come in today. That we are going to need us both at work today in order to pay for the god-damned medical bills that this is going to cost us. I tell him that I am not angry, I am terrified. I cry and then yell and then thank him for telling me. I tell him I love him and that I don’t want him to fucking die. Then that this is somehow progress, because this time he told me before I happened to find out and he didn’t try to hide it or fake it – like he did before. That maybe next time he can tell me or God or someone before he actually does it.

I tell him that I am coming to get him and take him to work and that he has 20 minutes to figure out how to suck it up and get ready.

Because I don’t know what the fuck else to do.

My seven years & his three days

Mrs. Messiness — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 21:20:02 +0000

It’s been 7 years.

Yesterday I sat in a doctors office listening to him be so honest, so naked and vulnerable and so real. I was so relieved to watch him peel layers away and admit to the doc that he had relapsed and that he needs help. That he knows what he needs to do and how badly he wants to do it. I sat there staring at his feet hanging off the end of the exam table – half of me wondering how many more times I would see him teetering on a paper blanket, and half of me wondering how many times I already have.

Out of nowhere, the doc says “effexor” and I slam back into myself. They are nodding, “similar to the zoloft” yes “familiar with the effects” yes “tapper up in dosage”, uh-huh. I stopped hearing them then, because my heart was beating so hard in my ears that I thought for a minute they might hear it.

Seven years since effexor, celexa, zoloft, and all the x and z meds. Seven years since lists of disorders and symptoms and syndromes. Seven years since I relied on cocktails of chemicals to find ‘normal’.

I had no idea it had been so long – so many things have changed and so many have stayed the same. So many things reoccurred and so many things have been forgotten.

I am proud and guilty all at the same time. I got better. I lived. I ran away. How many days has it been? How many weeks? Why did it never occur to me to count days like so many people in recovery? I wonder why I didn’t realize that the whole process was ‘recovery’.. does this mean I am recovered? Does it mean that the next relapse could be mine?

Doc said he will be okay on it. I was not; it made the earth shake. Doc says he will ‘keep up’ with it and monitor it; mine didn’t and they earth kept shaking for me for far too long.

But it’s been seven years, so maybe it worked.

Phase two?

Mrs. Messiness — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:17:08 +0000

Well now I have gotten angry because I got scared. I don’t want to be scared – I want to believe that everything is just fine. I want to look at you and know that you are still my rock and that you always stand tall and strong and that you arent afraid of anything or anyone.
And then I think- maybe I need too much from you. Maybe I asked too much or leaned too hard.
I don’t want to be angry or guilty or hurt or scared or confused; I want to be done with this and go back to normal; and I know that we arent sure right now where normal went or what it means – but I know we can find it and make it ours again.
I’m sorry I didn’t know that you were getting lost. I’m sorry I didn’t see the drop coming, and that I didn’t feel your reach. I don’t know how to do this either.
I love you and I believe you when you say you love me.

Please know this.

Mrs. Messiness — Tue, 29 May 2007 21:12:59 +0000

I am not angry.
I am scared. I want you to be ok. I need you to be alright – I need to know that this is not the beginning of you falling – that this is you asking for help. I need to know that you mean it and that you want to not do this and not give everything up. Please know that I love you and that I believe in you. Please know that I cannot stay if you choose to hurt yourself – because I love you. Please know that I have been waiting my whole life to be loved more than that drink; to be wanted more than a drink. To be more interesting and more alive and more beautiful than that drink. Know that I have been competing with that bottle since I could reach it on the night stand – that I wanted to fall in love with it like you did, but even it wouldn’t love me back. I stood up on my toes and tried to be bigger; I stretched out my arms and tried to be bigger; I climbed mountains to be bigger, and still found myself standing in the shadow of that drink. Please know that I am powerless under the weight of what this drink means. I pull myself together every goddamned day to be able to look at what that drink takes from you and me and every single person who gets to carry their metal to their meeting and be ‘free’ and if you drop your end of this load, I’m afraid I won’t remember why I carry it. Please know that I love you. Please get back up and find your strength again and love me more that you do that drink.