Friday, June 22, 2012

Musing: Where Is Up Really?

My growth becomes evident with every new thing I have to face as a woman, as an adult, and even when I'm in the throes of it, the knowledge of that makes it all worth it.

I'm not sure if you guys follow me on Twitter, but my boyfriend and I are a very...(vocal? open?) visible couple. So if it goes by that you follow him and I and we're debating or sending lyrics and whatnot back and forth, it's just a normal day. No tweets? Not a normal day, not at all.

A few weeks ago I wrote about being abandoned and how that sits in my soul. It hurts, because a lot of times in my life I felt abandoned by the people I love and care about; the thing about me is that once I'm open to you, I'm a sitting duck. You can hurt me as easily as you can crack an egg if I'm completely "there" with you, and not too many people know that because I'm not there with more than a handful of people.

So it happens that Tarzan likes to disappear on me at times. Every time, it hurts somewhere deeper than I thought my love could go. I don't think he realizes how I value him; more than just some dope dude, he's one of my best and closest friends, more than a lover I share pieces of my soul with him. Isn't it odd, how the people we love, have the easiest route to hurt us? Isn't it strange that we all know this and still love them with all we have anyway?

In the past the deep parts of where my pain is remained a mystery, not only to me but to those around me. I realized it was a problem about six or seven months ago when I started medicating with copious amount of alcohol. I would get into the low parts, not know what was going on or why it was hurting so bad, and pick up a bottle from my friendly local gas station, or from my fully stocked mini-fridge, and drink it all away, sometimes into the early morning; I still managed to go to work, act like it was all okay until I could get back to my bed, where all the bottles were lined like soldiers. Just because I was aware of the problem didn't mean I stopped. Nope, I didn't stop drinking heavily until I started dating Tarzan.

He doesn't drink, and I didn't want him to have an alcoholic girlfriend so I stopped cold turkey. And about the time I wrote that abandonment blog, he went missing on me. Because I'd made that vow to him in my head to not drink to soothe my pain, I didn't know what to do. What do you do when your reason not to is suddenly the reason to? What I did was plow through it.

I cried like my life was over. W couldn't console me. My mother couldn't coax me out. And it happened that one night in the middle of it all the house was quiet and I had the thought to just get in my car and find a liquor store. It hurt so bad and in such a new way I didn't know where to go with it. But at that time I found this song by Wiz Khalifa, and instead of getting in the car, I sat very still in the dark and let the feelings lead me where they wanted.

It wasn't a pretty place, it wasn't a happy place, but it was a place I needed to go. It was a place where I was confronted with all that pain I'd been pushing down, all that resentment and anger, all the fear. And it hurt even worse going through it than standing at it's door. That place reminds me of all my short-comings, all my doubts, all the things I try to deny to myself that I am; it's where all my negative, human emotions are.

I relate that place to this song because, for a few months there, all I did was drink; it was my high to keep me away from the real me and the real problems I was facing. Wiz's song is the anthem for that phase, reminding me with it's mournful beat and "high" lyrics where to not go. Even when it hurts, even when it's dark, that temporary high? It always drops you, and you have to have more and more of whatever it is that's keeping you afloat until your remedy becomes the problem.

So it happened that Tarzan shut me out, even in knowing where that pushes me, and instead of drinking I found a quiet place and reminded myself that yes, it hurts like hell, but the alternative, that false sense of control I used to get from drinking didn't compare to what I have with him, good day or bad day. He's no longer the reason I don't drink to soothe; I am. And it all came full circle when, my all knowing iPod, brought  it to the forefront and followed "Up" with Jill Scott's "He Loves Me." I won't lie, that hurt is still there, and I probably won't talk about it for a long while yet, but...I'm a woman, a fully functioning, loved and respected woman who, through sheer will, found her way out of painful places.

Even in your sorrows, even in those places where it hurts for you to go, even in your anger, remember who you are in relation with who you were and who you want to be. If you find yourself soothing with all the wrong things, backsliding, know that you're not alone. All of us have those moments where we can pick up keys and go get what will make us temporarily forget, all of us face those moments where it would be easier to forget than forgive. That moment, that small decision, makes up who you are in this moment and may make up who you are. Don't let it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perfection.

That's all I have in response: PERFECTION.

chunk

Tess said...

Thanks Chunk :)