Letter to Another Manic Depressive

How do the ones I know commit to sobriety this time? When will we relapse? I am using AA but I have always and I still get this icky cult feeling with this method. However, I find myself without another resource, especially within myself, to overcome that which has been my lifelong escape from the turmoil and voids within me. I don't want to burden you, but, I feel I must go on and tell you. So, here goes. You can always just press delete, right?

I was a divorcee who had landed an amazing job and was finishing college. A degree was in sight and promotions and awards were being flourished on me as I deserved. Then, depression and anxiety left me with no choice but to quit working. Of course, I was still using then, so its no wonder therapy and treatment didn't work.  I found myself on a path from which I would not be able to find success in life ever again. At times, I think its fate's payback to me, something about my place in life and a girl like me shouldn't have success. A year after leaving the great job, I had to place myself in the same place I took another years before, perhaps sat at the same group therapy tables and smoked in the same chairs as he did, when I took a sick one somewhere they would be safe. So it went for me, my lover brought me to the place where everyone I loved knew I would stay safe, where I couldn't do anymore damage. The treatment is progressing well. I stopped cutting. I don't obsess over suicide. My sobriety is in tact. I don't leave my house for days at a time and my neighbors have to run errands for me, but hey, that's progress!

You know what kind of emotional turmoil I could go through sometimes, everyone's had bad, crazy days. Everyone's overreacted or cried unreasonably. You've never seen anything like what I go through now, and if you have or even worse, ARE, then you know things about inexplicable and deep-rooted pain. My arms have scars, I no longer drive, I am unable to work, I'm afraid of my own fucking shadow. I am medicated and it seems pretty effectively progressing this time. But, its always one step forward, five steps back. I'm starting to have more and more "this times" to talk about. I hate being sober when it seems to have left me without a reward. We always want rewards don't we? Someone give me a fucking cookie! I'm sober. I haven't had a drink since I said I wouldn't have a drink. My life depends on it.

I'm tired of hearing people say they understand, or giving me tips on how I can overcome this shit - not just drinking but all the other mental shit - anxiety that is electric and violent and keeps me from moving, depression that makes me hate myself because I have a beautiful life which deserves to be appreciated, emptiness that the ones who love me cannot understand, fear that is so constant and present that I would rather end it than continue on this way.

Is it all that happened to me before? Does it haunt me so much inside that I can't pinpoint it or stop it? Questions to myself, I have never been able to answer. And I'll end with saying this, whatever you do, don't stop overcoming all that was or will be. Please, live. Please love. Find peace. If for nothing else, so someone like me knows it can be done.

Peace,
Denae