In life there are trade offs. You only have so many resources at any given point in time. I feel like an awful lot of the problems in life are because of the fact that there are insufficient resources. And I don’t mean oil–I’m talking about time and attention. I’m talking about the fact that I don’t keep up with my friends as well as I wish I could because I cannot handle the fact that I am already touched and pawed at all day long.
A friend else-net got very drunk last night. She’s at a hard spot in her life and she wanted to drink to forget. Of course she now believes this has destroyed her value as a person. On the kind of nights where you drink to forget you tend to believe your value was gone before you started. I make bad decisions. I don’t want to add an adverb describing when or how often. Because the reality is I probably make bad decisions about as often as average and maybe less. Do you want to know why I say that? Because something being a bad decision or not depends on your perspective.
Getting shit faced drunk and passing out seems like a bad decision. Until you realize that the alternative may very well be ending your life. When you realize that choosing to get shit faced drunk so that you can make it through the one bad night is actually a good choice. At the crisis point, get drunk. That’s ok. Really. It’s not a bad decision. If that is how you are going to still be alive in the morning it is a good decision. It’s a bad decision to do it every night. It is a bad decision to make it a lifestyle. Anesthetics have their place in life. I believe it is ok to self-medicate. But be very careful.
Does that mean it is the safest choice? Of course not. Drinking until you pass out is dangerous and I don’t really think people should be doing it. Much like cutting. It’s not a great thing to do. I don’t recommend it as a coping strategy for people who are looking for new tools. Sometimes people do make mistakes while cutting and accidentally die. It is not beyond the realm of possibility.
A lot of my friends point out that their lives “weren’t that bad” so they shouldn’t be upset. I honestly don’t know a lot of people who experienced more abuse than me… and I still don’t feel entitled to be upset. Not really. To me that means that it doesn’t matter whether I am entitled to the upset or not. I am upset. I need to not worry about whether or not I should be. I need to not focus on how my being upset affects other people. I need to look at how being upset affects me. It’s hard because for all that I have been talking constantly about being narcissistic… I’m truly not. I have a hard time paying adequate attention to myself. I worry constantly about the happiness of those around me. I work extensively to build up other people. That’s just an insecurity.
It’s just as true for everyone else though. Ok, there are people who are actually narcissistic. Most people are just existing though. You get upset. It’s ok to deal with being upset. If that upset goes on for weeks, months, years… you use up your resources. When you are low on resources sometimes you hit the bottom of the barrel. It’s ok. That’s why it is there. It is still a tool. The bottom exists for a reason.
Why am I babbling about this. Because I can say this emphatically when I am speaking with my friend in my head. When I picture my beautiful, wonderful friend who is going through a very hard time and there is nothing I can do to help… that feels like I am failing in my life. I don’t want my friends to suffer. I want to take it away and make everything better. I want to help build my friends up so big and so strong that they cannot be hurt any more.
I’ve been reading more in TCTH (The Courage to Heal–I’m sick of typing it out.) I think it is funny that every time I read it I get to a few pages past where I feel emotionally that day. When I come back and catch up I get to read on the page these testimonies from all these women describing their emotional processes and I could have written them. It feels really hilarious and predictable. This experience of going through this book is ensuring that I know I am not a special fucking snow flake. Ha. It’s nice though. I now have this invisible group of women who know what I have been through. Healing from incest is a fairly predictable path. I’m not lost and wandering and doing it wrong. I am working the steps. I really and truly am doing something that is worth doing. As hard as this is sometimes, as bad as some of my mistakes are… I am improving.
My momentary bad decisions do not negate the fact that I am a good person. That it is worth getting up every single day and continuing for as long as my body will let me because I add good to the world. Far, far, far more good than bad. I haven’t been sleeping enough and my emotions are very close to the surface. I feel very upset when I see my friends self-flagellating in ways I also do. It hits home for me what I need to start working on doing and that’s hard. I kind of don’t need more pressure to work, you know? I’m very tired. I feel so flawed. I feel like I will never be good enough.
And TCTH tells me that is part of the process. It will pass. This day will end. Today I will get good and stoned and I will wander around the house puttering and singing and talking with my babies. If I just putter around absent mindedly all the rest of the cleaning will magically happen. But I have to be very stoned. Or I will be a stress monkey and twitch and be unable to complete tasks and cry and probably scream at both kids. I have a choice, right this minute. I can continue to distract myself with the internet because I believe smoking marijuana is a bad choice and I am a bad person for doing it, or… I can shut up and do it. And have a really nice day. Bye y’all.