My First Love (Pt 1)

My love affair with alcohol started well before I was close to the legal drinking age.

When I was fifteen, I entered into my first serious relationship.  Like most romantic attachments formed as a teenager, it was an intense courtship and I was very much in love.  The object of my affection was 2 years older than me and was the kind of individual who garnered a great deal of respect in the Theater/Performing Arts department of our tiny school.  

Dating someone so out of my league gave me a small amount of confidence in myself, but all of my self worth was hinged on that relationship.  There were several reasons that the relationship was unhealthy, but it essentially boiled down to his need for power and control.  At the time, I was so happy to be getting attention from anyone that I was unable to see the level of abuse that I endured.  It was almost never physical (as if that somehow makes it better), but he wormed his way so far into my brain that I was, essentially, a slave for his love.

As I've stated before, I was universally hated and mistreated in school.  Because of this, he felt a great deal of shame in dating me and for the first several months of our relationship, we hid it from almost everyone.  I knew what was going on, and had, in fact, agreed to hide our affair.  When he asked me to be his girlfriend, he actually laid that out as a condition.  "We don't parade this," he said.  "We don't need anybody to know what's going on."  

Looking back, I see just how desperate I was for...anything, really.

It's not hard to wrap one's mind around that relationship dissolving, but it wasn't something that happened quickly.  In fact, it was almost 2 years before things ended.  Being older than me, he had moved almost 3 hours away and had begun college.  I somehow managed to grow more and more insecure about our relationship which lead me to do tell him all kinds of insane tall-tales in attempt to win his attention/affection.  That ended up backfiring on me (thankfully), and when he came home to visit several friends, he dumped me.  I had become too much drama to handle and the distance prevented him from being able to control and manipulate me in a way that was entertaining.  

Needless to say, I was devastated.  This boy was the first person I'd encountered who had made me feel like I might be worth something.  I didn't understand the sickness of the relationship or how miserable it was.  I didn't see the level of control or manipulation, and I didn't care about the abuse (as long as enduring it meant he would keep loving me).  All I saw was that the person I loved had decided that he didn't love me anymore.  And I fucking lost it.

For a while, I laid in bed and cried.  I listened to sad music, watched cheesy romance movies and did all the stereotypical, halfway normal things you do when you're 17 and mourning a relationship.

Then, one day, a friend of mine invited me out.  He said I had to get out of bed and move on with my life.  So, I did.  

I'd drank before, although not often and not much.  If anything, I'd put on a bit of a buzz, but it's safe to say that until that night, I'd only been drunk maybe once.  

When I arrived at the party, I remember feeling really out of place and awkward.  There were a few girls my age there.  I knew a couple of them, but they were saddled up close to a couple men that I didn't know, so I pretty much went straight for the booze.  

I remember that it was cheap vodka, and I liked the way that it burned.  I drank straight from the bottle, dancing, losing my inhibitions, talking to men much, much older than me.....  and then things got foggy.  From then on it's only images---still frames.  I remember crying to one of the older men about how my boyfriend had dumped me.  I remember him holding my hand and taking me somewhere.  I remember vomiting all over a strange bathroom and waking up in clothes that weren't mine.

I know what happened that night, but I have no memory of it.  I don't think I want to, honestly.

After that, I was a goner.  I'd discovered a magical elixir that made all of my problems magically disappear.  In addition to taking away my feelings, I also found a way to lubricate social situations and ease my anxiety.  I found a way to make myself "fun".  After an adolescence spent listening my friends complain that I only ever wanted to talk about feelings, I'd discovered the secret to being life of the party!

And that's where it began for me, that's how I found my first real love.

What do I do?

I often get discouraged by my own depression.  I suppose that doesn't make sense, but I don't know how else to articulate it.  I mean, depression is kind of like being discouraged all the time.....  What I'm trying to say is that I hate taking my depression seriously.  I tend to be incredibly hard on myself, and instead of wallowing for a minute, I'm always pushing.

When I feel tears start to form, I think to myself, "Okay...you have five minutes to feel panicked and depressed, then you need to get your shit together and figure this out."  Sometimes I even set a timer.

It's just that, I know what the bottom looks like and I have every intention of avoiding it for the rest of my life.

When I went to the mental hospital seven years ago, I was diagnosed with a myriad of things.  Panic disorder, anxiety, agoraphobia....you name it.   My Axis 1 diagnosis was listed as Major Depressive Disorder (you can read about it here).  It's a different kind of depression that what you most generally hear about and it's categorized by recurring periods of depression.  When I was in the loony bin, I was told that without proper medication, I would almost certainly find myself experiencing these cycles for the rest of my life.

I tried the pharmaceutical approach for a long time but it was so hit and miss.  When one medication made my feelings worse and my thoughts darker, they would change the dosage or change the medicines all together.  They told me it was all a matter of trial and error--that by process of elimination they would eventually find one that worked for me.  Any pill that was able to lift my mood left me feeling bogged down by the side-effects.  Welbutrin would stop me from sleeping, so they had to prescribe trazodone.  Trazodone gave me crippling panic attacks, so they had to prescribe ativan.  Ativan left me feeling zonked and it made me gain weight, so they wanted to prescribe a diet drug.....

After a while, it got out of control.  Not only did the medicines fail to improve my mood, but they left me unable to take pleasure in anything.  Food didn't taste good, I was unable to have an orgasm, I was gaining weight despite the fact that I had no appetite, I suffered chronic headaches, I was distracted and unable to focus....  Eventually I gave up on the whole thing.  I stopped going to my appointments and I stopped taking my medications.  (I certainly don't recommend this!!!!)  I started reading philosophy and forcing myself to get out of my comfort zone--out of my shell.

That's when things started to change for me.

Now that I am experiencing a similar (though very different) kind of a depression creeping up inside of me, I am reminded of all those small changes I made to my life.

When I first began making changes, one of the things that I did when I found myself in a situation that caused me to react with sadness or discouragement, I'd ask myself, "What is my responsibility here?"  And then I'd just kind of follow the bread-crumb trail and reverse-engineer a solution.

Grief is such a different kind of sadness.....  It's not just about removing yourself from isolation and finding pleasure in small things (although that is a part of it),

What is my responsibility in terms of dealing with grief?  Beyond taking care of myself and allowing myself to mourn and be sad, I am at a loss.

And, to be honest, I really suck at allowing myself to feel negative emotions.  I find it indulgent.  My ego kicks in and a little voice in the back of my head starts saying things like, "Suck it up," "get over it," "get your shit together, there's no time for this."

I don't know why my self-talk is so harsh....  I'd never speak to someone I loved that way, yet...here I am, berating myself for feeling emotions that, I think, are pretty fucking valid.

It's kind of ridiculous when I think critically about it, but I don't know how to proceed from here.