the Rollercoaster of Feelings in Sobriety
So the joy of being sober kinda came and then went away again pretty quickly. People said it gets easier. Why the hell do I feel so low? To be fair to ‘People’, they did also say that it wasn’t going to be an easy ride and that my emotions would be pretty eratic after I stopped drinking but I honestly didn’t realise to what extreme they could possibly reach. Now I’ve fallen off this supposedly pink cloud that the short term benefits of not drinking bring; I get it! I just didn’t know it would be this bloody turbulent.
I don’t really know what it is to feel ‘normal’ anymore, not that I ever did or would ever want to but it’s a big either/or these days. There’s just no middle ground which is what I used to use drinking for. If I felt too much, I would drink and if I wanted to feel more, I would also drink. It was meant to be so that I could feel more balanced and in control. Lol whoops. Now that I don’t have drink (which I am hugely grateful for) to ‘balance’ my emotions, I have had to learn to be OK with either feeling and overthinking absolutely everything to the point I may burst or feel nothing at all and just accept that my brain and body have no desire to feel anything whatsoever. It’s the worst. I don’t like it and I want to get off this rollercoaster of emotion. NOW!!! (starts crying hysterically)
But excuse me please kind sir how the fuck do I get off this fucking rollercoaster? Probably not by swearing (sorry dad). It’s the constant pressure I put on myself to feel a certain way that doesn’t exactly help the situation. It only exacerbates it. I’m finally realising that I’m going to have to work on myself and boundaries before my sobriety can become joyful. Before I can experience true happiness. At the moment, all I do is feel sorry for myself and get angry. I hardly show any of it outwardly but it’s all deep in there ready to feed the passive agressiveness that’s waiting for it’s moment. It’s like a stroppy toddler stomping around inside me and then all of a sudden it’s gone. Nothing. Not a trace of the emotion once there. Not a trace of anything. My brain is scrambling to find just a little something to feel but nothing. A complete brain fog. So I just exist for a couple of days, not really being able to do anything. I fall into a hole of nothing and I have absolutely no idea or energy to get out of it.
I’ve never had to sit with my feelings before so I never realised how horrific it would be. I’ve never had to face my mental illness without self-medicating. It stresses me out that I now have to live a life of coping with feelings in a healthy way, which is why I’ve still held on to smoking, eating and sleeping my feelings away. I’ve dealt with things opening back up again by hiding away and just pretending it’s not happening which is making it 10x worse. I understand it’s OK to not feel OK, but I think I’ve dug myself a bit of an emotional hole that I refuse to climb out because I don’t have to face my fears this way. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a very comfortable hole but one that’s not going to keep me moving forward and therefore maybe it’s best I do get back on the rollercoaster and feel the true emotions of what life brings. To get back on even if it’s scares the shitting day light out of me because learning to cope with these feelings is the only way it will get better.
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