So, I was given an interesting and frightening assignment: I am to look at one of my own blogs and comment on it. Right off the bat I’m feeling scared and anxious because....what if I prove that I haven’t learned anything? What if I say the same things that I’m saying now? What if I’m the same person then compared to now? Well, let’s start analyzing:
Saturday was such an awesome day! Went to the zoo with my friends and their daughter, then went to the shore and boardwalk and got on a couple rides. Sooooooo awesome!— Ok, so, this is me showing that I had a support network, and quite frankly, a damn good one. I did so many things with them, created so many positive memories. Here’s the thing though, if your an addict and it’s a problem, when given the chance to live in a new environment...you take it! This person, a few years later, accused me of taking the friendship away...I knew she was wrong because when you live with an alcoholic and the alcoholic starts telling me “they’re brainwashing you” and I’m starting to go to meetings and get what it’s about, I knew I did the right thing.
Ok, well, here's why I'm back on SG again. So that I can talk to myself. hahaha...seriously, I've had a vision of this blog o'mine for a while now and I'm going to use it as a therapeutic device since I"m too lazy to actually write down on paper my thoughts of the day. ——uh-huh....interesting I would say something like that because that’s exactly what this is supposed to be
So, let me take you the reader on a lil trip back to April 28, 2010. My dad had just left a week ago after staying with me or torturing me for six months. You see, back on OCT of 2009 I had checked myself into a behavioral health center because I was thinking of committing suicide. I was in there two weeks. Then my dad came here, helped me catch up on some bills, Christmas was GREAT! and then it all went down hill. My name is #### and I am a compulsive gambler. Yep, I love the Mr. Cashman machine...I'm a sucker for it actually, because you never know when it will bless you with it's presence. The thing is, I've been blowing my entire check on this machine for well over a year now. It's basically a cycle, I'll blow my check, catch up on the essentials, and then do it again. Did I also tell you that I'm a very naive/gullable person? I say that because I don't know my own limits. I started gambling at casinos when my mother took me down to AC when I was 19. It was summer, I was in college and had taken a trip up to visit my mother and one day we took the bus down to Atlantic City. We did the same thing the next summer and I won my first jackpot! It was for $600 and I used it to pay for car insurance and who knows what else. I guess now is a good time to also mention that I'm a compulsive person, yea money burns a hole in my pocket/head regardless of addiction. I tell you what, if casinos didn't even exist, I'd be addicted to something else. When my mother left for Greece in 2002, it was me and my stepdad. I had gotten a job a few months back, and well, we would both go down to AC every Friday or Saturday night. I didn't have that much of a life or friends back then. No social skills to speak of, just work, pay my student loan, and gambling. I never thought I'd go to AC on any other day than a weekend, but I took my first trip on a Wednesday back in 2004, I was living with roomates by then and my stepdad and mother were in Greece. I don't recall what happened, but I do know that because I was living with roomates, I didn't blow any more than I could afford. I paid my share of the bills on time all the time. So that relationship ended on a sour note about a year later, and I got a one bedroom apartment and was on my own. Ahhh, the freedom. It's just that I didn't take advantage of it. Don't we all say "I wish that I knew what I know now?" I also got my first credit card. I didn't know much about credit cards and in fact, I didn't even think I could get approved. Needless to say, now I have thirteen of them, and haven't paid any for at least one year. Soooo, back to April 28th 2010. I was itchin to go play my favorite slot machine. However, I did a self exclusion from AC effective for one year back in DEC so I couldn't go there. The PA casinos are 20 mins away from me, but I banned myself for life from those places. I've banned myself from two DE casinos. There was one left in DE. I drove three fucking hours to go to this place, I played there for about eight hours, and left with three dollars in my pocket. When I got home, I called out of work, and then popped whatever pill I could find in my cabinets. I had some anti-depressants prescribed to me from last OCT that I had stopped taking because I thought I was better, I had some digestive pills, sleeping pills. I must have ingested about fourty pills. I laid down so that I could sleep. It was about nine in the morning when my eyes closed, and 7:11 Friday morning when my eyes awoke. I was stunned, so stunned that my heart was racing and I called 9-11, then the ambulance came along with police and took me to the hospital. I was in there for four days. My oxygen levels were so low that I honestly have no recollection of what happened, who I spoke with, or what and I also had fluid in my lungs.
It still feels like yesterday and I'm still scared by it. I have found a new limit, that now I don't think about killing myself, I can actually attepmt to do it. Ok, this is getting kinda hard right now. I'm hungry and got to go. will post more later—-ok, so, this all has to do with knowledge of self. What was my knowledge of self then and what is it now? Is it improved?
The answer to these questions is yes...however, by reading this blog from ten years ago, it looks like I have some knowledge which I didn’t think I had. This worries me because I know what happened next. I dunno, maybe I knew what this knowledge of limits was but didn’t actually grasp what it was that I was supposed to understand..?..here’s the thing though, and why I believe that my knowledge of self is vastly better: all this was before I knew about sexual abuse...you see, here’s something that I think is fucking awesome that I got going for me: when I found out that I was abused, it filled a gap in my head about my past. The anxiety, depression, low self esteem now all made sense...here’s another thing that I can proudly say, which is, now I have no excuses, all. Have are bad habits which I know, I feel can be changed..
Something else I am happy about....I don’t care if some guy forced me to suck him off when I was five...fucking Christ, I’m 42! All the teasing and rejection I have suffered in life is meaningless now...ths doesn’t mean I have solved my problems, but I feel a lot more confident n myself now and what it is I want to do for my future. I’m more concerned about helping a student pass their English exam, than I am about getting rejected by some girl and I think that’s the whole purpose of therapy. I feel like I have found something of a calling and I’m going with it.
just a couple other observations, I’m kinda stunned at how many blogs I did..I mean there are a lot more than I expected. Also, I seriously hope that there will be a lot ,ore to come out if this...with this particular blog, I don’t feel that a whole lot was learned, but also, I’m. Kinda forcing myself to do this, so maybe my head is up my ass right now and I just can’t see straight l