Ok so I’m not going to go deep into what happened, I think I mentioned enough in the last post. But I think it’s important to say that I felt like crap. Like super, duper, crazy felt like crap. That lasted for a grand total of 4 weeks because I just kept beating myself up (and I still do occasionally), but I’ve been working on moving past it.
But when I say I was beating myself up, I really went into a deep fugue. I was already depressed. I had been already really upset about my brother, and now here I was, realizing that my drinking had gotten out of control. So I kept seeing everything I did wrong, and I kept hammering. I kept hitting and hitting and hitting my emotions, my concerns, and it was affecting my friends and family. Now here’s something I don’t think people realize. I have serious self esteem issues. I have never EVER been a popular person. I have always felt like the odd person out in every single group of people I’ve been in. I make up for it in one way, I joke. I joke like there is no tomorrow because I feel I have to compensate for the lack of what I bring to the group. I’ve gotten over it with some of my friends, but not all. With some friends I feel comfortable, but there have always been those friends that I joke because I may not be sure what they think. And then I think what if they are criticizing me, what if they are wondering why I’m even here? They didn’t laugh at what I said? maybe I’m not so funny after all.
With all the depression feelings, my emotions were already out of whack, then I could barely joke, my self esteem took a serious hit. At work people didn’t notice, but everyone else? Oh yeah. I was different. I snapped more often, and just was more grumpy all the time. And this has definitely been very difficult to get past because I just didn’t know how to act now. I was the one hurting, and hurting others. I normally try to be the opposite and help everyone. I try to push myself to be the person people can rely on. But now, here I was depressed, in a hole, and sinking faster than a dropped anchor.
It took a monumental effort of will, some major apologies, and the ability to own up to my mistakes that has moved me forward. I won’t bullshit and say it magically got better because it didn’t. It was hard work. It was realizing that I had made some major mistakes and needed to figure out how to fix not just the mistakes but move forward with those fixes. I haven’t completely fixed everything, but I’m working on it.