Reality Bites

I promised myself I would never tell this story until my kids were grown and had no real need for me anymore. . . until the day when I became a grandmother and my secrets could be kept behind doors not as easily accessible. But I forgot there were times in life when a person is alone with herself; when there is no hiding from what is real and what you have been hiding behind for all those years. I am in such a place now a place where my children have gone to college and my dog has died and I spend my nights staring at rerun after rerun of Law & Order hopelessly mired in my own muck. It is not as impossible a place as I believed it would be. You can be content with little. You can make do with night after night after week after month when no one hugs you, when your skin craves touch and cringes from it at the same time. I know. The existence I so feared is now the one I live within daily and I am living proof you can live to tell about it.

I live with several medical conditions ones I can't hide from. They have literally taken possession of my life, hijacked it, taken it completely off course and left me with remnants of what I thought life looked like. I breathe at about 30 50% of normal but have no desire to complain life could be so much worse. The constant pain of Fibromyalgia and the breathing issues put me on Disability, but I can be of service by working part-time. Nevertheless, the biggest and baddest of these health issues would be a whopper of an addictive personality. If I could get addicted to Cheese-whiz, I would, no kidding. The worst years of my life have been spent in the depths of addiction in my late teens and early twenties it was alcohol; my forties brought with them an addiction to prescription pills

It wasn't like I didn't try to live a clean life. I had twenty years of sobriety before pain resulting from Fibromyalgia led me to believe my doctor that the only answer was prescription pills. After five years of literal hell in the depths of despair and addiction, I nearly died and was given a second chance. I knew I was in trouble but couldn't get the help I needed. No rehabilitation facility or hospital program wanted to take me I was too big a medical risk. When my system ultimately collapsed, I had a chance to get the help I needed. I have remained sober since . . . not always the easiest of tasks. Dulling the pain, checking out into numbness, fading to black, still have their lures.

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