Books, Challenges, and Fears

Being that I'm having an awful time attempting to focus on the book I'm half-heartedly reading, I thought it might be a good time to get some blogging out of my system. This break, I've been trying to read as much as possible, since the crux of my reading material during my semesters revolves around class work. I'm on my third book in the last two weeks, all of them by Nora Roberts. It's not exactly brain food, but I like to read simple, quick books when I'm on break. I enjoy reading for pleasure, but it's really not possible while I'm trying to read for assignments as well. (It might have been more possible for me last semester, but that's got more to do with the classes I ended up dropping, really.)

This semester is going to be a bit of a change for me. I might actually have more time to read because I'll be doing precious little partying, which will be a very big changed compared to last semester. (While other people are grinding drunkenly, I'll be laying on my uncomfortable twin bed and getting closer to Dickens, Bronte [any of the Bronte sisters, really], or some other fascinating author.) So far, I'm sticking very well to sobriety. I have two weeks and two days sober, which I'm pleased about. New Year's Eve might be a bit of a challenge, but I'm thinking about staying home, despite some very tempting party invitations. It might be in my best interest to spend New Year's Eve with some old movies, books, and tea. In fact, that's what I'm very much prepared to do.

Anyways, this next semester will be a challenge for some very personal reasons. One, I'm very new to this sobriety idea, and I'll be very tempted to stray from it. Two, one of my very close friends is struggling with an eating disorder. While I want to beat her about the head and neck for not seeking the help that she very well knows that she needs, I also desperately want to help her find happiness and health. I've been thinking about her all break, worrying over what she's going through on her own right now. I also know that it will be harder for me to maintain my sobriety and composure in the presence of people who haven't got all their control themselves. Dorms, young people (and their natural tendency to drink), and friends with their own struggles could be the perfect storm of pressure that's enough to set me back.

I'm worried. I'm worried that I won't be able to help my friend, and she'll make herself more ill. I'm worried that the dorms will be too much for me to handle and that I might have to move back home or find a new place to live. I'm worried about slipping. I'm worried that people will think of me differently when I'm sober and might like me less--which is entirely conceivable, but not as plausible as one might think. I'm actually more sensitive to other people when I'm sober; when I'm drunk, I'll say whatever comes to my head, regardless of whether it might hurt feelings or spill secrets. There are also more worries on my mind, but it would be impossible to reveal them here without revealing the identity of the friend who has trusted me with her secrets, which would be entirely unfair to her. The point of the whole thing, really, is that there are a lot of fears for me to face this Spring.

Basically, it's time for me to gird my loins. Time to put on the big girl panties and learn how to deal. I'm not thrilled at the prospects ahead of me, but I've faced tougher times than this in my life. I know I can make it through. I might just need some periodic moments to bitch about how afraid I am of failure. But then, I'm a perfectionist. Sometimes, I need to check and make sure that my standards are within normal parameters and not Jessica parameters. Is there some unit of measure for these things? Can someone just get me a guidebook for this life or something? Please?

Let's Be Sobering

Lately, I've been struggling with some issues. I think maybe it's time to hold myself accountable for them. It seems that I have a problem: I cannot say no when it comes to alcohol. I need to quit drinking. Let me explain.

Let's start from the beginning. I've been drinking since I was probably 15 years old, which means that I have a solid decade of drinking under my belt. Only four of those years have been legal for me. I'd love to say that my sordid affair with alcohol ends there, but it does not. I've made terrible choices under the influence. I've said terrible things to friends, thrown myself at people (male and female alike), driven drunk (I can't even say enough how lucky I am that I've never had a DUI or worse). There are large chunks of evenings that I just don't remember, and this hasn't happened once or twice. Lately, it's happened every time I've started to drink. Once I start, I don't stop. Because of alcohol, I've lied and stolen. Alcohol has made me indifferent to the destructive tendencies of my friends, and I'm ashamed to say that I've stood by drinking when sober me would never have allowed certain behaviors around me to prevail. I will tell myself that I need to stay sober for a night, and then, I drink anyways.

I'd been thinking about committing to sobriety a lot lately. What was my wake up call this week, you ask? A friend brought over some Jim Beam--a brand and type of alcohol that I cannot stand--and some of it spilled when we put it in the fridge. It spilled on my fingers, and smelling it on my hands made me want to drink it. I actually salivated. To tell the truth, I did drink later that night, though it was not the Jim Beam. But the fact that an alcohol that I previously found more or less abhorrent seemed attractive to me simply because it was alcohol gave me pause. I didn't realize how often I crave alcohol until I thought about it. When something's happening, I want to drink--good or bad. When nothing's happening, I want to drink. When I'm angry or upset, I want to drink. When I'm happy, I'm always down to drink.

To be perfectly candid, it scares the hell out of me. Seeing the addiction on both sides of my family has shown me what I'm possibly headed for. More than that, I'm tired of being that girl that has to apologize for everything. Sorry I threw myself at you. Sorry I broke that. Sorry I said fuck your face. Sorry I told everyone your business. Sorry I flashed your whole party my boobs. These are not normal behaviors! They're not!

As of now, I'm two days sober, but I'm so afraid to fail. I've thought about AA or something, but I feel like I'd be laughed out of those places. I've never gotten a DUI. I've never lost anything because of my idiocy related to alcohol. I just can't keep living with myself when I'm living like this. I'm probably going to speak to someone at our college's counseling center in the next few weeks. For now, I'm just trying to gain enough footing here to be able to say that I can say no.

Amusingly, I had a dream that I was trying to learn how to be sober, and I asked Josh Ramsay, my Marianas Trench love, what it takes to be sober. He answered me honestly, and gave me some Yoda-like personal advice. Then, I dreamed that he hung out with me while other people drank around us and tried to help me to resist. I woke up feeling like a failure. I'll be seeing Marianas Trench live in February, but I don't think I'll be asking Josh Ramsay for advice on sober living. It might be weird.

I don't really even want anyone to know that I'm struggling with these things. I've always told myself that I'm stronger than this. There's a little bit of a shame to not being able to control myself and my impulses. I definitely don't want my family to know. I feel like this would be much easier if I never told anyone. Sadly, I know that that can never be. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was going to put it off. I need some inner-strength first.

The weirdest part of my sober dream was that I woke up hungry. How is that fair? My subconscious wants me to make good choices, but my body prefaces this by making me hungry. I'd really love it if I didn't gain a bunch of weight while trying to forge a healthier lifestyle. I'm already fat enough, thank you, Universe. Also, if we talk (face to face), let's never speak of this. At least, not until I'm comfortable with where I'm at. Give me that at least.

Feeling That Familiar Burn

I'm not sure if it's being in this house again, but I'm feeling that familiar manic burn again. It's that pressing need, the need to do something, to get up and get gone, change my entire life into something else. It's the presence in my stomach that screams that I need to do something--anything--to make it shut up. It's the compulsion to destroy something to make sure that I'm alone again because that just makes things easier.

I guess I fooled myself into thinking that this feeling would change once I started school. I thought perhaps I'd get busy, and my life would just fall into place. That burning feeling prompting me to get off my ass and do something would be shut up by the fact that I was off my ass and doing something. It turns out that I may have been wrong. Of course, this means that my inner panic level is rising rapidly, like the water when the tide is high.

I'm trying to be more and more honest with myself. I've been working pretty hard at trying to give myself time to be truthful with myself, time to look in the mirror and decide what my opinion is of what I see. Yet, it feels like even my harshest truths--about myself, about others, about what I want or need or what I'll do--are lies. My best faces are exercises in fabulous manipulation. More and more, I just seem to feel like a huge screw-up. This is not the woman that I hoped to be. This is not what I wanted for myself. All my attempts to cure it, all my attempted triage to fix the problem doesn't seem to be helping at all.

I'm a little bit afraid. What if this feeling never goes away? What if I always feel like there's something else that I'm supposed to be doing? What if I always have that burning? What if I have to be on meds again? What if the panic attacks come back?

If I'm being truly honest with myself, I probably should be on meds again--nothing too serious, just a mood stabilizer, something to take the edge off the panic. At the very least, it might help to assuage some of the general freaking out I'm doing. I always hated being on medication, though. It makes me feel like I'm depending on everything else to fix me. But then, am I not the girl that keeps saying that I just want someone to hand me the answers, to give me a life solution? Maybe I do depend on everything else to fix me.

The one constant in my life is that I'm really amazing at messing things up. I'm also really good at allowing people to think that I've got it all together, that I'm really fine. Faking it is a specialty of mine. Will I ever be real? Will I ever be really, truly honest? Am I even capable of that? How do I find my place in the world? How do I stop breaking everything?

I used to have this same feeling in high school. It was always the most terrible thing, keeping me awake at night, keeping me full of fear. What an interesting irony when juxtaposed against my fearless, ballsy image! In high school, I just had to wait it out. I had to let it pass, find myself. The older I get, the further from my self I seem to be and the harder it gets for me to get back there. I've been down in here before. I need to fight my way out again. I need alone time. I need to start at square one. I need to keep a journal, to push myself a little further than before. I need to get it right this time.

I just need to breathe. Step one is just learning how to breathe again.

Dental Work

The dental appointment I had went fairly well. First, I should explain that I'm terrified of the dentist. I once had a dentist when I was a child who was incredibly mean to me. I bit him, and it was all downhill from there. Needless to say, an experience like that can change a kid's life. Because of that horrible guy (I even remember his name, though it's probably not a good idea to include it), I've always had a hatred of dental offices.

Then, as soon as I start to get comfortable with them again as a teenager, I get the idiot dental assistant who screwed up one of my teeth during a routine cleaning. As a result of being a twin, I have pocked enamel on my teeth, meaning the surface of my teeth is not smooth, but rather litter with tiny little pockets. Apparently, this idiot dental assistant thought that they were the result of excess plaque or something because she tried to scrape them off. Literally, she tried scraping the pocks out of one of my teeth. This wouldn't be so bad if she hadn't dug a gouge into one of my two front teeth. The gouge is actually still visible today.

This most recent appointment was just to get a couple of cavities filled. It went pretty smoothly, actually. I was doing okay because of the chatter of the dentist and the dental assistant. We turned on the TV to CNN so I'd have something else to focus on to ease my tension, and the doctor and assistant were talking about the news of the day: Lindsay Lohan's court appearance, the BP oil spill, the finale of Lost, the season finale of House, etc.

I was doing really well until I saw the flecks of blood on the dentist's rubber gloves. Talk about freaking me out! I kept my cool. I managed to keep it together and not freak out too bad. My breathing got faster, my eyes got wider, I grimaced a lot more, but I didn't lose it. I'm pretty proud of the way I handled myself. The blood came from my gums--the cavities being filled were at the meeting points of two teeth. Because of their location, the dentist had to floss in between them with plastic stripping in a certain way and it made me bleed. The gums are still really irritated right there and sore, but it looks better now.

On the downside, I'm running a low-grade fever right now, and my back is aching like no other. I don't know if those things are in any way related, but it's making me miserable. I can't find a comfortable position to save my soul. My body keeps alternating between hot and miserably uncomfortable to cold sweats. The good thing is that it's coming down. My temperature is starting to normalize--leave it to the nursing student to monitor the change in temperature. I did sleep a little bit, but I woke up as a result of some loud video-game killing happening at the foot of my bed. After that, I simply couldn't seem to get back to sleep.

Hopefully, after some decent rest, I'll be feeling much better.