broken

thirteen years of yoga.
four years of hard core spiritual buddhist work.
1207 days of clean time.

things I gained... equanimity, community, peace, joy, gratitude... broken ... all so quickly.  I blame no one but me.  every choice for every situation I put myself in lead me to this moment.

my physical health is suffering greatly, and I know this is related to the emotional pain.  I'm not taking good care of me.  over the past week, I've developed kidney stones.  this isn't something new.  the pain is so severe that the best way to explain it, "I'd rather give birth to 5 10lb babies again and again than pass another kidney stone in my lifetime."

the medicine... pain killers and some other medications.  I have not taken them as prescribed, instead, I only took them if the pain was acute to avoid abusing the meditations.  yesterday, I had to take more than I wanted to, and in tandem with the other medication, my head went crazy.  I lost my sober clear mind to feeling as though I couldn't feel anything physically.  my mental capacity is another story.  it was like being really fucked up without being high.  in a way, the experience was very reminiscent of coming down off of a weekend long coke binge.  big depression, huge crash.

for a good chunk of time, whirling in my physical, emotional and drug induced agony, I convinced myself that I had broken my sobriety.  that my surrender to say that I needed pain medication was a sign of weakness and relapse. 

I cried and sobbed, everything was just awful.  and then something came that I didn't expect.  as I felt as though I had ended my 1207 days of clean time in a whirlwind of discomfort.... an unexpected sigh of relief came.  sigh, finally, it is over.  I can be normal now.

I wanted to talk about it, but the emotions were so extensive, I didn't know how.  relief came with the idea that I had made it this far and that I could stop working so hard and feeling so much day after day.  I was off the hook.  I could smoke a bowl and drink a glass of wine like everyone else.  for 26 years I didn't have a clue what emotions were.  up until I got clean, I assumed I might actually be one of those sociopaths, because I was so passionately cool and ambivelent about things people seemed to think I needed to react differently towards.  men considered me cold, Ice Queen was a nick name I relished. 

last night, after leaving the office, walking down the street, sunglasses on, playing my iPod, sucking in Lafayette where I have walked countless times at countless hours for countless reasons, moving slowly towards the subway ..... the rush came, I was overcome by the realization that it was official, I had been anhilated by life and fully broken.

I know my experience was exacerbated by a combination of sort of involuntary ingestion of medicine I took to help me get past excrutiating physical pain. 

in the process of spiraling to the ultimate emotional low, I came to some strong realizations.  it has occurred to me that in the path of poor choices I have been making... I have morphed into someone else.  for the first time in my life, I stopped being strong and let go of all my armor.   I introduced a vulnerable and honest me to another human being, and in a short time I got very hurt.  the scary thing is, the person I was turning into was someone I do not like.  I loathed watching myself become attached to impossible outcomes and hopeful for a life that was never going to be.  My self-control and self respect disintegrated around me, and I compromised myself with the hopes that I could trust someone, and failed miserably at being the true Elissa Jane.

it is sad that it took days of excruciating physical pain combined with the heinous effects of Vicodin consumption to realize that the only way to stop hating myself was to end a relationship I thought would never end.

my heart breaks... and breaks... and breaks.  but in reality, the only way I can get myself back is to stay as far away from the person for whom I was so willing to change and change and change.

I tried desperately to please and impress this other person so that I could be appealing to the needs of someone else.  every intention I had was to get attention, which I was losing with each and ever moment I was turning into this repugnant needy girl.  in the end, I only continued to torture myself more and more to the point that I do not recognize me anymore.  where did I go?  what happened to the cool, independent, balanced, serene me I worked so hard to become over such a long diligent period of time?  it was almost instantaneous that I crumbled over a feeling of daily rejection and perpetual heartbreak for what was not going to happen.


thirteen years of yoga.
four years of hard core spiritual buddhist work.
1207 days of clean time. 

and I'm in worse shape than I ever was.  where did I go wrong?  I can answer that, it just seems like a good moment to post the rhetorical obvious.  in the past few months, I've cried more than I did when my dog died.  I mourned more loss than when my marriage ended.  how did I come to believe so strongly that I had found 'the one' only to discover that I was so incredibly wrong?

technically, according to my friends and support network, I'm still sober.  my sobriety has not yet been compromised.  while I did get fucked up from drugs, it was not the kind of use that will end my day count. 

tonight I sat in the room where I normally facilitate my weekly dharma punx group, and announced that it is time for me to resign.  if I am giving up on myself, how can I continue to be in service to anyone else?

when I died a year ago, I had one regret, that I never had the chance to fall in love before the end.  well, I almost fully fell, wrongly, deeply, wrongly and now I cannot see... with the big life I have ahead, how I'll ever be able to be open hearted with anyone ever again.   visceral connections for aliens like me are almost impossible to come by.  I suppose I should be grateful that in this ocean of existence a few of the drops of time included little moments where I felt a 'connection', no matter how slight and immeasurable, at least I know that maybe it is possible.  perhaps my next lifetime. oh look, I think I just expelled a hint of gratitude.  maybe there's hope for me after all.  I don't think I have another 42 years in me to wait for the next one.  sigh.