Jeans.

Today was the first day in a long time that I have put on jeans, and not wanted to die. 

When I first bought these new jeans I was so happy because they fit me so well. They are made for curvy girls. They fit in all the right places, and the rise is high enough to hold everything in.

I was so happy, until I gained a few pounds. Because suddenly these brand new jeans that I was raving about fitting my body, were doing the exact opposite. I felt like they were no longer high rise. I had to undo them just to sit in my car and drive. Heaven forbid that I eat while wearing them. I was so disgusted and upset by the way clothes felt on my body. That’s around the last time I felt like cutting the fat bits off my stomach. Literally taking an exacto knife and cutting it off.

I wasn’t just uncomfortable about my body in my mind. The discomfort I felt in my own skin was destroying me from the inside out. I wasn’t eating meals because I didn’t think I could control myself. Then when I was eating meals I was feeling guilty. My body was going into fat storing mode and I felt like I couldn’t do anything about it. Then I would be upset and I would stress eat.

Then I decided to write about it. Suddenly the solution came in so clear to me.

Change.

And so I did. The night of the 17th of May I decided to change. On the morning of the 18th I started the process. It’s only been 17 days and I have lost 7 lbs. I am not starving myself. I’m eating more than I was before. But smaller portions. And no garbage food. I feel energetic, without being manic. I feel alive.

So this morning it was a rainy day. I was hesitant about even trying on the jeans. I think for about the last 3 weeks I’ve been asking my boyfriend almost everyday if he thinks it’s shorts weather yet. It’s not because I want to show off my smokin’ legs, because I don’t have smokin’ legs. It’s because I bought 4 identical pairs of high waisted shorts, in different patterns from Walmart last year. When I put these shorts on I feel like I don’t have to worry about if they will still fit if I eat something. I don’t feel cut in half. I can pull them up past my bellybutton. I can let my stomach hang out. They make me feel free.

But back to the jeans. So today I pulled them out of my dresser. As I put them on each leg I said to myself, well let’s try this again. Because it was only about a week and a half ago that I tried them on and I almost cried.

Today was different though. They finally fit me. There is room around the waist that wasn’t there before. I didn’t feel like I was being cut in half when I sat down in my car. I ate with them on. I didn’t want to die.

Until it got hot outside and I had to come home and change into a dress. But I didn’t want to even take them off. I tried to tell my brain to shut up and suffer through sweating to death.

Because finally, I felt comfortable in my own skin.

When I was a teenager.

Deep down I knew right and wrong. But I had a faulty wire in my brain that caused me to do things that I would later regret. I had absolutely no impulse control.

On time when I was about 15 or 16 I went into my parents room to look for money. I wanted to buy some weed. So as I was looking through my dad’s work jeans, I came across some money. It was a hundred dollar bill. I took it and the thought in my mind was that they wouldn’t know who it was. I had two brothers that were around my age. I would stand my ground and be adamant it wasn’t me. They would line us up and all or none of us would be punished. 

So with the money I bought some candy, and some weed. I remember being at the back of the school and holding onto the rest of my money and wanting to set it on fire. I wanted to return the change to my dad’s jeans pocket but then he would surely know that someone had stolen it. Especially returning being in different denominations and short about 15 dollars.
I felt guilt and shame, but at the same time I felt a rush. This was a time in my life where stealing things really made me feel alive. I didn’t think I could get caught, because I was that good. I also had an attitude where I just didn’t give a fuck.

There was no recourse from me stealing the money. I think that’s what implanted in my brain that my parents were just so busy that they couldn’t keep track of anything. Later on I would go on to steal prescription medications from my parents room when they were at work. I thought I was invicible. I was not, and soon enough this lead to them putting a lock on their door. I found a way around that by sitting on the stairs, or waiting at my bedroom door. I would wait for my mom to go to the bathroom and I would sneak in to steal the pills in under a minute. This only worked when she had migraines, which for most of my growing up was almost everyday. This method also meant that I would sometimes be sitting and waiting for hours.

I had broken their trust, and they had no idea that it was me. I had broken the trust for the entire household.

I lived with this little secret up until a few months ago. I was at work and I decided it was time to tell my dad. So I called him on his cell, and I started to explain to him that when I was 15 or 16 I found a hundred dollar bill in his work jeans pocket. He stopped me right there. He said he has thought about what happened to that money all these years since it had happened. He had done a cash job and mom freaked out on him after because he had no explanation as to what happened to this substantial amount of money. He just thought he lost it.

I couldn’t believe that was something that had stuck with him and bothered him all these years, until I stopped to think about it. Or course it affected my parents. They had 4 children and a hundred dollars was alot back then. That was more than a full grocery cart worth of food. And what if that hundred dollars was what broke the camels back?

I told my dad that I would work towards paying him back, and he told me not to worry about it. That is was enough for him to finally know the truth.

These are the things that I get to experience in my sobriety. Telling the truth about the past. Revealing things that I had covered up so perfectly. These are the things that give me freedom.

New habits.

I thought I had no willpower over my eating habits. Clearly that was just a bullshit excuse. Just like when I said I couldn’t quit doing drugs or drinking. I kept saying that the success rate was bullshit. That nobody ever really recovered. Well I know that I have battled stronger addictions than food. 

I am overcoming the awful habits I have been hanging onto. I decide what goes into my body. Nobody else eating garbage around me should have any influence on that. It’s the same for alcohol. Just because my parents are having a glass of wine with dinner, doesn’t mean that I need to.

So I have lost 4 lbs in less than 2 weeks. I have been eating, quite often. I am not starving myself by any means. I even went away on a little mini vacation and ate 4 meals at restaurants and everything I ate I felt happy about the choice I made! I wanted so badly to eat a French Fry, but once I eat one I am literally done.

The thing that is different this time is that I am not counting calories. I am no longer using mayo on everything. If there needs to be sauce, use half. Nothing deep fried. No more cookies. No more chips. No more candy. No chocolate bars. No more fortune cookies at work. No more chow mein. No more garbage that I have no idea how its made.

My boyfriend and I went on a roadtrip to visit his daughter. Just over 3 hours there Saturday morning then 3 hours back yesterday afternoon. I drank water. Lots and lots of water. Normally on a road trip you bring a whole bunch of junk. I didn’t feel the need to.

We even went to the movie theatre with his daughter, and they bought candy and popcorn and pop. I bought some snacks at Walmart before and which consisted of sugar peas, bananas, jerky and water. I had one small sip of his pop, but nothing else. 

One thing I noticed when I was having soup yesterday is I could barely finished half the bowl. My stomach is finally going back to its normal size. I was overeating for so long that my stomach was stretched out. When I ate I just felt the pain of hunger. Unless I can feel my stomach hurting a little bit because I am physically full, I am not able to stop eating a meal.

Also I was able to wake up at 6:30 am on Saturday morning and 7:00 am on Sunday morning. Hell I even woke up at 9:00 am this morning. This is very strange of me. The better stuff I put in my body, the better I am feeling. I know people talk about changing your eating habits will change your life, but I didn’t think I could ever do it. I thought I needed to keep that addiction. 

It turns out that addiction just thought that it could keep me.

Undiagnosed.

I think the first time that I went to the doctor’s for mental health issues was when I was about 16. The doctor said I had social anxiety, and depression. I knew exactly why I was depressed. It was because I was using drugs and alcohol. But I didn’t tell him that because I didn’t want to get in trouble.

He didn’t test me for drugs, so I thought I had fooled him. One time he prescribed me Zoloft and it made me feel like I was on acid for the two days that I took it. So I stopped taking it as prescribed. Then I started taking it to abuse it. Now that I’m talking about this I remember being in a room at the doctor’s office and sneaking into the supply room and stealing samples. I don’t think it was the Zoloft I was stealing but something else that looked good. I was addicted to pill popping at one point in my teenage years. I was also addicted to Ritalin. I was also addicted to pot. Drinking made me too slutty and I hated my body, so I would rather do drugs.

So I refused to use medication as prescribed because I didn’t want to be thought of as crazy. But I somehow validated abusing the same drugs in my mind. 

I never knew anything about any mental illness being in my family, until right after my big brother killed himself in 2002. I mean, I knew we were fucked up. But I just thought it was because we did drugs.

So I saw and spoke to my biological dad a bit after my brother was gone. My bio dad informed me that my brother was bi-polar and there was a good chance I was too.

I told him that he had no fucking idea what my brother was. He had no idea what I was. He didn’t know anything about us because he wasn’t there. I was so angry. How dare he think he knew anything about us.

Turns out he was right. 

I kind of wish I knew sooner. I wish that he could have talked to us about his experience with it. Though he took the low road in life just the same as us. I wish things were different growing up. I wish I knew what was going on in my brain.

But then when I think about it, would it have changed anything?

I wasn’t even officially diagnosed with bi-polar disorder until 2008. Even then when the doctor prescribed me medication he warned me not to take it on an empty stomach. I would feel very sick. So I took a few of the pills, and then I stopped. Because I did not eat very often. Not often enough to be taking pills with food.

I finally took my diagnoses seriously when I was putting together a plan to quit using meth. That was at the beginning of 2013. When I started taking my prescribed medications I finally understood the physical and mental need that I had to use drugs, stemmed from my brain. I was self medicating.

And I also had to relearn that when after 3 months I stopped taking those medications because I felt better. That I was doomed to relapse but with other substances and alcohol. I was self medicating once again.

And the day I called 911 on myself and put myself in the psych ward for two weeks, I was prescribed various medications to treat my illness. In that time I stopped wanting, craving, desiring, needing and expecting drugs and alcohol to be a part of my foreseeable life. 

I did what my brother could not do. In his bones he was much too proud. We were so much the same but he would never agree to that.

I accepted help. I asked for help. 

I almost lost my life, just as he did. My family almost lost me. My boyfriend almost lost me. My future almost lost me.

I ran rampant when I was undiagnosed. I also ran rampant when I thought I could survive simply on knowing what was wrong with me, but leaving it untreated.

Treatment isn’t just medication. It’s talking about it. It’s writing about it. It’s becoming a part of the solution by being present with those that are there to help.

I couldn’t be happier about knowing now the truth about what’s going on inside me.

Overslept.

I just slept for 13 hours straight. My head is pounding. My mouth is dry. I feel like death.

I am not sick, this is just what happens when too much stress and excitement are going on. I crash hard. 

Last night at the student orientation I felt very old. Until I got to the program specific orientation which was for social services diploma students as well as community support worker students. In that orientation I wasn’t the oldest. It made me feel a lot better.

As I had arrived I saw everyone with their parents. I called my mom and kinda quietly said I think you are supposed to be here with me over the phone. The area that the people were waiting was dead quiet. I didn’t want to embarrass myself. We had a good laugh about it. But a part of me felt at a loss. She is three hours away so she said I should call dad because he’s down here working, or my uncle. That my uncle lives close and he could step in, just like he stepped in for me at grad. My uncle was my grad date. Because I had one but he backed out.

So last night I started to feel not good enough. I tried to remember if I have ever worked an 8 hour shift in my life without wanting to die. Have I even worked an 8 hour shift at all? I felt like I just wouldn’t be very successful at working full-time. I started to tell myself things in my head. The self doubt started.

They instructors brought like 10 large pizzas in. I said no to pizza. I said no to free pizza, for the first time in my life. So there is that victory.

I think I may just be in shock about where I am in life right now.

My anxiety.

Where does my mental illness end? Where does my personality begin?

Who am I, without my mental illness?

How brave does a person even have to be, to rise against all odds. All the odds in my mind every single day. Sometimes about who I used to be, but my anxiety likes to remind me how I failed at everything I did in my past. My anxiety is the fine line between spiritual wellness and sickness. My anxiety likes to keep me micromanaging every second of my day so I feel like I can control it. My anxiety tells me to stay in bed for as long as possible. This is the safest place for me to be. Not too long though, because I’m at least 20 minutes early for everything I do. My anxiety is often like a broken record. Trying to stop me from calling people to hang out. My anxiety asks me why nobody ever comes over for coffee or tea? My anxiety thinks the bi-polar side of me is too much for people. My anxiety turns everything that makes my pulse race, into a possible anxiety attack. Even when my pulse races, my mind stirs and then I often feel like it’s self induced. My anxiety is so loud, it’s screaming at me through the four walls in my bedroom.

My anxiety lives inside of me. My anxiety does not drive me to drink or use drugs anymore. My anxiety is quietly working behind the scenes. The difference between my anxiety now, and my anxiety in the past is the way I treat it. It takes over less often now. I’m trying to give it less power as anxiety, and more power as self care.

When I call it self care, it doesn’t blow up. It doesn’t become a panic attack. It becomes relaxing.

Sometimes I don’t have anxiety for weeks at a time. Then it comes back after I forgotten it ever existed.

I do not take anything for my anxiety, as I do for my bi-polar. Because when a doctor prescribes a recovering drug addict a bottle of pills, that say “take as needed” suddenly I would find myself needing them all day. Suddenly that sometimes paralyzing anxiety is being held down by more paralyzing anxiety in the form of a pill.

I’m writing right now because I am scared. Not of failure, because I have been doing that for most of my life. I am scared of succeeding even more. I am scared to go to my University orientation tonight. I’m scared about meeting my classmates. What if I am the oldest, most experienced person in the entire Social Services program? What if I rock the entire 2 years and have the best marks in the class? What if I go on to be someone who CAN make a difference, not just talk about it?

This is fucking scary stuff.

But my anxiety can’t stop me from trying.

Wtf.

Someone on Facebook sent me a video last night. I didn’t open it until now. It said share this picture before it gets deleted. I thought it would be something about Trump.

I am going to be sick.

It’s a 17 second clip of two white men with a Confederate flag hanging on the wall. They are hanging a young black girl. In a bedroom.

My brother hung himself.

I am going to be sick.

I just asked him why the fuck he would send me a video of a girl being hanged. All he could say was sorry.

What is wrong with people? Why do people hate one another so much to take their life. Who instilled such hate inside of you? Why is there no love in your world.

Why did he send that to me.

It’s back.

I can feel it coming.

I should go back to bed. I need to protect myself. I need to protect everyone around me. The mania feels like it’s starting. My jaw is clenched. My pulse is racing. The thoughts in my mind are swirling so fast. What do I do? How do I cope? I eat something bad for me. No, not today. I left bad eating habits last week.

I am sitting on the couch in the livingroom, so that is a start. I’m arguing with myself in my head why I need to eat lunch.

Then I see lunch going something like this. Eat 2 bananas, an apple, some pickles and some peas. What’s wrong with you? Why are you not full? That was food. Oh you want to eat garbage don’t you? You could starve yourself for a month and still be fat.

I am rising. I have risen. Something is boiling inside of me. It’s really hard on the spirit when you think that the comedown after the mania could kill you. It’s all about what happens during the mania that really matters.

Sometimes I think that everyone is mad at me. So I will message them all the time. Like my boyfriend. I get so needy. I just need to be reminded that everything is ok.

And texting sometimes is the worst, because I can’t hear the tone of someone’s voice through texting. So I am always fists up. Ready to battle.

I am sick. I feel like I’m in the dead centre of the climb into a panic attack. I’m huffing and I’m puffing and I’m climbing it with all my might. I am doing this to myself.

I get carried away in my head full of sickness.

Tally the cat just jumped on my lap. I think she’s trying to heal me.

Overwhelmed.

I am feeling very overwhelmed right now.

Today marks 4 years free of the chains of crystal meth addiction.

But here I am sitting in bed still. Having just ate a bowl of oats for breakfast. I just can’t pull myself from this slump.

Some unknown number called, and it was from NCO Financial. Who I have been paying $20 a month, for the last six months. To pay down a debt from in my addiction. I pay down $20 and $30 on all three of my debts every single month. They are only like $400 each anyways now.

So she calls to say that my account has been brought to her desk. Which is confusing. Because I am making my regular payments. She says it’s not good enough. That I need to make big lump sum payments or it’s going right back into active collections. I tell her how much money I make a month, and that I am paying down all my debts. I have expenses and she’s not going to bully me. She says so what about child tax benefit? You get that, what on the 20th? 

To which I respond are you fucking kidding me? I lost my daughter 14 years ago. Why the fuck would I be getting child tax benefits?

I explained to her everything about my situation. That I am proud to be able to even pay down my debts every month. That she didn’t need to call and make me feel like a piece of shit for not being able to pay more. I was actually the one that hunted them down and starting paying off my debts. I saw them on my credit report and got in contact with them. 

I know she might just be going her job, but fuck her. I’m paying what I owe, and they told me to begin with that whatever I could afford would be good enough.

I am brewing and stewing right now.

And my water pump in my car appears to be cracked. Thank the Universe for the friends at Nightshift Street Ministries for looking at my car for me last night after volunteering. 

Thank the Universe for my dear friend, who is getting the part for it to be fixed this afternoon and her ex is doing it for free. Because I pick her kids up from school so she can work.

Thank the Universe that a few days ago my tailpipe was broken and falling off and my brothers good friend welded it back on for me, for free.

Thank the Universe that I am not only clean, but also sober.

But I’m still overwhelmed and freaking out. I am now on the most powerful antibiotic. This is my 4th round this year. I have been referred to a urologist because something is wrong with me. 

I have another doctor’s appointment tommorow that I need to keep because I need my meds renewed. Then after I have student orientation at the University.

If I was still using meth, none of these stresses would be happening. Because I wouldn’t go to the doctor, until it was so bad I was in emergency.

I wouldn’t have car problems, because I didn’t drive or have a car. I couldn’t afford to and I was scared.

I wouldn’t be nervous about going to University orientation, because well I wouldn’t be going to University.

I wouldn’t have even had a conversation with a bill collector, so I wouldn’t have gotten upset. Hell I wouldn’t have cared what they had to say.

I stop and I look at the big picture. Then I feel warm, but the second I let my emotions take over, I’m screwed. 

I am so scared right now. I just want everything to run so smoothly. I feel like any more problems that arise could be catastrophic.

Usually by the time I am done doing a blog entry when I am in bed, I’m up out of bed by now. Not this time, I actually feel the need to turn off the lights and crawl under the covers.

How I became a bully.

Back in Aldergrove right now. Waiting to get in to see my family doctor.

It’s funny because where I am sitting right now I can see the very spot where my nose got broken when I was in grade 11 or 12. I don’t remember the exact timeframe. But I was on mushrooms. And a guy broke my nose. Because I was using my bully status to defend a younger girl from getting harrassed by this random guys sister. Turns out there were not even from around here but had just moved to the area.

The end result of him breaking my nose was my brother and a group of his friends went around to the back of their second story walk up apartment and broke down the stairs. The stairs were the only entry into their apartment. 

So I wasn’t the most popular in elementary school, but I also wasn’t a complete loser.

Something awful happened in grade 6 though that set me up for the rest of my life. At the beginning of the year, probably 2 days into class I was informed I was being switched classes. Sometimes it happened, I was kinda shaken up by it. I was put into a grade 6 – grade 5 split class. No big deal right? Well it was, because there was only me and two other grade 6 girls. I thought it was pretty cool at first, the three of us could be a posse. We would stick together like glue.

I remember having sleepovers at one girls house. I felt like she was my best friend. I thought she was really cool. The other girl seemed bossy but we were also friends. I remember going to a sleepover at her house for her birthday and her uncle told me I looked like Amy Grant.

One day I came to school, like any other day. Suddenly my one friend, my best friend – was giving me the silent treatment. She wouldn’t talk to me. They stuck together like glue. Suddenly I became unstuck. For no reason. I couldn’t understand what had happened. Within days I was informed by them that the bossy one had made a bet with my best friend that she couldn’t talk to me. If she talked to me she lost the bet. 

Kids do the most fucked up things. 

I got my hair cut short into a bob that year. A really short one up to my ears. Since my hair was so big and thick, I ended up having to get an undercut to make my hair less puffy. This was years and years before it was cool for girls to sport undercuts.

People made fun of me for having an undercut like a boy. For having no friends. I remember at break and lunch hour I used to stand on the portable steps, under cover. Just standing there by myself. My best friend had abandoned me. The lonliness I felt then, was quite comparable to the lonliness I felt in my darkest places of addiction. My heart felt liked it had been emptied. I was so ashamed of being alive. I literally wished I would die.

You know how sometimes people remember memories different? Well I’ve had this memory embedded deep in my mind since this happened. Since this is one side of the story, maybe I am remembering it different than it was. Maybe I smelled weird, and that’s why they stopped being friends with me. Maybe I was too weird. Maybe I was too needy. I have no idea to this day, but I do know that they disowned me. It lasted right until the end of the year.

The only good thing that came from that whole thing was my grades were the best they had ever been. I had no distractions. I had no friends. I kept my head down in my books. I did the work, then I went home.

Thank God for being in Girl Guides. I had some sense of belonging in life. If I hadn’t stuck with girl guides and pathfinders I think this whole thing would have fucked me up even more.

So when I got into high school, I was definately​ one of the heavier built girls. My soul and heart were very tender, and I did not want to get hurt again. I needed to protect myself. 

When I found my place in life with drugs, it only made sense that being a bully would go hand in hand with it.

For the first few years though I was all talk. I had the biggest mouth, and the biggest walk. It wasn’t until the start of grade 11 that my switch flipped. It was right after the whole thing happened with Reena Virk. The entire school system was in high alert for bullies. I didn’t care. 

It was in my grade 11 writing class. On a Friday afternoon. I got in a little spat with a girl who I had probably bullied for a long time. We got in a word exchange and I think she called me a bitch. I stepped up to her face and if I remember correctly she slapped me. We were like 6 inches from another’s face. She was about 8 inches shorter than me. I wanted to stomp her, but I didn’t know how.

We left it at that, but the whole weekend I was brewing and stewing.

When I came back Monday morning I was ready. I was going to attack her. When first break time came, I walked out to the back of the school where I knew she would be. I lite up a cigarette and I walked right up to her. I grabbed her by the ponytail and I started to singe her hairline with my cigarette. She would never speak to me or do that to me again. I would make sure of it. I was not to be fucked with.

That was it. I left it at that.

Until lunch time came around. Her friend who was exact proportion to me in weight and size wanted to fight me. I didn’t even know this girl, why did she want to fight?

I was terrified. A group swarmed around us and cheered us on. It all happened so fast. Punching and kicking and scratching. Thank God she couldn’t pull my hair, it was too short.

Next thing I know the principal and vice principal are escorting me to the office. I’m wearing my sunglasses walking down the hall.

I had arrived.