Hang Over Thoughts

What time is it?

Where is my phone?

What happened last night?

Why did I call him sooooo many times?!!

He’s gonna think I’m obsessed

UUGGGHHHHHH!!!!

Water….. I need water….

***gulp gulp gulp*****

Taste like it came straight from Jesus himself

Do you think he would my drunkness?

Wasn’t he the one who turned water into wine

I’m sure he meant for us to drink it right?

The church said to just to pray

My momma says I lost faith

The only thing that seems to wash these sins away is E&J

They tell me I need to pray harder

Dig my knees into the ground until I get my redemption

My head is POUNDING

My skin doesn’t seem to fit anymore

It fit perfectly last night after shot number five

These days I don’t even need a chaser

I just want to cut to the chase

The chase always seems so elusive

When I’m trying to find myself at the bottom of all these bottles

They say one is too many

And a thousand is never enough

I’ve had a thousand and one

And still by the morning I lose you

I think……

I think I might need help…..

No… no… no

You don’t need to get help

This is just what we do

What kids in college do

What people in our family do

What new stressed out mothers do

What alcoholics do…..

Here is two truths and a lie

I love myself. I want to die.

I love the thing that is killing me because it makes me feel alive

Can you spot the lie?

I’m such a contradiction

Filled with these spirits

I can’t seem to conjure up enough

Confidence to even have a conversation

Until my blood alcohol content is past its limit

And I make sure to finish every drink put in front of me

I call it alcohol abuse when it’s wasted

I can’t even count how many nights

I’ve spent my time getting wasted

Only to have my mornings wasted

All that potential fuckin wasted

And isn’t that why we call this a hangover?

Like when you see the star

Basketball player of your high school

Ten years later and he’s bagging groceries

Head. hung. Over.

There seems to be no cure for these

generational hangovers

I swear I never asked for this

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be this

That’s the difference between an alcoholic

And a person who is drowning

The one who is drowning knows it

A disease of the mind the same thing that was killing me made me feel alive

How was I supposed to know that putting that drink to my lips

Would cause me to self-sabotage

When I knew how to swim

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be an addict

It wasn’t a dream of mine when asked as a little girl

What I wanted to be when I grow up

A movie star, teacher, astronaut maybe

But not this

It started out as experimentation

Take a broken hearted girl

A desperate need to fit in

And a little bit of peer pressure

And you have a recipe for euphoria and escape

That only drugs and alcohol could imitate

With a predisposition to addiction

It was pretty easy for me to start using everyday

When I never learned another way

I can’t exactly tell you when it turned from a want to a need

But that’s the cunning and baffleness of this disease

SELF DECEIT

You wanna know the difference between an addict and a person whose drowning

The one who is drowning KNOWS it

A disease of the mind

The same thing that was killing me was what made me feel alive

Sucked in to an oblivion of chaos and destruction

The person in the mirror no longer looked familiar

And the more I tried to gain control the more I lost it

How could I possibly save myself when I didn’t even know how to swim

Thats when I seen my lifeboat H.O.M.

When the pain of staying the same outweighed the pain of change

Thats when I knew House of Mercy could help me find my way

We’re only asking you to change one thing and thats EVERYTHING

As impossible as that seems I was given the answer within the question HOW

H.O.W.

Honest. Open. and Willing.

I found the capacity for healing that being honest contains

And when I accepted the powerlessness of my disease it actually empowered me

I was no longer a victim when I accepted responsibility

My life had become unmanageable so I had to become open to living a new way

And when all the walls came tumbling down

Is when my fears, insecurities and vulnerabilities came tumbling out

I had searched the depths of my soul for the little girl that I used to be

and I cried for her

No longer afraid of what she might tell me

of how I made her suffer even more

I was able to heal, restore and be made whole in a place

That I knew I was safe

I was able to truly and completely love me

House of Mercy gave me all the tools I need to live a life of recovery

Just when the catepillar thought it was going to die

It became a beautiful butterfly

I didn’t deserve this second chance so

Above all these I had to become WILLING

Willing to fight

Willing to thrive

Willing to take it just one day at a time

Because this is not a race to the cure

This is a marathon

How long are you willing to fight

if your life depended on it