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I shouldn’t leave writing for so late in the day, er, night. I’m tired by now, and my mind is a little vacant. Earlier, I had lots of thoughts and ruminations – now I’m just ready for it to be over.
I had a great day with Little C today. We shopped for costumes and spent a leisurely lunch hour in the Wendy’s dining room, lingering over our rootbeer floats, (yum), making wiggle worms from straw wrappers, and just being silly together. It felt so good to just be in her presence, and to be able to connect with her and not be moody or grumpy or sick or high. Felt really good, a little giddy and I felt a bit kid-like myself. That is something worth quitting for, to be truly present with my daughter, enjoying a totally typical Sunday afternoon. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed that. Missed her. Missed myself.
I feel somewhat rushed right now. The weekend is over, and it’s back to the study docs at 8am. I should be getting my implants this week, and I’m nervous about that since a&j got hers and hasn’t fared so well. Work is still chaos, and an avalanche of paperwork and other bullshit that I need to take care of awaits. *Deep Breath* I am also feeling some side effects from the suboxone: confusion, anxiety, hot flashes & flushing, sweating, thirsty. Kinda sucks, hopefully it will go away soon.
Oh, and those mother-fucking Lice are back again. I looked in Little C’s backpack and what do you know? Someone’s got lice at school again! We checked her head and found bugs, so now I have a mountain of laundry to do, and I have to clean the house and vacuum, and and and.
Life sure didn’t take a break so I could get well. It’s nothing major that makes it hard to hang on, it’s just the little b.s. that hits you over and over, and the lack of time and lack of rest and the clutter and accumulation and not having a quiet space for myself where I can just be the fuck alone.
The house is a mess, but if I work on it a little every day, I’ll get it fixed. My body is sick and tired, but I can work on that a little every day too. Everything is like that – I just have to do a little bit each day and not give up and I’ll get there. Well, I’ll get somewhere anyway. Right now, I’m going to bed.
I like looking at my blog stats to see what search engine terms have led people to my blog. Now, this blog is quite new, so there haven’t been a lot of terms, but the ones that I’ve seen are golden.
My personal favorite thus far is today’s: Life is Full of Shit.
Seriously, if you google that, I’m right there at the bottom of the first page.
This makes me perversely happy.
A couple of other good ones are: Tizanidine to get fucked up (doesn’t really work, just makes you sleepy) and Suboxone the hardest thing to get – which is really quite puzzling, since it’s pretty easy to get.
I’m glad that anyone is reading this. It makes me feel less alone. I appreciate the comments I get so incredibly much. Last night, a&j’s comment that she was loving the strength I was showing was just what I needed to decide not to use. I’d just gotten home (very late) from work and I was exhausted and in pain, and there was oxy in the house and I was mighty tempted. But I looked here first, and I read her words, and SuboxoneMom’s words (shout of thanks to her too!), and I read over my own posts and by that time the desire was ebbing away and I felt so encouraged by the words of my friends.
Something else I noticed was that I was able to think through the repercussions of my decision. If I decided to do that line, would I be able to take my sub the next day, or would I get sick? Would I tell the study docs, or would I lie? How would doing that line effect me getting the implants on Wed? Would they postpone it? And, How would I feel about myself? Would the 30 minutes of buzz really be worth it? Was I feeling so bad that I really, really needed that oxy? These questions may seem really obvious, because they are obvious, but when you are addicted to something you can effectively shut off that part of your brain. I think it’s called your conscience, Jimminy Cricket!, and I’m glad mine is asserting itself again.
When I returned from inspecting my navel, I realized that I was just tired and I needed to eat. I made some beans & rice, rested, visited with a friend for a few, took my klonopin & tizanidine and went to bed. Not very exciting, but probably good for me.
And so ended the third day of suboxone treatment. It seems like it’s been much, much longer than that. *sigh* I guess this is where that one-day-at-a-time philosophy comes in handy. I wish that those recovery slogans weren’t so overused and tired and cliched, because there is a lot of wisdom there. I just have to get over my gag reflex I suppose.
Today started out with a really great outfit. I’ve lost a little weight lately, and I bought myself a new skirt yesterday, to celebrate my big step into the abyss of sobriety and I thought I’d get started on the second day of my awesome new life with a fashionable new ensemble.
Well, that was practically the only thing that worked out today.
I went in for my second dose of suboxone, and based on my stellar performance on yesterday’s 8mgs, they thought 12 would be a good dose for today and throughout the weekend. There was some sort of snafu at the pharmacy, and it took a while for my pills to materialize, which put me behind schedule for another appointment I had. So, I sat there waiting for the 8mg pill to dissolve under my tongue, and it was taking for-fucking-ever, and I got impatient and I think I spit out the residual drool a bit too soon. I tried to compensate by keeping the two 2mg pills under my tongue until all hint of orangus-vomitus had dissipated, but it didn’t work. I definitely felt under-dosed, a little sick, and a lot like I wanted to go get high.
There was a slight up-tick in the day’s general downward turn when my healthcare provider obliged me with a letter that should exempt me from participation in the required work-hours to continue getting my benefits. And she complimented my outfit, so at least someone noticed that I’m making an effort.
Back in the car, I could not pry my thoughts away from the weekend’s supply of suboxone sitting in it’s anonymous paper bag, right there in my bag, on the passenger seat. Stuck in traffic, I started with the math. If I just take 2 more mgs, then I’ll feel better for the day, and I’ll still have 10 for tomorrow and 12 for Sunday and then Monday no one will be the wiser. It should be fine, since I did so great on 8 the first day, right? Plus, 10, 12, it’s not that much difference. The study doc even said he might have kept me at 8mgs if the study didn’t require a minimum dose of 12 to get the implants. Now, this whole line of rationalization took about .00025 seconds and the bottle was in my hand and the pill was under my tongue.
And I did feel better. I went home and ate a bananna, and relaxed for a few minutes. Then the phone started with the infernal ringing. Can I drive over here, and drop off this order for work, and pick up this other order, and go get some supplies, and oh, I have no gas money, and Mr. B has a doctor appointment and he’s got a bad cold and thought I’d be taking Little Cappie with me to work and, and, and, I overestimated my abilities to cope.
I packed up Little C and off we went to my job, and I drove a different way than usual because I was trying to pay attention to her running-stream-of-consciousness-narrative about the adventures of the Gummi Bears and what do the parking signs mean when suddenly I see the red & blues flashing behind me. Fuck.
I pull over, my tags are incorrectly displayed, I have no proof of insurance, because I have no insurance. I get a ticket. $550, unless I can cough up proof of insurance within a few days. The cop was nice enough to fix my plates for me though, so I guess I got a kiss with my proverbial screwing.
On to work. Chaos. Dust bunnies. Teething babies. Why won’t that phone stop ringing! Logistical nightmares, and I don’t want to drive all over town picking stuff up and dropping stuff off. The day goes on and I can’t focus, my concentration is gone. My head starts hurting, and the pain chases away cognition. It’s just normal stuff, the regular shit that goes wrong in a day but it’s getting on top of me, I want to run away, I want to not deal, to put it off, but there’s no one to take care of it but me.
Credit to Little C, she sweeps and mops and helps count the money. She pulls it together at the end of the night like a real trooper. I get her to her gramma’s house and back in the car I sit and think I might cry because there will be no fat white line of oxycontin waiting for me when I get home. There will be no ritual of peeling and crushing and chopping the pill, no laying out lines, no passing the glass around. No flooding my aching mind and body with relief. I feel this as a loss, much more profound than I ever thought I would, a hollow space in my chest.
I think: What the fuck am I supposed to do? Honestly.
I think, I could go home and I could do some pills. I might even get high. But I don’t know how that will effect my ability to take my suboxone tomorrow. Will it make me sick? I don’t know. Will it just be a waste of drugs? Do I want to have to tell the study peeps that I used, or do I want to have to lie to them? I guess the fact that I care about any of these questions is progress.
I chose not to do any opiates when I got home. I took a klonopin, but that’s ok because I have a perscription for it. We ordered pizza, and we have Netflix that came today. I have the night off from being mom, and most of tomorrow too. I think I will feel better if I wake up in the morning having made it through a hard day without using, and then I will take my suboxone dose (minus the 2 mgs that I raided for today), and I will feel allright.
I’m trying to believe that doing the right thing, or at least as close to the right thing that I can, will feel better in the long run then getting high will feel right now. This is not a process that I’m familiar with, so I’m going to take it on faith. I think I’ll be ok.
I’m setting a goal for tomorrow. If it is sunny, I will go for a walk outside. If it is not, I will do yoga or dance. If the gods of money smile on me, I will go join that gym and take myself for a swim. I want my body to know other ways of feeling good. I just need to remember.
Today was a good day. I had my first dose of suboxone and I felt amazing all day. Amazing. It was a good day, but a long one too, with another long day to follow and I don’t have much energy to write. I wish I had it in me right now to sing hosannahs about my suboxone experience, but I’m wiped. So we’ll count this post as obligitory and hopefully I can whip up something a bit more poetic next time.
My secret fear: that this can’t last. That the good feeling, the normal feeling, the feeling of being me will wear away – because it’s drug-induced, then is it real? But I will take this day, today was beautiful both inside and out and at least now I know that I had one more good day left in me, which leads me to suspect that there might be quite a few more.
I just put little Cappie to sleep, and she is just so lovely and amazing. I love the smell of her hair, and the way she curls into my body, the tenderness of her skin and the little twitches of her muscles as she finally succumbs to sleep.
She has been my tether to this earth. In her I see all the things that I lost somewhere along the way, and I wonder that I’ve been entrusted to steward her through this life, and to help her to hang on to those things for as long as possible. I hardly know if I’m equal to the task, but if I’ve ever applied my every resource to anything, it’s being her mama.
The things of which I write: innocence, self assuredness, joy, openness, unselfconsciousness, freedom. It’s the way she moves in her body with such grace and spirit and when she falls down she gets right back up again. It’s the songs she makes up to express both her joy and her sadness. The way she negotiates the intensity of her feelings and then, as soon as the storm fades, it’s like it never happened. The way she forgives and lets go, the way she tries to take care of me by leaving me with her favorite stuffed animal in the morning.
I look at her, and I see myself as a little girl, skipping down the sidewalk in front of my house, singing Joy to the World at the top of my lungs. Wonderously out of key, the breath and the sound filling my whole body and ringing out, up into the sky. I remember roller skating on that same sidewalk, with those metal skates that fit on over my shoes, up and down and up again, every time I fell, brushing myself off and getting right back to it. I remember being very young and thinking: I was born with my heart and my hands open to the world. I want to fill the world with love love love.
So much happens to us, and it’s a rare person who retains that kind of innocence. But it’s still there, just buried. I know it is, because it sees itself in Little Cappie and it stirs. All children bring it out in me to some extent, but my own child really touches that place in me where that happy yelling singing skipping little girl still lives. She’s been there all along, buried under my fears of not fitting in, my painful awareness of being “too smart” and the ridicule that brings, my shame at my own failures, and my failure to live up to everyone’s expectations of (or hopes for) me.
I want to let her out to the surface. Fuck being cool, sarcastic and ironic. Well, maybe not entirely – I actually like my sense of humor. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I want to bring back that girl who wasn’t afraid to try anything, and would do things she liked even if she wasn’t all that great at it. I mean, what little kid says “I’m not going to paint with you because it doesn’t come out good”? Exactly. Somewhere, things became about the finished product instead of the experience, and that blows.
There are so many things that I’ve been wanting to do, to try, but there’s always a but. I’m too tired, too sick, too poor, too busy, too much in pain, too depressed. I’ve stopped living, and that really bothers me. I miss me, the me that was spontaneous and free, who took things as they came and trusted that the universe wouldn’t let me down. Maybe I should write her a love letter, and see if she’ll give me another chance.
Here are some things that I’ve wanted to do, but (insert excuse here):
Take ballroom dancing with Mr. B, take yoga again, join a gym and start swimming, go on a writing retreat in Taos w/Natalie Goldberg, clean my house & get rid of all the shit I don’t need, Go to massage therapy school, finish college, find a therapist who doesn’t suck, take a drawing class (or just draw more), learn photoshop, do volunteer work, go kayaking, get up into the mountains and hike, go to poetry readings, write poetry again (hell, write anything again, build fairy-houses, make Christmas presents, take more pictures, take a dance class, take a cooking class.
And that’s just a sample. I’d forgotten how much of the world there is to enjoy, and that I do deserve to enjoy it. I do deserve to be happy. I just hope I can find my way.
I scrounged up the last of my klonopin and a tizanidine, took 3 222’s and passed out for a while. That helped. But really, it’s kinda pathetic. I will cut myself some slack because I’m sick on top of everything, though my voice is coming back.
I’ve been searching the intertube for blogs like mine. You know, stories of people who are trying to quit opiates, who are going to use suboxone to do it, and possibly even who have depression as well. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, but no such luck.
Tonight is the last night that I should be taking any pills. Mr.B gave me some morphine (my least favorite) but hopefully we’ll come up with something a bit more fun for my bon voyage. If not, wev.
I told him, well I squeaked to him, my concern about being bored and not knowing what I’d do when I didn’t have the pills anymore. He said: Maybe we could, you know, go out and do stuff, the way we used to? Maybe you’ll start writing again, or dancing, or hiking.
The way he said it just made me feel so sad. I look around my house, which is a FEMA level disaster zone, and I think about all the days and nights that I’ve sat in this chair, doing not much of anything. Hell, it’s been half a year since he’s even been able to drag me out to a movie. It’s just so hard for me to be social when I’m depressed, and since the pills aren’t making me happy anymore, I’m pretty much permadepressed.
Anyway, the way he said it, which was just pretty matter-of-fact and not with any kind of judgement, made me realize how incredibly not here I’ve been. That’s really sad. And, whoo-hoo! I get to confront that sadness, along with the zillion other sadnesses I’ve stored up over these past months pretty fucking soon I guess.
I have some hopes though, and some plans. I want things to be good again. I really want to take advantage of the counseling that I’ll get through the study. The study Doc thought I have some unresolved PTSD issues (hey, water is wet!) and that maybe that was the root of everything, everything that has subsequently gone awry in my life, so much for my agency, but that if I addressed those issues then maybe I could be cured.
If only he knew what a fucking tangled mess of thorny branches those issues are. We’re talking 20 years of me self-medicating, going to therapy but only saying what I think they want to hear, never wanting to talk about what’s really wrong. God, I don’t even know if I know what’s really wrong. All I know is that I doubt there’s a magic button that if I get to it, it will all fall away and there I’ll be, shiny and clean and new. Yeahright.
But at least this time, maybe I can try. Maybe.
I am in withdrawals, and it’s really starting to suck. I asked Mr. Bottlecappie to please please make sure I wouldn’t run out before I start this induction, but shit happens and there was no money and so here I am. Plus, some asshole took all of my cough medicine that had codine in it, so now I have to deal with this fucking cough too. Joy.
As you can tell, I’m a little pissy. I’m restless and my muscles ache, soon the bones will start too. Of course, no one is answering their phones so I can hook up a few pills. Good lord, I just ned to get through till Thursday am, which means I only need pills for today and maybe Tuesday am. Then I’m free. I hope.
The whole point of this thing was to not have to fucking suffer through the dopesick. Well, that and to get better, but still. This Fucking Sucks.
I guess I’ll go see if I have enough benzos to knock me out until something better comes along. Like my new life.
I hate this.
I just started reading A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield a couple of weeks ago. It’s a book to be read slowly, digested a bit at a time, which is so not my style. I inhale books. This book, however, requires lots of thoughtful attention.
There are a lot of bits already that I would like to quote and discuss, but I’m picking this one for this post:
When you meditate, try to allow whatever arises to move through you as it will. Let your attention be very kind. Layers of tension will gradually release, and energy will begin to move. Places in your body where you have held the patterns of old illness and trauma will open. then a deeper physical purification and opening of the energy channels will occur as the knots release and dissolve. Sometimes with this opening we will experience a powerful movement of the breath, sometimes a spontaneous vibration and other physical sensations.
Let your attention drop beneath the superficial level that just notices “pleasure,” “tension,” or “pain.” Examine the pain and unpleasant sensations you usualy block out. With careful mindfulness, you will allow “pain” to show itself to have many layers. As a first step, we can learn to be aware of pain without creating further tension, to experience and observe pain physically as pressure, tightness, pinpricks, needles, throbbing, or burning. Then we can notice all the layers around the “pain.” Inside are the strong elements of fire, vibration, and pressure. Outside is oftern a layer of physical tightness and contraction. Beyond this may be an emotional layer of aversion, anger, or fear and a layer of thoughts and attitudes such as, “I hope this will go away soon,” or “If I feel pain, I must be doing something wrong,” or “Life is always painful.” To heal, we must beome aware of all these layers.
I was, of course, reading this while lying in bed, and as I finished this passage my eyes crossed and the book fell from my hand and so I figured I might give it a try – this meditation of exploring pain. I made myself comfortable on my back and shut my eyes and let my mind drift.
Almost immediately I had this mental picture of myself, laying there with these bands of energy all around my upper torso. This is weird in itself because I am not usually a visual thinker, and if I am able to visualize something it’s with a lot of dilberate effort. But there I was, with these bands around my upper arms and chest and back. The bands were forcing my shoulders up towards my ears, and my whole posture was of someone cowering defensively on the bed and I thought “Jesus, I look like I’m afraid that someone’s going to come in and beat me.”
And that is the attitued surrounding my pain. I am afraid of it, constantly tensed up in anticipation of it, even with many mgs of morphine flowing through my bloodstream. It’s habitual, this defensive posture, and it speaks to my attitude about life in general lately. It’s like I’m just waiting for the next blow to fall.
And somehow, in the midst of this vision, that kindess Kornfield talks about entered my consciousness. I was able to see that things were really hard and painful, and for a while my pain had to be secondary to the pain of my partner’s shattered ankle, and I had to function for both of us and the only way I could do it was to keep pounding down more drugs.
Now, that time is passing. His ankle is slowly healing and he is making heroic efforts to help me, now that I have reached the limits of my ability to function. And as these thoughts floated around my mind, I started to relax a little bit, and felt my shoulders lower**, and I even started to feel my chest opening and relaxing and the chakra there trying to stir. Then, I passed out. Well, I guess I fell asleep, but it was so abrupt and the nap ended such a short time later that it almost seemed like I fainted. I don’t even remember it, just waking up like WTHuh?
That was a beautiful gift, that vision, and the ability to see myself with compassion. I hope to try that meditation again soon, and maybe stay awake and see what’s in the next layer, and the next. And to practice that kindess to myself, just to observe myself as a person who hurts, and needs comfort and love, who deserves those things regardless of whether I brought my hurts unto myself or not. That is healing.
**I have noticed that the two times I’ve gone to a certain resort with an awesome sauna and hot-tubs, when I left my shoulders felt about 5 inches lower than usual. I want to be more aware of that posture, as I’m sure it contributes both to physical pain and to a psychic attitude of defensiveness and fear. In fact, right now my shoulders are making friends with my ears. Perhaps a hot bath before I turn in for the night, for tomorrow I will go ask for a chance to change my life.
I am irritable. Not in any major way, but enough that my overwhelming attitude is “Leave me the Fuck Alone.” I suppose I could go through my regular laundry-list of gripes about the Republic of Quit, but, whatever.
I do have some thoughts, though I haven’t really been engaging with my thoughts these last couple of days so I don’t know where any of them might lead. But here they are, in no particular order.
I am worried about being bored. My job is boring, and I’m not in school. Pills have been my main source of entertainment for the last however long. I guess I am already bored, but I am worried about being even more bored. It’s hard to motivate to entertain myself when I’m depressed.
I am afraid the suboxone won’t work. I mean, I’m pretty sure it will work for the w/d. Fairly sure it will at least partially help my depression. But what if the fibro pain reasserts itself? I’m not sure what I will do then, since the sub (supposedly) blocks the analgesic effects of other opiates. I guess I will jump off that bridge when I come to it.
My unrational brain keeps thinking that since the sub is working so well for a&j, then it won’t work for me. Since we have never responded to the same anti-d’s before, and since there’s never enough good in the world to go around for all of us. Natch. I don’t like it, but I’ll own it, this thinking is the product of my brain.
I am starting to be a little scared of having to figure out and fix a lot of stuff that is fucked up in my life. For so long I have just been keeping my head down, trying to get through the next day and the next week, that I haven’t been thinking in terms of my goals. That part of my life is sadly neglected, and I’m not exactly looking forward to reengaging with all of that.
There’s just over 12 hours left until I go meet with the study doc. It still doesn’t seem real, or like it’s that big of a deal. The worst thing is that I am out of dope and out of money and there doesn’t seem to be any help for that in the next day or so, so I might be in w/d sooner than I’d hoped. That kinda blows, but getting all worked up about it won’t help.
Oh, and also I’m worried that this stupid-ass laryngitis is going to create a problem for me tomorrow.
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