Breaking the cycle

I am coming up on nearly 90 days sober this month. I never considered myself to be one with an addictive personality. As a teenager, I did many different party drugs just for fun and had no problem ultimately kicking it to the curb when it was time to get back to reality. I guess those teenage experiences gave me a sense of cockiness. I felt as though addiction couldn't touch me, because I just wasn't the type of person who got addicted to anything. Well, other than cigarettes, I never got addicted to anything.

When I first discovered my drug of choice it was supposed to just be a fun time for the weekend. Little did I or my fiance at the time know that it would come to impact our lives forever. It started with that weekend, but when the next weekend came we decided to do it again, and the weekend after that, and so on. Eventually, it became not a weekend thing but an all-the-time thing. During active addiction, I was still in denial that I was actually addicted to it. I didn't experience any physical withdrawal symptoms and somehow my brain seemed to reason that, because of that simple fact, I was not addicted. I quickly learned that not all withdrawals were the same. I didn't have the physical aspects, but mentally I was truthfully in the worst spot of my life.

The thing about being addicted to any sort of upper is that when you don't have it you don't just go back to feeling normal. You have lived your life in a state of "up" for so long that normal is no longer normal. Instead, normal feels as if it is miles down. Personally, I was not able to feel much of anything emotionally other than boredom and sadness. Everyday tasks were like climbing over mountains, every bit of energy I had would have to be put out just to do basic self-care. Everyone's battle with coming off of drugs is hard, but when the end of your high is riddled with trauma it just adds the extra pinch of difficulty.

I and my fiance were both heavy users by the time that night came around. I had taken it upon myself to stop doing it for a little while simply due to my self-guilt. I knew better than to be doing such selfish and foolish things, but at the time it was as if I wasn't me if I wasn't high. He hadn't stopped, but I did not think that that would be much of a problem. However, I guess the long-filled nights alone without someone else there to enjoy the high with cause some unnecessary paranoia.

It was less than a week after I had stopped, and I was struggling daily with feeling any type of joy. It didn't help when he began to develop the paranoid thoughts and feelings associated with long-term use and became very angry toward me. We had been together for 7 years and he had never put his hands on me until that night. I had been in some pretty sketchy situations before, but I've never feared for my life the way that I did during those three nights. I was left with a black eye, bruising on the entire side of my face, probably about 6 bruises down my back, handprints from him grabbing me on both my thighs and calves as well as my arms, and not the mention the severe bruising around my neck.

The most heartbreaking part about everything that occurred wasn't even the actual abuse. The moment that plays over and over in my head at night was when my children walked into the room and saw their dad beating their mother. I replay the pure horror in their eyes nightly. It is sad to say but I would go through the experience once more if it meant that I could somehow ensure they never saw what they did. It breaks my heart to know that they encountered the same things I did when I was a child. Although it was hands down the worst experience of my entire life, I am somewhat thankful for that moment, because without it happening I would have never left.

I know that to some 90 days may seem like next to nothing, but to me, it has been one of the hardest journeys I have ever encountered. I have had to navigate getting off of drugs, coping with the trauma of abuse, and going from stay-at-home mom to single mother of five. Some days are much harder than others. There are days that I feel dead inside and there are days that I manage to get by. I haven't conquered the feeling of not being yourself yet, but I work towards that goal every day. I sometimes think to myself, "How am I going to do this all by myself?" Then I see my children's smiling faces and just have to remind myself that I have to for them.

For them, I will defeat my addiction. For them, I will gain back control of my emotions. For them, I will be the most kick-ass mom I can be to support them in every way. For them, I will come out on top. For them, I will break the cycle.

If you would like to read about my journey throughout addiction or the traumatic events that occurred to give me my wake-up call, please follow my stories. I will be sharing those stories soon. I hope to make others dealing with similar things and addiction know that they are not alone, and to give those who haven't been through addiction a better understanding of how much of a struggle it truly is. Thank you for taking the time to read.