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Drunk

The Numbers and Waters of Worthlessness and Hope

By Katie BurkePublished 5 years ago 7 min read
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This woman captured here has been drunkenly molded into place through the suffering of active addiction over the course of fifteen years. This joy captured here, on this woman, has been soberly unlocked over the course of just two years, this 8th of August, 2019.

Please drop me a line if you are suffering from addiction.

[email protected]

DRUNK & LOVE

I’ve heard that by the time a body feels the symptoms of dehydration, it is already 75 percent depleted of water. I believe hopelessness works the same way; that by the time we feel the despair, feel the giving up, hear the self-defeating and hateful thoughts, we are 75 percent depleted of worth and self-love. I believe self-love is the only love worth throwing everything away to have (everything superfluous and in the way of our relationship to ourselves). It is the only gauge of our tolerance, acceptance and prayer around the human life. How we feel about others is completely indicative of how we feel about ourselves and therefore is contingent upon ones love for oneself. If I can’t tolerate me, take care of me, be with me, then what I am doing with you is not love—it’s something else. It may be pleasing, coping, manipulating, surviving; it may be relating, saving, comparing or contriving intimacy for pleasure, but it is not loving. Not with the capitol “L”, anyway—not the big one that saves your life when you’re going into the kitchen to fall on a knife in Brooklyn and you let your room mate stop you by saying ‘hello’. That day in Brooklyn, I was ready for death, I was so in tune with despair, my body was well past 75 percent hopelessness, well into the 90s maybe… but a spark of light in me saw the six percent I had left of Love and saw it reflected in my room mate’s “hey” and I remembered who I was just long enough to not kill myself in the kitchen, then to not take the knife back into my room, then to call my sister and ask her to help me get out of the deep hole I had been living and rolling around in, for quite some time. The six percent of me saved the rest, through a fraction of a reflection of a human life.

I had never felt hopelessness until that day in Brooklyn. I had never known depression or futility because I was a runner. I ran from all pain and had no idea the constant sorrow I was living, not really. I drank every day. I drank every single day. I would hide it, envy those who could admit and joke about their hangovers; the shame I felt was insurmountable about my alcohol abuse and to my friends, their “long night” once in a while was a fucking joke. A fucking laugh. And I’m waking up with no recollection of how I ended up on a train in Queens at the end of the line, in a skirt, at 7AM, Alone. And they’re laughing cause they peed off a subway platform or hit on bartender, and I’m making sure I wasn’t raped or robbed—and that was a better morning.

WORTHLESSNESS unHEARD

I thank God I had no idea how bad I was, how little I thought of myself, that I couldn’t hear it. I thank God, that I could not see the horrors and atrocities I was committing against myself, against my body, my inner child, my psyche. I thank God it took so long to erode my precious hope past the points that were probably the most horrific, because if I could hear my body’s actual cry during those times, if I could have heard the thoughts and hateful tape playing in me to me, I may have well died. So I’m grateful that when I NEEDED IT to be there, HOPE FUCKING WAS THERE just before it was really too late. I’m a lucky one though. I had just enough juice in the tank, even if it was just six percent, Hope showed up that one night.

In seven days I’ll be two years sober and I can count on two hands the pits of despair I have experienced. And I want to share with everyone, that that is A LOT for me, A LOT OF TIMES TO FEEL THE WORTHLESSNESS creep up and be at those audible numbers of 75 percent or higher of self-defeat. The difference now, the reason why I’m writing this story is because I want to tell everyone that sobriety has not made me invulnerable to hurt or healed or scabbed me over, it has allowed me to Love me. It has allowed me to feel hopelessness and despair and take their hands and give these feelings, these high percentages, air time. That’s how we hydrate hopelessness—we be with it. This is Hope’s water— being with the darkness, accepting it, naming it and taking time to listen to its gifts of stillness and abandoned or lost connection, that is the stuff, that’s the replenishing nature of the waterfalls of our hearts cleansing themselves. Waterfalls purify through the drop, the great splashing about must be to clean the stream. If we can’t allow for the waterfall, the water will still and sour. Self-love, real Love, springs from this well and waterfall of connection to ourselves. Drugs and alcohol, and sex and porn, and people and stuff and distorted success don’t hydrate hopelessness, they add to it. When we scatter our energy using these coping mechanisms, we’re giving away our precious flow that is meant to churn in us to clarify its waters. The stuff we use to regulate instead of our own inside-stuffs, spike our hopelessness numbers and confuse the natural replenishing system that allows for all ways of being.

TERROR FLAVORED HOPE

I have felt a more clear despair in sobriety than in any time of alcohol induced terror I had created in my life because I’m present for it. As much as possible I don’t scatter it away for fear it will eat me alive. I don’t always know how Love can be of medicine to these wild feelings of loss and fear, but I know the feelings pass, I know what I can do around these episodes, as a sort of preemptive way to lower my fucking harsh numbers. And I now know, that when these HUMONGOUS desperate feelings arise, they are just the ego breaking new ground, stretching itself away from the clinging on to stuff and substances for relief. The feelings are not me, they’re a spike in the numbers, they’re regulating a system that will hiccup now and again to recalibrate to a new level of well being and peace.

Sobriety brings peace and terror, both can occur on the way to equilibrium; that’s what groups and mentors and friends and sponsors and family and community and tribe are for—they lower our numbers and increase our capacity— our emotional well. My well and waterfall are only so big alone, they are twice the size with another compassionate human’s container right there with me.

DO WHAT YOU CAN AND DON'T DO IT ALONE—ALONE AIN'T NATURAL

So, when in despair, when the numbers get high, drink Hope. Hope is space, hope is support, hope is just looking into some human’s (any human’s!) eyes and saying ‘hello’ before you go abandoning the amazing and outrageously human feelings you think you can’t be with that are actually letting you know how much you can be with them, all of them. I’m truly beginning to see that the more wild my despair, the more unequivocally wild my joy, depth, connection with myself and therefore connection with others, actually becomes. If six percent hope left can save my fucking shit storm life, then it might save you too. Just keep it in mind and ask me about it. Ask anyone about it who’s been through the renouncing of substances and processes they once clung to; and tell everyone how much you hurt, let’s widen each other’s net. Let’s hold everything and care about our pain and stop running and drinking and fucking every uncomfortable thing away. Let’s talk. Let’s say ‘hey’ before we run, just check in, do what we have to do to stay alive, but know, we’re put here to heal each other and shrink the gap between what we think is possible to hold and what actually is possible... hint: the latter is infinite when we’re all in the room, arms outstretched, minds quiet, hearts on the floor, teaching one another how to Love ourselves first—together.

Until next time fellow humans!

I love you,

Thank you.

KB

addiction
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About the Creator

Katie Burke

“Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as you ever can.”

—John Wesley

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