There was a time in my life I felt like I was being buried alive.
I couldn’t function in relationships, in work, in my body, in my life.
My only concern was to blot out the agonizing feeling of simply being alive. The daily struggle to keep trauma-related memories locked down and out of mind is exhausting and I wanted to rest.
With addiction I was continually like a rat in a maze trying to capture the very first time I ever had that first hit.
If trauma makes a person question their life purpose, heroin addiction comes in and strips any remaining meaning.
Trauma creates a hole in your memory and so does addiction.
In many ways, I was retraumatizing myself with dope. Reenacting the loss, the chase of joy, the terrible isolation , the unending suffering of my childhood.
Living in fear. Terrified no one will come, yet terrified someone will. No relief, just fear and dread. No sense of control and a profound sense of isolation.
That was my life… from the moment I remember it until many years after I got clean.
But today, I am not living in fear. I am living in hope. And grace. My days can still be hard… but the hardest day now is nothing compared to my easiest day then.
🤍B