Claiming My Voice: From the darkness, the light emerges.

Yes, sure I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. I have also been diagnosed with depression and bipolar (although when I was diagnosed bipolar, it was still called manic-depressive so that may say something). I have two parents that both had problems with alcohol: neither of them ever did anything to recover from it, in fact one of them died of alcohol/drug overdose. I have been raped. I had a gramma who coddled me, a sister who loves me, a brother who I also think adores me but can’t show it. I think I have higher than average intelligence and teachers gushed over me. Bosses give me raises and praise. I’m pretty funny (if I do say so myself) and I can fix most small appliances in my house and am pretty clever.

And I lack the ability to form true partnerships with friends and lovers.

I have reasons to be messed up and reasons to not.

Sure, we could point at so many outer things and say, “yep, that is why she is messed up…that is why she seems unhappy.” But I can look back at my life and I can see that life was challenging for me from the gate. Then normal life things happened and I just didn’t have the tools to cope with them. For example, I remember my friend skinning her knee and my gramma making a big fuss over her, and I could have sworn that I had skinned my knee the week before and gramma had basically told me to stop crying. I don’t know if that is the truth but that is the memory I have of it and I was deeply saddened because it felt like gramma didn’t care as much about me as she did the other girl. I can remember feeling like folks just never really treated me in the manner to which my feelings thought they should. I often felt like I was getting too much attention or not enough. I think I was born with a broken feelings meter.

So then I hit my teen years and those feelings got even more wacky as my hormones spiked this way and that! I remember my first drunk so clearly: It was heaven! I was no longer too tall, too smart, too weird…I was not not enough, not a stranger. I fit. I felt OK. My feelings were not out of control. People seemed to like me and I didn’t feel insecure around them. So of course I drank again. Of course I did. Then came drugs and sex and lots of other things that helped take the edge off all my extreme feelings.

You may be asking yourself why I think my feelings are extreme or different than others. Let me be clear…I know there are others like me. I am not all that unique. But I also can look around and there are lots of other people on the planet that seem to have either control over their feelings or they seem to be able to cope with the feelings they have. Let me give you and example. As teenagers, most of us start dating. Then usually, at some point, the person we are dating breaks it off and we have to figure out how we feel about being broken up with. The first boy who broke up with me, I was fine. His name was Greg (that was his real name…not protecting him because we are good – I think 😉 ). He told me the truth and I understood and we moved on. The next boy who broke up with me, I lost my shit. I decided that I was the most worthless piece of dirt and no one would ever love me, and I tried to commit suicide for the first time. Even during this, I watched my peers. Most of them were dating, breaking up and moving on. They seemed to simply understand that this was all part of the process and moved on to the next person. Part of my despair was that I couldn’t understand how each of them moved on and I couldn’t.

So I think the crux of my problem is not the alcohol or the drugs and its definitely not the boys or my upbringing. The crux is these feelings. Luckily, with age and a fellowship of like folks and a program that helps me sort of manage these feelings, I can get by without my feelings owning me the way they have in the past. Make no mistake. My feelings still own me. Today I am glad of it. I am sensitive and that’s OK. They make me creative and loving and empathetic. I am usually grateful that I feel deeply. Sometimes I stuff my feelings but they always come out in the end.

If I had my druthers, we all would get to have and feel all our feelings. Contrary to when I was in my 20s and worked so very hard to push them down and cover them, today I embrace them. If you see me out there being unhappy, know I’m just having a feeling. If you see me out there laughing and dancing and I look happy, I’m having that feeling too. Neither is better or worse than the next. They all just are. And yep, mine are particularly big. Are yours? Sometimes? I hope so. Feelings are fabulous!