Lemons into Lemonade

I am a rampant procrastinator. I have watched this whole day go by without accomplishing the things I set out to do today. I believe there us only one cure for this: self strength.

Self strength is a new concept I’ve thought about as being better than self reliance or self will, but more like something that’s got to come from within myself to win this battle over my laziness and procrastination. The truth of the matter is all I want to do is sleep, and that funk I’m in has become a daily thing. How do I get out of it? Self strength. Basically pulling myself up by my own hair and forcing me to get up and out of bed and do what I’m supposed to do.

Self strength will be my new mantra and how I can turn these lemons in my life to lemonade.

How do you find your self strength? I would love to know.

Stay tuned.

Reading a Damn Good Book While The Rain Falls…..

What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?

One of the things I have missed out on the past twenty years is reading, I mean really reading, like a novel. Paperback. Hard Cover. Eff this staring at a tablet or screen nonsense! I mean actually smelling the pages. Turning the pages and savoring every moment.

Out of all the things I am grateful for that happened while being jailed for 10 months, was the opportunity to read a total of 43 books. I read almost a book every few days and I loved every minute of it. Being in this rehab afforded me that luxury too. Since we weren’t allowed phones or the internet, I got to read even more books; getting to know authors like Nora Roberts and Lee Child. These opportunities brought me peace and excitement I hadn’t had in a long time – and even now that I have my phone again and television, I find myself resorting back to the paperback books that are at my disposal.

But the best? The ABSOLUTE BEST is reading during a thunderstorm. I have found so much peace listening to the rainfall and engrossing myself in a good book. It is my favorite pastime so far.

Do you like to read during a good rainstorm too?

I would love to know.

Stay tuned.

In the Heat of the Moment – “She’s a Runner, She’s a Trackstar”

Do you jump to conclusions easily? Do you have a knee-jerk reaction to confrontation? Are you a runner when things get tough? I epitomize the word “runner,” in so many ways that I have to laugh every time I hear the song: “She’s a runner, she’s a track star,’ lol. Things got really tough at this program last Friday, and just as usual I’m out the door. Something definitely has to be done about it.

My dad was very violent and had that knee-jerk reaction too. I grew up in a very abusive household, so I ran every chance I could and that same behavior is showing up in my life today. When I was using a ton of drugs with my husband last year, I used to constantly try to run from him by opening the car door while he was driving, and even ended up jumping out of the moving car onto the highway. Needless to say, I have a very dangerous pattern.

Out of all the character defects, (that’s what they call it in recovery), this runner syndrome seems to be the hardest to shake. When I am down, I am really down, and my depression takes me to a place where running seems like the only option. God, however, had plans for me to sit my ass down this time because no matter how much I’ve wanted to run since I’ve been here, the court system made sure I stayed put. Being mandated here has been the best blessing that could have been bestowed upon me, even though I fought it all the way and absolutely thought it was a curse.

What do you do in the heat of the moment? Do you run? Or do you face things head-on like I wish I could do?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Stay tuned.

Love. The Battle. The Dagger. The Perseverance.

I was reading one of my other blogs from a few years ago, and couldn’t help but feel sorry for the person I used to be. Love finally made it into my life, and even though it is at a great cost, years ago I would have killed to just have had the opportunity to experience it. There was a post of mine called “The Dagger” in which I glorified what it would have been like to kill myself with a knife – needless to say it was a very dark time in my life.

The Dagger

Posted on February 10, 2015 by unchainedsoul

Plunging in my heart.   I am here again.  Loving so hard and so fast that I want to die. Bipolar.  Pills.  Do I go to my psychiatrist and tell him to give me something else?  Or do I fight through this?  Feel it.  All of it.  I want to be taken.  Off this Earth.  It’s the same old story.  So much pain.  What is this?  Why does it hurt so bad?  Feel it.  Feel all of it.  Let it kill me.  Let it consume me.  Feel it.  Like a dagger.  Like a dagger.

Want to be better.  Don’t want this.  I am envious of people that don’t feel.  Live life through their texting, Facebook, and laughter.  Marriage, children, and careers, and I am left behind.  Can I have all those things?  Where am I in this life?  35 years, 10 years in total darkness.  Sex, alcohol.  Drowning in pills.  Like a dagger.  Time, sneaking up on me.  Like a predator stalking me.  Why does he have teeth?  Why is he biting down upon me?  Take me from this life.  This hell.  Do I find Jesus? Will he be my salvation if I turn to him?  I am too far gone into my hell to find him.  Like a dagger.  Take me, aliens.  Take me up, change my brain.  Show me what I am capable of.  Make me an artist.  Make me something more than myself.  I feel like nothing.  Drowning.  More pills.  Bipolar.  Fuck.  Just take me and kill me.

Pretty deep huh?

Even though I have been feeling down in the dumps lately, my life is so much brighter today. I battle with my bipolar disorder and the highs and lows that come with it, but my medication is on point and my CPAP machine helps me with restful sleep. I do feel tired though, and I chalk it up to just being sick the past week. I am noticing that I am dramatizing my life a lot more than it is or it should be. Not everything is a meltdown, and not everything is a travesty.

Perseverance comes through the strength of the spirit, and I have just been spiritually sick these days. My trust in God has wavered, and I feel like I have been losing my way. I have to be vigilant in my fight against the Devil – he’s telling me that I am going to fail, he’s telling me I am ugly, and he’s telling me I will never see my husband again. My fault is I have been listening to these horrible thoughts in my head. We know we shouldn’t listen to that “voice,” but we do every time.

I am coming home to the realization that I am going to be okay. I may not have a high-powered career like I used to, and make all kinds of money like I did in New York, but maybe being a Peer Support Specialist won’t be a bad alternative. I go to this place called NC Works tomorrow to talk about what options I would have for a career since my mugshot is plastered all over the internet and no employer will ever hire me. There I go again, thinking extreme.

It’s a vicious cycle, isn’t it? How on Earth do we break it?

Faith. Perseverance. Strength. Hope.

Love for myself.

Stay Tuned

The End Goal is Near And I am Self-Sabotaging

Did you almost complete something? Have you always started things and never finished them? Have you always quit before seeing it through? This is me, and where I am at today. I was in jail for 10 months in 2021, and I remember the staff telling me, “well you need to go to a program for another 12-15 months.” My world imploded because I thought I could get out on probation.

Well, it’s 12 months later and I haven’t learned anything. I still feel my old self coming through with the same old negative behaviors. I put up a good front, as if I got it and I have it all together, but inside I am dying. I am screaming at the top of my lungs inside my heart and no one can hear me. I am almost at the end of this program and I feel like I am going to screw up and throw it all away.

I am suffering. I miss my husband dearly. We are separated by the system right now where he is in a hospital and I am in this rehab. On Sunday, when I visited him they wouldn’t let me kiss or hold him, and I wanted to die. This is so hard. I keep asking God why this happened to us – and then I realize we did it to ourselves. We drugged, we partied, we thought we were above the law, and now the consequences are so severe we may never recover.

I can’t go on like this. I feel completely ungrateful. I am underserving of all the good that has come out of this program as I am rebuilding my life. Why am I so unhappy? I know why. Because my whole life all I have ever wanted was to be in love. And now, it comes with a terrible price. I am so upset in my heart, I feel like I don’t want to go on even though things are moving in the direction that they should. I keep hearing that “it’s all in His Timing,” but I am tired of being miserable. What’s worse is I can’t even pray anymore because I don’t even believe.

I am trying my best, but I feel lost. I am almost through with this program and I feel like I have a high school senior’s sickness. I am ready to run out the door and go back to jail – why would I even do such a stupid thing? Because I’m bipolar and my highs and lows are so severe I can’t make heads or tails out of it.

If there is a God, please see me through this month, please.

Or at least hold my hand till the end of the day. Please.

Just please someone help me.

Stay tuned.

What It’s Like Being a Model Citizen to Jails and Institutions

This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I played it straight and arrow for 40 years. Then a man came into my life with promises of adventure, love, and mayhem that was too good to pass up. Sometimes I wonder why I did what I did or why I just went along for the ride.

I’ve looked at some of my other posts from earlier years and seen what a good writer I used to be. The zeal for being creative and original isn’t as appealing as it used to be. I’ve lost my streak and my muse, much like how I lost my soul on the floor of that jail cell last year. Never had I imagined the horrors that I’ve gone through or the pain I put my family through – because it all was, in essence, for Love.

I’ve loved before in my life, but never like this. I watched myself become a drug addict and a convict overnight all because I followed someone down this path. But it was my choice too, I am not going to dodge the responsibility, it’s the least I could do for myself. I feel like a sorry individual who is just scraping by. I am in a homeless shelter now, which feels like the worst of the worst, and I can’t wait to be out of here. I have been here for almost a year, and in jail for almost a year. All these institutions are driving me crazy – I used to be an executive in New York for Christ’s sake – how did it ever get to this.

I am spinning down this crucible, and it feels like it is never-ending. The bottom is bottomless, and the sky is hard to see. My sanity is barely holding on because I think another bipolar meltdown coming on any day now. I have been sick lately too which doesn’t help, but I think it’s mostly me being sick and tired of being sick and tired.

God help me through this. I have had enough of these places, these rules, and these stipulations. I just want to be free.

I just want to be free,

Stay Tuned.

Jail, Institutions and Death

To the Future

So, to anyone in recovery, we know those terms. I am in a rehab now, and on the rare opportunity that I have a chance to sit at a computer and write down my feelings, I’m going to take it. I’ve just been in jail, now I’m in another institution, I’ve been in so many mental hospitals, when does it end?

I had a good career, I have a husband, I relocated from New York to North Carolina during the pandemic; I thought this was it, my big break – but no, it was my downfall instead.

I am in this rehab, and everyday I want to leave. My sentence is 9 more months in this place and I want to die. I thought I would be able to make it here, but it’s hard. I want to go home. You guys don’t know how lucky you are to be able to blog and share – this was my outlet for so long, and now I have nothing to help me, really, through my struggles.

AA is helpful though. At first, the meetings were hard to stomach, a lot of sharing on topics that bored me; so much so that I would snore at meetings, (nice people tap me on my knee or shoulder to wake me up), but I think I am coming around to the whole idea of it. Will I attend meetings after I leave here? I honestly don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know how I am going to make it through my 4th step that I am working on with my sponsor.

Where do I go from here? Everyday is a girt I just want to regift back to God, I swear it’s true even though that may sound terrible. I am miserable in my skin. I didn’t want my life to turn out like this. My husband is in a mental hospital straight out of jail, I am in this rehab straight out of jail and it seems God deems to separate us for going on two years now. Hoe is this possible? I am grateful that I get to talk to him on the phone, and my parents did take me to visit him so I got a kiss. (YAY), but other than that, husband and wife are doomed apart for at least another year.

Jail, institutions and death – how close I have come to that last one this go around. I have always been on the outskirts – my crazy bipolar takes me just so far, but the crack and cocaine took me to jail. I am lucky to be alive after all that happened, all the poisons I put in my body, but I know for a fact that God has a purpose for me. What it is, and what it will be is hidden to me for now, but just for now. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Stay tuned.

Focused Despite a Pandemic, Bipolar, Addiction, Relationships, and Uncertainty

steps Those are the concrete steps I fell in a freefall backward, in which I could have died by breaking my neck. How I survived that fall with just some stitches on my head and a broken wrist, I shall never know. Of course, we all know the culprit – alcohol, which is ridiculously accessible during these times – even delivered to your door via the Drizzly app. An interesting thing isn’t it – that such a deadly substance is obtained so easily now, and many, many people are drowning their sorrows in it, especially for those of us losing certain unemployment benefits as of this week.

But that’s not the reason for my post today.

I was supposed to get married a week before that fall down those steps, and my parents and my fiance’s parents being what they are, canceled our wedding in some sort of punishment as if we are both teenagers recklessly in love. There is some truth to the reckless love part – we have almost nothing in common, except of course music – which unites us in a way 90’s R&B and rap songs usually do – it brings us back to a time in our life when things were simpler, more comfortable and just made sense.

I have spent a good portion of my life looking for true love. There were times in my life I thought I have felt it, but this man, the one I am going to marry, makes me feel the love so deeply that it moves me to tears even as I type. Our primary common bond is, of course, mental illness, in which certain parts of it come out of both of us, bad and good.

He hears voices and conversations and has delusions I try and cope with and understand, while he deals with my constant yelling and flip-flop moods of this horrible bipolar. We are hardly the perfect match, but the abundance of love that comes from the both of us to each other is undeniable – oh and as a bonus, two people who have incredibly vibrant mental illness issues have, without a doubt, the best sex life on the planet, at least for me it is.

But besides the sex, which is explosive and out of this world, on top of all things, I picked up a drug habit that I share with him now. I explained a little bit about this in my last post, and, ironically, I spent my entire life avoiding hard drugs and now I am a full-blown addict on top of my bipolar disorder. I have kept it quiet, of course, not broadcasting it on social media or even to any of my friends, but I know this drug addiction is killing our relationship. All of our fights, and I do mean all of them, have been around this habit – either fighting about money to get it, or the fact that he sits there and watches hours of porn in front of me as we do it together, (I won’t even go into how many fights there were about that one), it’s just the fact that I don’t want to do the drug anymore.

There is something to be said about incarceration or, in my case, 10 months in a psychiatric hospital. I spent most of 2018 and 2019 in a hospital (this happened twice), and honestly, I believe it cured me of any addiction I have ever had. I had a bad alcohol addiction most of my life – mostly, which I blame my violent, drunk father for (like father like daughter apparently), but I was really cured of it before I met my fiance.

Experimenting with cocaine has been an invigorating experience, and when I got the chance to mix it with both Vicodin and alcohol, suffice to say, I was hooked. That freefall came from a night of coke and alcohol, both of which the Emergency Room found in my blood, but luckily my landlord only knew about the drinking when he called my parents – (oh yeah, the cops were called, and they thought my fiance pushed me down the stairs, and my landlord threatened to kick us out).

After that incident, I haven’t touched an ounce of liquor, but I have been drowning more and more down the cocaine drain. And when we do it together, we’re okay for a while, then the worst comes out in both of us when we want more, and we just don’t have the money for it. I am currently negative $377.00 in my account due to the last binge, with rent due in a week or so. My fiance is working delivering pizzas with my car, which I can’t afford the payments on either, and we plan on getting high tonight, or at least he wants to, and I feel almost forced because I need some sort of pick-me-up.

This vicious cycle goes on and on, with every binge we break each other’s hearts, and I don’t know if it’s the fact that he has nowhere to go and I have nowhere to go that we stay together. We are so co-dependent; and we are both abusive – me calling him a worthless piece of shit and a loser, and telling him that I hate his guts – to him calling me an ugly whore and on and on. I have never been in such a volatile relationship, but we hang on to each other tightly because we know each other’s “crazy” really well. I once told him, “my crazy knows your crazy” because it really does.

I don’t know what will come of this – all I know is we hide this from everyone, employers, parents, friends, family, and landlord – and when we do it, we always want more, it’s never ever enough.

All I know is I’m trapped, and I am screaming on the inside every day. The cocaine brings me high and makes me incredibly focused, something I think rich people get off on; that’s why they are so successful, I mean stockbrokers are cranking in billions a year. But I know it’s my downfall and either my fiance or I am going to get really hurt – I mean I almost died down those steps so what’s next?

Probably death or jail.

Stay tuned

How the Mighty Have Fallen

anguish-d-rogale

I never wanted to date a drug addict – now I am marrying one in less than a month. I didn’t think things could get this bad, but if there is Hell on Earth, this is what it would be like. I’ve wanted 4 things all my life – and I wanted them so badly before I turned 40. I wanted a fantastic job, a brand new car, a lovely apartment, and a man who loved and adored me the way I wanted to be loved. What I realized was, God, gave me all these things before I turned 40, but with a “punishment clause.” God said, Lynn, I am going to provide you with your happiness and everything you dreamed about – but it will cost you your heart, your sanity, and your sobriety.

I am bipolar, and I am an alcoholic. Now, I am a crack and cocaine addict, thanks to my fiance. I tried it with him because I grew tired of fighting with him so much, crying every night, and watching my bank account shrink to almost nothing. After all, he was bullying me for money. So, I tried it. Now I want more. He is out there, driving around in my brand new car with the phone I gave him (that is currently turned off so I can’t call him). He is using me, he doesn’t respect me, and I don’t respect myself. I am drowning so far down that even when he hit me because I refused to give him money, I turned around and picked him up off the ground and gave him his money after someone hit him for hitting me. I never thought in a million years my life could be this bad – this horrible, where my insides burn in pain. We have everything – we have each other, now the drugs are in both our lives and I feel sick all the time.

Dear God, help me. I am not going to make it.

I honestly don’t want to leave him – what I really want to do is die. I don’t want to live no more really, because I have suffered so much in my life with men using me and this bipolar bullshit I just don’t want to do it anymore.

As the tears fall from my face as I type this, I will pray for this simple truth – in the world we live in today with all this disease and activism and death, could Jesus really hear us if we call out to him? Can he really save my wretched soul? I have so much talent and skill, my fiance is so smart and funny, why is it that there has to be so much suffering.

I don’t want to not wake up anymore – I don’t want to face tomorrow anymore. I don’t want to fight anymore. God gave me everything I ever wanted but ripped it all away at the same time. Who would want to live if that happened? If God gave you everything you ever dreamed of, that you prayed for years for through all your pain and misery – if he gave you all that you wished for when you were left for dead at the floor of a psych ward time and time again would you really want to live if he took it all away?

Wherever you are, God, I ask, I pray that you find me now before I take my life.

Stay tuned.

In Crisis – I Can’t Walk Away Because No One Else Ever Wanted Me.

Homeless adult male sitting in subway tunnel, hands on head

My self-esteem is at an all-time low. I have waited and dated miserably for over a decade for a man to come into my life who loves me completely – the only problem is he can’t beat his drug addiction.

I never wanted to date an addict – never – only because I know how hard that road is.  I had left my fiance when I was 19 due to his addiction and selling drugs, and I don’t know, it seemed easier to start over then. Everything seemed easier when I was younger. Now that I’m approaching 40, I have to say that dating had gotten so excruciatingly painful,  I honestly thought I would be spending the rest of my life alone. I don’t want to date, I don’t want to try, I don’t want to do anything anymore.

I really think I am falling into a depression. I am no prize either, I mean with my mental illness and my fat and ugly, pot-hole face and body, who the hell would want me? Am I going to stay in this relationship because I simply think I can’t get anybody else? I am so scared to be alone again that I am risking my overall mental health to be with this person. He can’t stop the drugs, I can’t stop loving him – two sides of this toxic coin that won’t stop spinning on the edge.

I feel like the whole world is rooting against me, I feel that God is punishing me for moving on from that ex-fiance whose heart I broke into a million pieces after he had gotten clean. What if I am not giving my current boyfriend the same chance I should have given that ex-fiance all those years ago? Is this a pattern that seems to have come full circle in my life?

I have been dying for love. My whole, damn life. I have never been loved like this before. Maybe it’s cause he’s an addict and is so desperate for love, that I find his desperation appealing. Maybe I am so damn desperate too, that I would believe anything he says.

I would love to walk away, say fuck it and let him deal with his own issues. But I can’t. I know things could be a whole lot worse because he could be an abuser, cheater or just downright misogynistic, but he’s not. He’s warm, loving, funny, and the man I want to marry, and who wants to marry me. But he can’t beat his addiction and my love isn’t enough. He just got out of rehab and hasn’t given himself a chance to be clean yet – they say it’s all about people, places and things, and I know his environment and the friends he hangs out with contributes to his weak resistance to his addiction.  I want to help him, I want to love him, but I feel so powerless that I can’t do anything for him.

Worst of all, I know everybody reading this will say, “just leave him,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s easy for ya’ll to judge me when you haven’t been in my shoes. I feel weak, pathetic and unworthy of a good man. I have been waiting my whole life to be loved the way he loves me, but unfortunately, he comes with his drug baggage that has destroyed my inner light inside.

I wish I could die.

This life is just too fucking hard.

Stay tuned.