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The Madness That Is My Life…..a blog about my life

~ The madness that is my life…my thoughts, feelings and experiences as I go through life

The Madness That Is My Life…..a blog about my life

Tag Archives: failure

Temporary release.

16 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by themadnessthatismylife in Emotions, Life, Uncategorized

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Tags

abuse, addict, addiction, drugs, failure, heroin, reality, recovery, relapse

Sometimes, when life is going swimmingly and everything is all right with the world I struggle to understand why anyone takes drugs. I especially cannot imagine why anyone who has been to hell and back through addiction would ever pick them back up again. You know what it’s like both sides of the line and you know that it is infinitly better on the drug free side.

And then something will happen, it may be something catastrophic, or it might be one small thing, that, pulled on top of all the other small things just makes you forget the negatives. And you remember why. It’s like a switch in the brain that wipes the times you just wanted to die because you’d had enough of addiction, the craving, of being sick and tired. It erases the feelings of withdrawal and the constant nagging that used to sit in your gut wondering where you were going to get your next hit from, and it is like someone got a highlighter pen, or hit “control+B” to emboldened only the memories of the good parts and greyed out the bad.

You remember the way that the skin pushed against the tip of the needle as you gently pushed it against the vein underneath. The push of resistance before it pierces the life of you. You remember the colour and rush of the blood as it forms a cyclone as you hit the right spot, drawing it into the barrel of the syringe. It’s almost branded on your brain; the feeling of anticipation as you move to push back plunger. As you turn the tide of the blood and begin to push the golden brown liquid into your body. Knowing, as only an addict can know the nothingness that will inevitably, slowly, if only temporarily, come.

Because every addict I’ve ever known has been someone who felt too deeply; who struggles to manage their own emotions. That’s one of the reasons they ended up addicted. The pull of absolution promised by the release from the struggles of life, is sometimes more than they can bear. So they turn back to the needle, to the quietness that they crave. To the almost irresistible feeling of momentary peace.

How many people can honestly say that they’ve never just wanted the world to go away and leave them the hell alone?

To know that you can not feel confused, scared, an emotional and physical wreck, and instead feel nothing is a hard knowledge to live with, because who wouldn’t, addict or not, occasionally just want release from all the pain stress and heartbreak of real life. As an addict you know better than anyone that that release is available. And that, unlike a lot of other solutions, it works. Once you know it’s possible, there’s nothing stopping you apart from fear of going back to addiction. And when you feel confused enough to be considering using, you probably aren’t in the right frame of mind to think that far ahead. You forget that one hit is too many and at the same time will never be enough.

So occasionally, not using, even after years of recovery, can be a life or death battle. And sometimes people don’t win it.

I’ve always been lucky enough to have people to pull me back from the brink. Who I can turn to to unload before I get to the stage that I’ve wiped out the memories of addiction and replaced them with thoughts of oblivion. And I’ve always managed to speak to them before I walked off the edge. Not everyone is that blessed.

So before you judge someone for relapsing, for turning back to drugs and all the turmoil that ensues, imagine that at your very lowest; if someone offered you a temporary release from all your problems, would you consider it? If only momentarily?

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Good enough.

10 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by themadnessthatismylife in Emotions, Motherhood

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Tags

failure, games, guilt, parent, perfect, playing, supermum

I kind of look back on my early childhood as being idyllic. When I was growing up, my Mum was extremely ill. Sometimes she would be in hospital for months at a time, leaving us in the care of my Dad, and when he was at work, my Nan. However when she wasn’t in hospital (and even when she was) she was the perfect Mum. She didn’t work and was a stay at home Mum, which meant that she was always there for us. She walked is to school, she picked us up (and there are a lot of us). She would even have hot orange and hot chocolate ready for us on cold winter days. She always had time for us.

My Dad worked shifts and so worked irregular patterns, we’d never know when he would be home, but when he was he was great fun. He’d play tricks on us, like the time my brother and I were in the bath upstairs and it was snowing outside so he climbed a ladder up to the bathroom window and threw snowballs at us in the bath. One Christmas he made santa’s foot prints all across the front room. He built us a house in the garden. Life was good. Life was fun.

So when I had my eldest, despite all of the odds, I decided that my son would have the best childhood ever. I was going to be supermum. He would never want for anything. I would fulfil his every need. High expectations, even for someone who isn’t an addict, but as I was one it was nigh on impossible.

In my plan of me as a parent, I was going to give my son all the attention in the world, I would take him to the park, I would play cars with him on the floor, I’d build forts, Lego, do painting. Only, it soon became clear that I really wasn’t that type of mother; I am terrible at playing make believe games in which the rules change constantly. I don’t have the patience to build Lego cities, and even if I did I’ve not got a creative bone in my body. Basically. I sucked at being Mum. I was left with an unending feeling of guilt. I was failing at something that I should be perfect at.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love him or do my best for him, I just couldn’t live up to my own expectations. I had set the bar too high. Life got in the way. My need to go out and earn money, to clean the house or cook dinner interrupted my perfect Mum plans and the guilt of my failure got in the way. My patience failed me.

Roll forward a few years, I’ve now got 3 beautiful boys, each and every one I adore and love with all my heart. I am still not the supermum I always imagined myself to be. I don’t hit my own expectations of a perfect parent. I shout when I shouldn’t. I snap at them and get annoyed if they interrupt me doing something. Sometimes, I send them to bed early just so I can get some peace. I don’t always read them a bedtime story. I have missed school plays and “first” moments, because I’ve had to work. I use the TV as a babysitter. I moan when they make a mess.

I beat myself up about it. I wish I could enjoy those make believe games, ignore the chaos they leave in their wake, but I don’t. It’s just not me. I can’t play computer games, I’m rubbish at them, I get frustrated and irritable, I’m not good at this parenting malarkey!

However I have learned something in the last few years. I don’t need to be supermum. I don’t need to be perfect. If I talk to my parents, they tell me of things they did when I was a child that made them feel failures. And do you know what? I don’t remember any of them. The times they got parenting wrong, I don’t even remember! I just remember the good stuff. The times they got it right. I talk to my eldest and he remembers the day trips we took, not the time I shouted at him because I was feeling ill and he wouldn’t leave me alone. The time I didn’t turn up to the school nativity play is forgotten but he does remember the harvest festival that I took the day off work to see. The good kind of outweighs the bad. Nothing I have done has been so bad that it has overshadowed the good.

I am not a perfect parent, I’m not even a near perfect parent. I will hopefully manage to bring my kids up without doing too much damage to them. I might not be perfect but I am a good enough parent, and sometimes that is all you can do.

2015/01/img_2788.jpg

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