Aftermath and Another Rock Bottom: Part One

The weeks that followed were definitely not easy and I tried to hold it together as much as I could, after all I am a strong person and I didn’t want others to see my pain. Yeah, I have issues with vulnerability, but I’m working on it, hence pouring myself out in this blog. I’ve never done anything like this before or trusted myself to be so open, but I have come to a point in my life where I know I have some definite things I need to change or develop. The emotions here are hard to put down on paper and even harder to let the outside world see, but I hope that maybe I can help at least one person know they are not alone in this world with some of the things they may feel or experience. While I always say that I’ve not done something that at least one other person, or a thousand, or a million, haven’t done before, but all in all, my set of experiences in the order that they happened, the emotions that were felt, the time in my life they occurred, and so much more, all of those make them unique to me.  This post is inherently hard to write about because it deals with something I’ve struggled with since I was ten years old and in the fifth grade: suicide.

While I took a week plus a day off of work after my return from the backpacking trip and sudden, heartbreaking conclusion to my relationship, I still came back two weeks early simply stating to most people that the backpacking trip just didn’t work out at this time, it wasn’t a lie. There were only a handful of people within my department that I told about what had happened, mostly because they were people I worked with on a daily basis and would notice a change in my demeanor in addition to asking about how my trip went. I tried to go about work and life as best as possible, after all, I work with a K9 and we are taught very early on in our training that our emotions go straight down the leash, hence affecting the dog’s ability to work at their best. This was also another reason why I initially took a few extra days off; I simply couldn’t keep my shit together to feel ok working with my dog. I went to visit her in the boarding facility she’s required to live in after nine days of being apart, it was the longest we had been apart in the more than two years of being partners.

That day I had gone to relieve some of my anger and frustration at some local batting cages and her kennel was only a couple blocks away, in fact, where the batting cages are located was along part of our morning jogging route, so I thought ‘I should at least stop by and visit her,’ even though we weren’t going back to work for another five days. She was beside herself with emotion when she realized I was there, she was jumping up and down repeatedly and couldn’t stop looking back at me as I lead her out to the play yard with that look her eyes of ‘you’re really here?! You didn’t leave me forever, I thought you did!’ it made tears well in my eyes at how excited she was, and I just stayed with her until she was able to relax and calm down after we played together in the play yard the kennel has on site. She’s the kind of dog that likes you to hold her paw when you’re sitting next to her, something I refer to as ‘you want to hold hands?’ and we held hands for a number of minutes before I departed her that day. Sometimes holding hands with your dog can help a lot.

No matter what my day was like on any given day, I constantly felt on edge and on the brink of tears, but I was really comforting to find how many people were there for me in those following weeks and months. Since him and the kids were now moved out, it was time for me to find roommates as to better afford my new house. One of my former roommates I’d lived with at the previous house ended up having a living situation that didn’t work out, so he asked if I had still had a room available. Well, it just so happened that sadly, I now had three available and yes, he could have his choice as to which room he would like.

That next weekend, my mom and her fiancé Bob came down to visit, be there for me, and also knock out a couple home projects on my endless list of things that need to get done around here. When the house was in escrow, it was found that subterranean termites were present and had done some damage to a few floorboards. It was also found that there were two leaks in some of the piping underneath the house that needed to be fixed before the property could be treated for the pests, so the three of us set forth to fix the problem areas so I could have the place treated. Bob is a general contractor by trade and is skilled in a number of these home improvement areas, so with his guidance and expertise, we fixed the two leaks and ran a waterline from the sink, underneath the house, and to the refrigerator in that weekend. We also attended the birthday party to a little girl who is super precious to me and, while I was there to see her in the hospital the day she was born, I had been unable to attend her birthday party the two years prior.

 When Morgan turned one, I was in Georgia training with the USDA for my job as a K9 handler and for her second birthday I had the difficult decision of choosing between her birthday party, my best friend from junior high’s bridal shower, or my uncle’s 75^th birthday party out of town, and I choose the latter. This year I hadn’t anticipated being able to attend her party once again since I was supposed to be deep into my hiking adventure by this time, yet due to circumstances changing, this year I’d be able to attend! I had already purchased her present long beforehand (a Frozen tea set and her request) that I had anticipated giving her after I returned from my trip, yet now I got to see her unwrap it in front of everyone! Morgan said ‘oh my gosh!!’ after she tore that wrapping paper off and showed everyone who was in the adoring crowd what ‘Auntie Sami’ got her. It was nice to see the excitement on her face and be able to be amongst people who were there for me in such a vulnerable and rough time that weekend.

 That next week, I went to work and the regular motions of life, then that Thursday my cousin Heather came to visit me with her son, River, who was just shy of four years old. They spent a couple nights here and it was nice having them here so I wasn’t so alone in this big house during this tough time. Meanwhile Cody, my former roommate, started moving his things in to occupy his room the following week.

I remained sober during this whole time which, quite honestly, was a shock all on its own. There have been plenty of times where it took a whole lot less for me to turn back to the bottle, even times where there was really nothing going bad at all and I ‘just felt like it.’ The people closest to me kept reminding me how strong I was, how proud of me they were, and I at times couldn’t help but feel the same about myself. Honestly, I didn’t even want to drink, I actually don’t even know what I wanted, besides just wanting this pain to go away. It still didn’t feel real, to this day, there are times where it still doesn’t and it’s hard to wrap my head around. I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how much time goes by, I’ll never fully grasp what happened or why, and I never will. I feel I will struggle with this for an endless amount of time. I know it wasn’t and isn’t me, it is him and something within him, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me want to or feel like turning it back upon myself.

 Being sober gave me more clarity, but it also had the crazy, obvious effect of having to deal with myself and my emotions, something I often try to mask or run from. Dealing with me and how I felt about myself became the worst part of all of this. Although I had people around me or within a phone call’s reach to support me and talk to, I felt like I was a lone planet. I was being told that I was doing good and all, but inside I felt like complete mess, an eruption. I had been in a few failed relationships in the past, but none of them had affected me in this way or had such a dramatic impact. None of them had been going so seemingly well and felt so right, to then by disrupted and ended in such an unexplainable way. But besides all of that, I was faced with dealing with me, and well, I have never been my own biggest fan. I am my number one worst enemy, I am horrible to myself. This period was no different than the rest, and it only was getting worse.

One day I had an unexpected breakdown at work. Sure, I would talk to my coworker friend Amanda all the time these days since we had been through similar situations in our relationships, which is the main reason why I let her in on all of this to begin with, but did I expect a simple conversation to turn into a meltdown? Absolutely not! We were having one of our ‘real talk’ conversations and quite honestly, I thought I was doing better at this point and getting over the tears in all of this, but it became quite apparent that I was nowhere near that point . She asked me a seemingly easy question to which I became teary eyed, then the tears began to slowly fall. A customer came in that needed some direction, so I retreated to our main office’s breakroom to give myself a minute, but things only went south from there. Suddenly I found myself in uncontrollable tears, so I quickly escaped with my K9 in tow. I began to ball uncontrollably, there was no way I was going back to my office to have my coworkers see me like this! I took my dog to the back of our building where seemingly no one would ever drive by, let my legs collapse, and I let it all out. When I cry hard, I cry HARD! I get to a point where I can’t breathe very well and talking is out of the question, it’s quite embarrassing. I get the residual sniffles for hours where I could be talking and have that sudden ‘hmmp hmmp’ breathe in moment, giving away my emotional state quite easily.

My dog was so sympathetic during this utter emotional breakdown at our place of work; she just sat with me and would give me her paw, again simply wanting to ‘hold hands.’  She started lightly panting in the stress of my stress, but moved closer to me offering her body for me to cuddle with in support. She’s such a good dog. She was patient, she was kind. Then suddenly a coworker drove by unexpectedly, no one typically drives through this area I was crouched down in wallowing in my seemingly endless tears. It was one of my former assistants in the high risk program; she’d been working in our pesticide division now for a few months and was heading out for an inspection. She stopped to ask if I was ok and I tried to pretend like I was but there was no hiding my emotions. I told her through broken sobs that I was “just having…*sob sob*…a really hard…*sob sob*…time right now…*sob sob*…” to which she started to cry with heartfelt emotion for me, hence making me feel worse, I just tried to suck it up.

I couldn’t keep it together that day. I returned to my office a couple times just to fall back into a flood of tears that seemed to be unprovoked, but of course they weren’t. I finally jumped on my stationary bike that I typical ride at lunch and that was able to stunt my tears for the rest of the work day.  

I had initially intended on starting this blog as a celebration of 100 days without booze, but quite obviously that didn’t happen. I’m a procrastinator, what can I say. I wanted this blog to be about my sobriety and the continuing of that, it’s struggles, etc etc. This was my plan, but the break up most definitely was not, and hey, that threw a wrench this this gig. No, it’s not the only excuse, but it’s not a bad one.  But I did hit 100 days of sobriety, and more, before I fell to a new, but similar rock bottom.

Being sober makes you deal with yourself, every day, and now I am alone. He was totally supportive of my decision to stop drinking, he was there for me, and even before all of this, I had not been in a good place, he knew that, I told him. I had admitted that there was a part of me that didn’t’ even want to come back from the trail; I just wanted to disappear, never to return. I admitted things to him that I don’t trust to tell anyone and I trusted to tell him, and he threw it out like it meant nothing. I admitted some of my personal struggles, he acted supportive, he said he would be there, he said he loved me, but that didn’t stand up.

This entry became longer then I expected, so to be continued...