THE ABYSS

February has not been particularly kind to me so I’ve found myself absent from the blogosphere in more ways than one! Pretty much up until today, I’ve been filled with an overwhelming amount of apathy and everything that tends to accompany these feelings of nothingness. Every so often I find myself in this exact same place, and I never really can identify specifically what brought me here. All that I do seem to know is this ever present and all pervasive kind of sadness. Seems to drape itself around my shoulders and until it decides to loosen its grip, I’m left feeling incredibly defenseless and vulnerable. Funny thing is that I also have a near impossible time identifying why suddenly one day, this feeling somehow no longer exists, having vanished completely into thin air. I rarely, if ever, even speak of my blue moments as I tend to be embarrassed if I show any sort of weakness. I know, I know, this is the farthest thing imaginable from logic, and yet, it is a habit that I’ve managed to develop over the years. It is also a habit that is particularly hard to break. I think that this may be wrapped up with my issues dealing with having to be a near perfectionist in anything that I try or do. When you’re a perfectionist, one of the hardest things to do is allow others to see any potential weaknesses that could possibly be used against you. OK, sounding more and more like a junky with each and every word typed…Paranoid much? Once a…always a…

So, moving right along now…Regardless of what precipitated these feelings, by the beginning of this month, I was well on my way to feeling deeply buried by them. Normally once I get to this stage, one of two things generally happen. I either become near manic in my behavior, starting - and most often finishing - any number of projects. If I am not knee deep this hyper mania, then I am most likely lethargic beyond belief with no amount of sleep seeming to alleviate this never ending tiredness. I could remain in bed for any number of weeks if I allow myself to indulge my pity party any more than I realistically should. Self absorption much? No, not really, but when I am, I more than make up for this that’s for bloody sure. Thank goodness for my Jim as he is not only extremely patient and tolerant of these moods, but he is my map back to reality, without wounding or hurting my already fragile state. He always allows me a reasonable period of time for me to indulge myself properly, but once this time has passed, he reigns me in tout suite! He rarely has difficulty identifying what seems to have triggered these moods, nor does he have any problems identifying what needs to be done to get me out of my funk.

This time, and I suspect most of my other times, he attributed to plain, old fashioned boredom. He’s most likely correct, although blaming solely boredom is just a bit too simplistic in my opinion. Actually, once I had managed to shrug off my mantle of lethargy, I returned to reading my favorite blogs and one recent entry at The Australian Heroin Diaries certainly identified a large component of what I seemed to be struggling with in this entry. Even though I have been drug free for near three years this time, I definitely seem to be suffering from the loss of interest in normal activities and interests/hobbies. It’s not so much this loss that troubles me in the end, but the fear that this could be a permanent state of mind, something that I may never be able to recover from. Perhaps this is simply one of the prices that we are forced to pay as a result of our years of uncontrollable and selfish substance abuse with no thought or regard to potential consequences because of our actions. It certainly would be justly deserved, although not remotely welcome. The horrific part of all of this is that I know that I wouldn’t have changed my previous behavior even fully aware of what the end result would be. How selfish is that!?!

Anyway, all that I really wanted to accomplish with this post was to give all a heads up, and to calm any worriers out there. Yes I was MIA longer than I should have been, especially as I didn’t even bother to post so much as a simple I’m alive post. Truly, bloody selfish indeed. To make amends then, I shall bore each and everyone with constant and multiple updates, so many, your heads may actually start to spin!