Hopesick

I am not yesterday, I am today. I am reborn in each new sunrise. Yesterday was a warzone in my mind. So insignificant in history, it won’t be lectured about by scholars or printed in textbooks, but to me its a tape I replay, over and over.

"Why did I do that? Say that? What if I just stayed quiet? Did as I’m told?"

My body is ridden with shame like a disease. It feeds at me like a tape worm at my soul, sucking me dry of any serenity that may reside there.

Pause. Rewind.

"You’re shit. Nobody likes you. Its no wonder you’re alone."

I am my only enemy. Its like my mind has no registry deciphering between moments worthy of feeling guilty and feeling so bone deep with shame I can’t sleep. They’re one and the same. Is it normal to feel this way? I’ve spent years living in shame, dragging this anchor weighted sign around my neck advertising “dope fiend,” “whore,” “thief,” “cheat.” That’s no longer me.

When I awoke this morning I had no master plan to weasel money from your pockets, or the jewelry from your mothers night stand. I didn’t turn the house over searching like robbers in the day for shit stained, triple rinsed cottons that may heal some sick, aid in resurfacing the zombie edition of me. No, today I hit my knees and asked the universe to free me from this nagging, self loathing dialogue. Yesterday was a bad day. Yesterday my reactions to life were not my ideals- not the human being I strive to be. But maybe, in a way that’s my freedom. I’m not that girl of yesterday. I am not even tomorrow. I am today. This moment. Right now, everything is perfect. I’ll go make yesterday right, if need be. Tell my boss I was wrong to yell at her, I should have respected her authority, I’m not always right (what!!??)

Move forward, learn, grow.

I am not my guilt. I am not a bad person. I do bad things but even those can be fixed with right actions.

I just went into a rehab and lay my soul out naked for a group of twenty women to inspect and dissect. Each story, hidden secrets, internal battles, wounds and raw flesh.

I shared that I am a drug addict, an alcoholic, an ex prostitute, a woman of suicidal and criminal tendecies. My family has given up on me. Driven me to the homeless shelter on Christmas day, changed locks, shunned me.

I’ve breathed recovery, spirituality, trudged the road of happy destiny and stumbled, flat on my face into a spoon, a hotel room, a cock attatched to a hundred dollar bill.

I shared my insanity. The time I overdosed in my apartment and woke up to narcan and paramedics. I made my boyfriend spend hours in the back yard looking for the dope he tossed over the back balcony cause he thought the cops were coming. How we vouched to smoke it not shoot it, until the next time I od’d.

How I hate every jogger on the street, every family in the grocery store, every smile unprovoked. They had to be high, they had to be.

I shared how even when I’m sober, I don’t feel whole. How I seek a man to fit the fragmented pieces of me into something beautiful, something acceptable, “something someone can take home and say, look mom, can we keep her?!”

How I cried the other day after sex with a person I care about because even that too, like whiskey, like heroin, pills, cocaine, xtc, meth…. it all stopped working. I simply feel wrong as me.

I’m the chameleon girl. I’m whoever you want me to be baby.

But I’d rather be a name whispered in grace than stained on cotton sheets by the nameless lips of men in expensive suites.

I’d rather be the strong woman standing on my two feet, with my 10 dollar an hour waitressing job, and my bus pass and my handful of real friends than the pretty party girl who is the pulse of Friday night. (Or just thinks so)

I could see the memories like my own play over in these women’s eyes. At last I’m not alone. They understood. Unscripted, naked, raw, vulnerable. They grabbed my hand and asked me to stay longer. I gave out my number.

I feel high. Like real high. Like, my life means something. All the pain, all the bullshit, the relapses. They were in awe of my six months sober that I find so insignificant.