Okay where actually am I? Right now it is 5 in the morning. I'm at my desk thinking of how to open up this blog.
I'm currently sorta tired. I woke up at 8pm and played Divinity Original Sin 2 with friends for like... six hours. Laid down for a few, thought about what I actually want to do while I am awake and... honestly thoughts are swirling. I feel like I want to do something but I'm also just constantly managing my physical and mental state. I miss when I used to drink sometimes because the only thing I really thought about was just... my next drink. And then my next cigarette, muting tough thoughts, feelings and decisions, and just sorta existing in that buzzed state constantly on top of whatever else I was doing. Usually just going on my phone, listening to music or playing some games.
Whatever real goals or plans or dreams or responsibilities I would have I would always post-pone until tomorrow, whenever I were sober. But for a long, long time, that time would just never come. If the next day was a work day, I would go to work, do my shift while feeling miserable and hungover, get off, go to the liquor store and just repeat my aimless evenings, enjoyable, but they came at a cost, cost of feeling miserable and very sick when sober, and at the cost of complacency and just putting everything else off. If the next day was a day off, I would essentially just start drinking soon after waking up and repeat the process.
I did that for a long time. And I actually felt somewhat functional for a long time despite feeling miserable most days. Until I just wasn't. Eventually I started getting panic attacks before work, lightheadedness and just an extreme sense of danger and feeling trapped. It was unbearable. I would call my mom because I didn't know what to do and would get no answer. It happened several more times over the next coming weeks, where I would clock in, feel panicked and before my first down of the shift as a poker dealer, I would tell the floorman I was not feeling well. I would hide in the bathroom and just feel so trapped, that I couldn't work that I had to just get out and leave and just be home. I almost didn't care about my job anymore, I was close to just leaving and never coming back while never saying a word. Luckily after ruminating and the feeling of panic not subsiding after spending some time in the bathroom, after I had made the decision to just leave no matter what, I met the shift manager on my way out of the building and just told them "I really need to leave, I am not feeling well", and they let me leave without digging into it at all.
This panic just lead to more callouts and eventually after doing my best to show up, not too long after these incidents, one day, about fifteen minutes into my shift, I finally got called into the office and the manager that night just told me they were letting me go.
It sucked, it was a good job and it paid well, though very stressful for me personally, because I'm really introverted and hate dealing with rowdy people, and the business of coming into the shift at the busiest and drunkest part of the night eventually wore me out. I would say my biggest regret here was not speaking up that I needed help, with alcohol, or that at least, I was having medical issues that I needed time to sort out. I have a feeling that could have saved me. But at the time, I just, I never asked anybody for help, and I didn't know how to when the source of my troubles were most likely alcohol related.
That was the beginning of my spiral and just crash into rock bottom — I sort of hesitate to use that term as, when you picture someone hitting rock bottom, you might think of someone on the street or being in and out of the hospital, rehab or jail. I never really went through any of that, but... I essentially was just, besides basic shelter and a basic diet, enough to not starve, but still lacking a lot of nutrition, pretty much at the bottom — though luckily I didn't have to deal with something like, being evicted when losing my job, or actually starving and being able to not procure some food for myself — and for that I'm pretty thankful.
But otherwise, the last few years have been pretty miserable and the time crossing them has basically been evaporated.