I've Been Here Before
“When you aren’t fed love with a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off a knife” -Lauren Eden
I started this newsletter because I felt powerless over alcohol and I wanted to publicly document what it would be like to quit. Now that I’ve quit and am pushing a year of sobriety I am faced with the harsh truth that I have not only an alcohol addiction to deal with, but an addiction to male validation, sex, and love in general that is getting ugly.
When my alcoholism was getting really bad I’d find myself in these desperate situations to either get alcohol or be with people who were also drinking alcohol. I knew it wasn’t where I wanted to be, but I couldn’t help myself. It was like watching a car accident happening every single day — I didn’t want to see it, but couldn’t look away.
Now I’m in the same place, doing the same thing with men. Men I KNOW do not deserve me, yet I am begging for crumbs of attention and affection. It is embarrassing and painful to watch. And I don’t really know how to stop. I mean, you guys would literally laugh in my face if you saw the guys I have cried over. I don’t even want to think about it.
But thinking about it and acknowledging it is the first step, so here I am once again: admitting I have a problem and praying to god that I can break this cycle of feeling unloved and unworthy of love.
In my mind I can see that I am accomplished and nice and cool and can cook good food and am very fun to be around. I still don’t feel like I’m enough for anyone. I feel like because I was treated so terribly for so long I don’t even know what it feels like to be loved. I get excited about the bare minimum. A text back, a morsel of attention have become the most I get because that is all I feel I deserve.
I’m just tired of feeling like I don’t matter. I am sick of trying to mean something to some loser guy. It’s not fucking fair. I didn’t ask for an absent father figure as a child. I didn’t ask to be sexually assaulted when I was five years old. I didn’t ask to be in the most toxic relationship literally EVER for seven long years.
I know it’s my job to heal. It’s MY responsibility, no one elses. I know that. I’ve accepted that. It doesn’t stop it from being any less painful to deal with. I want to swear off men until I can love myself, and although that seems impossible so did quitting drinking, but here I am.
So maybe there is hope for me.