When I met my husband I was fresh outta highschool. Still very much on cocaine, all sorts of pills, shrooms, and alcohol occasionally, only because I was only 19. But 2 years after meeting J, my husband, I turned 21 and I went heavy on the drinking. This was back in 2006 when I turned 21 and I didn’t get sober until 2018.
The chaos our relationship endured is what I’ll discuss along with what I did with myself to help fix what seemed like an unfix-able situation.
I may have started using at a young age but when I turned 21 things changed. I was able to buy my own beer, go to bars, and just numb my pain on tap. ( Pun intended LOL)
I would take so many pills, cocaine, and drink alcohol to the extent that I would wish that I would overdose. As I’ve said before, addicts are just slowly committing suicide. I hated my life, my thoughts, my behavior, and the world. Poor J got the shit end of all this behavior after we moved in together in 2012.
I could no longer hide my true self or what I thought was my true self. I was showing my hurt self, not the real me. Read that again, if you tried to hide who your addicted self was to those you love.
Stop hiding the best you and start getting rid of the hurt you that hurts people.
We fought almost every day because I drank almost everyday. We would literally fight over nothing. The look on his face would be enough for me. I would blame it on a long day at work or that I just wanted to let loose. Those were all lies. I didn’t want to feel the feelings I had regardless if they were good or bad. The good feelings I didn’t like even more than the bad ones. The bad ones were normal. The good ones were foreign and didn’t know how to understand what they meant. It’s hard to explain that the good ones were feelings that I didn’t even want. The euphoria feeling of happiness actually just made me want to drink more or do more drugs because it was that high on life feeling and I wanted MORE and because I was used to numbing my feelings and allowing drugs to create the feelings of euphoria. I justified all my bad behavior though and covered any good behavior with more alcohol and drugs. I’ll dive into more about how J would TRIGGER me to snap and I always blamed him later. .
The year we moved in together we got pregnant and lost her at 6 months pregnant. I share more about that in my course The Shift Method. My drinking and using intensified along with my bitch-o-meter. I just had more pain to cover up, so that means my relationship worsened even though we walked around with this false sense of okayness but in reality we hated each other. There is a fine line between love and hate. Remember that.
In a matter of 4 years we managed to pop out 2 healthy baby girls. JJ didn’t come until after I got sober. During those 4 years more hate was had, things were said, hands were thrown (on my end) and ultimatums given. Somehow we still managed to stay together. God had a plan for our relationship that we didn’t know about yet.
I question our sanity at those times (LOL) because any sane person would have left that drama driven relationship for sure. But that’s what drugs do to you. They cover up all aspects of reality and are able to react in a normal way because your brain and the way transmitters fire off are being bombarded by all these extra chemicals so your whole body and mind is going internally crazy and it all comes off by the behavior you show.
In 2018 we were at our wits end. I was on the verge of running away from J and my kids. I didn’t want to be the drunk mom who smelled like left over alcohol with a hangover when my kids started school. I didn’t want to show that I was a loser with no passion or purpose. I needed or thought I needed a fresh start. I had that thought that we all have. They’ll be better off without me.
Right? I know I’m not alone in that.
Questioning your life is how you begin to change your life
Anyways, something had to change because I couldn’t live without my kids and If I dug deep enough I didn’t want to be without J either.
The thoughts of wanting to change started seeding back in 2017, if I’m honest it was when I lost Jasmine and gave birth to Arianna but the addiction was stronger than any thoughts I had during those years. I continued drinking daily and lying to myself and the voice that was begging to get out. The voice that wanted to be sober and live life in true happiness. I lied to myself and said that I function fine drinking and using.
That was a bold lie.
Then one day God gave me a vision of my death or a premonition, however it sits well with you. I was dead at 40 of liver cancer. In that moment I chose sobriety, love and faith. But my relationship was so broken not only with my man J but with myself. I didn’t know who I was, what I wanted or how to figure it out.
But I knew ONE THING….
If I didn’t fix me it wouldn’t matter. Everything I would try would be fake and would just be a band aid.
This is where I share the goods with you but I had to share how messy it was so you could get an image of the damage I had to not only undo within myself but within my relationship.
Here’s a SECRET. Once you start working on YOU your path becomes more clear.
August 4, 2018 is my sober date. We also use this as our anniversary date because it was also the day that we were given a new beginning even though it took a year to really have a breakthrough mentally.
OK, so the first thing I did wrong in my relationship is I attached my happiness to him. If he wasn’t making me happy then I wasn’t happy.
Then I viewed him as the enemy. He wouldn’t say anything without me taking it offensively. I allowed everything he said to trigger me instead of me working on my own triggers, reactions, and beliefs. Why was I so offended at everything that he said? Why would I over react rather than THINK and then react? What was wrong with me? All questions I asked myself during my first 6 months of recovery.
Next was a realization that led to many breakthroughs. I wasn’t happy because I didn’t like or love myself. I don’t ever recall having a positive thought about myself that didn’t come out of drunken words or ego. Such As, I’m so hot, I’m smarter than you (ha) I am the bomb dot com. All the dumbest I am statements a drunk person can make because we are the least attractive, we act the dumbest, and we are the bomb just waiting to explode.
Once I realized my happiness was attached to superficial shit like drugs, shopping, his view of me, others acceptance of me, is when I knew I had to deconstruct and dismantle this image of me I’ve created through the hazy days and faithless and non spiritual nights.
Here’s what I did to begin my shifts not only in myself but in my relationships.
First, I wrote down my bad thoughts about me and wrote how untrue these words really were and then I wrote why and where these thoughts and beliefs about myself came from. This helped a ton. In my journal The Shift Method I lay it out in a way you can get down to some major areas or issues. Get a copy HERE.
Boom, after repetitive much needed work I began changing my inner beleifs. I had to get to work and write down all the shit I kept lying to myself about so don’t let the short sentence fool you into thinking that it was easy. It’s not easy but it is simple. It’s simple in the fact that if you put your head down and get to work you can find real freedom from all the trauma affecting your life.
Then I started writing down all the bad habits/addictions I had that weren’t serving me and I wrote how those came about, why I used them, and how not using it can serve me better. I use this for anything such as hard drugs, food, tv, news, and so on. All of that matters.
Then the hardest part, the one I still struggle with, my emotions.
These are the most addictive of our behaviors. Our reactions.
We don’t know any other way of reacting and I’m a person who doesn’t see the middle ground. I’m either chill or angry.
I used to attach my emotional issues on everyone else including my spouse. He was the reason for my outburst not me. “If he could just not be a dick all would be okay.” I used to say that to myself to justify my behavior or lack of emotional intelligence. Everyone else was rude and disrespectful and I put myself on this pedestal of perfectness because it allowed me to not check myself or put a mirror up to my own self even though by me pointing a finger at everyone else I was showing my real flaws.
But, and this is a big, Becky got a big ole butt, when I started being aware of how other people’s energies affected my own, including tv, news, comedy, even my own kids, is when things truly started shifting within my relationship.
I worked on myself and other areas of my life fell in line. It didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen without communication.
I had to be honest with J and really let him in. Once I did this we started pulling back the layers of what kept our relationship from blossoming.
Now we are thicker than thieves and the butterflies are back. We talk like we used to and we are finally really happy.
Does this mean we don’t argue or disagree? Hell no. This means we have a deeper understanding of one another and have the tools and awareness to not let this make or break us if we have a moment of unawareness.
If you’re struggling in your relationship and you really do want to make it work there is a way.
You have to put yourself first. You have to work on your emotions, beliefs, triggers, and behaviors daily. But don’t leave your spouse out of the mix. Talk to them, let them know how you’re feeling and ask for the space needed to grow internally. There will be bumps along the way but you have to keep awareness of what you’re fighting for. Don’t have this all or nothing attitude.
If you want to get deeper into what helped me in my life you can get the shift method journal and access the course free or just dive right into the course.
Pick your poison. Positive poison that is.
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