traceyh415

  There comes a day in the life of any place of employment when you come to a crossroads. You ask yourself a fundamental question-Is this job and the paycheck that it provides worth what I have to deal with on a daily basis. There may be a point at which you have a dark fantasy about revenge but those thoughts rarely come to fruition.  This job afforded has me many opportunities. First and foremost, benefits. A union. A chance to not eat cat food when I am old. Time off when I am sick. Holidays. Educational time. Stability. At my last job, we were told on more than one occasion to not cash our paychecks because they might bounce. I was encouraged to be on call 24/7. I was seeing clients through my non-existent lunch period. There were things here known as boundaries. I appreciated that. I appreciated feeling like if a client was about to assault me, a team of people would respond. And in my short time here, they had. Many times. If a person so much as farted loudly here, every...

 The global pandemic has been a year without parallel in my life. First of all, to those who have lost someone to covid, my deepest condolences. To those with long covid, I hope you get relief soon. And to those who have lost someone to an overdose in the past year, I see you. It has been a long road to a place where I even see a glimmer of hope. That does not mean we should look past the pain the last year has caused.  I started having panic attacks in Jan of 2020. I can clearly see now that this was related to two items: One was the lack of adequate treatment for a hormone balance. Two was fear of coronavirus. The type of anxiety that I have makes any kind of medical fears related to death or disease spiral into a monster that is unmanageable. I remember the Lyft ride home from the ER when they pumped me up with benzos because I was shivering alternating with having trouble breathing. I was so fucked up, I really should not have traveled alone. As I was riding, I realized I ...

Hi Friends, It has been awhile since I've written anything. With the specter of coronavirus hanging over all of our heads, there are days when I find it challenging to put together a complete sentence. I have gone through all of the various stages of guilt. I have now settled on a sort of acceptance. I cannot change this broader situation. I can only focus on my little part of it. These include: Trying to get an adequate amount of sleep, taking my psychiatric medication twice a day, checking in with a therapist periodically, texting friends that care about my well being, taking at least 30 minutes a day outdoors, and collecting cuddles from the pets. I have had to implement various changes to adjust my routine. Meditation is also helping. Also- drinking water.  As a person with a life long history of depression, I fully assumed I would be curled in a ball in bed for the duration but strangely, I can good at adapting to a crisis. As a person who likes graffiti, I have no problem wea...

I slowly vibrate with a feeling of anxiety as my eyes involuntarily pop open. I don’t even need to grab my phone to tell me it is in the neighborhood of 4:00 am. Every night without exception, I am forced awake with the feeling of dread that a terrible thing is about to happen. No amount of CBDs or chamomile teas or Buspar are going to convince my overactive mind that everything is going to be okay. It is not. Or so my body believes. I stick my head under the faucet in a kitchen filled with moonlight to get a drink of cool water. The words are stuck inside my throat. I cannot talk about how I am feeling. I am ruminating without my conscious mind. I have no idea how to turn off the snake brain, the brain that is screaming DANGER while I drift off under the fluffy white comforter of my dreams.  When the shelter in place is over, when I can finally give people hugs again. I want to embrace people I don’t even like. There is no amount of self reflection that can convince me this time i...

I found a bag of meth yesterday. I've found broken syringes, tiny bottle of cheap vodka, and a few wrappers have blown in the spring breeze when I've taken the dog out for a walk. What day of the week is it again? Oh, it is another generic day in my house. I generally don't CRAVE drugs. I get little "c" craving. Things like seeing a person pull the needle out as we make eye contact as we walk by. I might think to myself "damn that looks good". But mostly, I can maintain a sense of distance between me and my sketchy past. Until this pandemic.  I wake up from using dreams 3-4 nights a week now. All kinds of crazy shit, mostly where I am stuck in abandoned building on a filthy mattress or I am dopesick and freezing in the rain. This now month long waking nightmare of sorts has stirred up repressed memories of days gone by. I never really cared that much about dying. I mean I was cautious but that is different about caring. I could not visualize what the ...

I quit heroin 22 years ago. That sentence is a lot to take in,  I never, ever thought I'd live a day without heroin. It's weird how when people get sober they seem almost afraid to admit that they enjoyed getting high. It's disingenuous to me- like you are trying to put one over on yourself. You got high for that long and you DIDN'T like it? That's weird to me. I liked getting high but truly that is such a small part in the average day of a person using drugs. It was all that other bullshit that I hated. In the last few months of my drug use, my life had evolved into a pattern. On Saturdays, my mom would western union me $175. I had lied to her a million times by this. I told her I was sober since I had gotten out of jail. If I was smart on that day, I would use that money to pay for my hotel room by the week. Many times, I would go straight to the dopeman then pay $30 for a room for the night. By this point in the game, the young low level drug sellers that had...

Every morning, I wake up with an existential crisis of sorts, wondering why am I here. But there are a few levels to this why. There is the why of how did I survive an addiction that killed so many others. Why did I make it through ten years of hard living when my friend relapsed and could barely make it through a month without tapping out/ nearly losing his leg.  Why am I here as in what is my purpose.  Growing up firmly entrenched in codependency, I like to have a reason for my being. I am uncomfortable when I am choosing my own path, my own way. I like to have that decided for me because I’m needed. The kids aren’t little, my work life is fairly stable. The years of crisis management have settled into a place where my free time is nearly exclusively my me time. I fucking hate it. I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s hard to admit this but it’s a deep dark truth that I’ve lost faith in my own ability to navigate this ship. Anxiety manifests itself in “what am I goin...