The dark places...

...that still exist, no matter where one is at in their recovery. Well, that is my assumption anyway, the most I can say for certain is that they still exist no matter where I am at in my recovery. Thankfully now I visit them far less frequently, and they involve a lot less self harm than they used to.

I am writing now because I am in one of those dark places, where I am freaked out by how rapidly I descended into it, and how powerful those familiar old feelings of shame can be. And with the familiar feelings comes the desire to turn to familiar coping mechanisms. I happy to say that I have not turned to these harmful ways for months now, but every once in a while an urge will come up, and though I am able to deal with it, I am frightened by the force of it and how much energy it takes for me to resist it.

And along with this comes a whole gamut of stuff that is so overwhelming that I want nothing more than to lock myself in a room, curl up into the corner, and cry my eyes out. This is not a bad alternative to other things I might do (ie. bingeing and purging), however this time I tried to get some of the overwhelming energy out through writing. I've always had that there as a trusty "binge alternative", but have rarely been able to use it as such.

I didn't go through an urge to binge tonight, but I did notice as I descended further into my pool of shame I became increasingly nauseous and occupied with thoughts of throwing up. And of course stopping to think about what the hell that was about just made me more anxious and ashamed. Ugh. Is my body still programmed to throw up when I feel afraid and/or ashamed? Seems like that could be the case. Do I need to punish myself for this? No, nor do I need to pretend that it is not so.

So what now, then? I'm not sure. I'm not going to lie - I have slightly numbed myself out with some red wine over the course of writing this. I have not been in the practice of doing this, in fact I have hardly had any alcohol over the past month and a half (nor have I wanted to have any). And tonight, well, Martin and I had already planned to get some wine to have with dinner (it's been rare for us to have an entire evening together lately), and for whatever reason I started using our conversation to hurt myself, and got really stressed about the things I have been trying to avoid lately. So yeah, the wine was an immediately available option to relieve what felt like some intense unbearable shit. And the writing! The writing has helped immensely as well.

Without the wine, I think I could keep writing...but, I am not without wine, and in fact I think I am a little tipsy. So, I'll sign off here, and come back to examine this sometime soon...because the dark places will always be there, no amount of wine is going to change that!