Yes I did actually have a zoom meeting with my dog this morning. He was not interested in today’s objective, or even paying attention to me. This is going in his employee file.
On an unrelated note, I can’t imagine why I’m single.
Category: Uncategorized
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The time I broke my back
This was a couple months ago, near the end of 2021.
I threw out my back when I BENT OVER TO PICK SOMETHING UP OFF THE FLOOR. I stood back up, as you do, & before I became a straight line I realized I was not the same version of myself I was before, & reflexively snapped back over to avoid further pissing off my lower back, which was now fucking furious & letting me know. Threw my hands down to catch myself, which put me in a strange pose in front of the wide open front door. I watched the cars driving by as I contemplated my predicament. I don’t know how I ended up as an EXTREME SPORTS x yoga mashup competitor, but the challenge was clear: make it down the hallway (appearing longer by the second) & into my room safely.
Some choice expletives were verbalized, but won’t be printed here, at the foul-mouthed party’s request. She is afraid her Mema may read this at some point, & frankly I don’t blame her. Mema apologizes first to Jesus, then to me, whenever she accidentally lets a frustrated “crap” slip out in my presence. I once used a certain f-word on Facebook, which, I heard through the grapevine, was a great source of grief to her. The anonymous party & myself agree that including the explicit dialogue would only cause a fuss.
So anyway, contorted my body just enough to slowly crab walk down the hall.
I made it to my room where I ingeniously interpretively danced my way down to the floor against my bed in a way that made my back booboo, & the weird twitchy thing my toe was doing, considerably less ouchy & twitchy, respectively.
Grabbed my nearby laptop & keyboard with my toes, which is the one time this ridiculous talent has actually been useful instead of just a tool for laziness or gross party trick) hunched over to type, & promptly plopped right over on my side.
Laid up helpless like a goddamn turtle. Turtles probably have more dignity than I though, as I began howling (my mother would probably use the word whining) & did not let up until my mother answered my pitiful cries for help. Thankfully she was just getting home, or I surely would’ve perished in that position.
After assessing the situation, which was a 60” TV screen with Google results for death by broken back statistics, & her daughter, COVID-19 & alcoholism survivor, succumbed to the boring ass banalities of old-age related injuries.
She assured me repeatedly that my back was not, in fact, broken, just strained, gave me lots of medicine, asked if I wanted a drink, clarified the offer was good for non-alcoholic beverages only when I requested vodka “neat, but straight from the bottle’s fine,” & brought me a water that I begrudgingly accepted.
Then we had a floor picnic in my room, as I was an invalid who wouldn’t survive a second attempt through the hall. She offered to toss my catfish nuggies right into my mouth, but after some thought we agreed Dude was the best at that game, & would intercept every single attempted pass.
The nuggies healed me enough to get into bed although I slept in a very concerning position, & I awoke the next day covered in lidocaine patches & that is how I am able to carry on today despite having such a grievous injury.
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Whole30
I began my current sobriety journey in September, the same month I had Covid, and I was essentially confined to bed and couch. These two events coinciding means that I gained weight. A bit of weight. Quite a bit, if you must know.
So, against my (not so much) better judgment, I began whole30 two days ago. Because y’all, I fit into a size L hoodie, and those have always been my comfy frumpy hideout hoodies. I mean nothing against those who wear size L, especially considering y’all my people now, but my 5’1.5 (the half inch is important!!!) frame can’t handle the extra weight I’m carrying around post-Covid. I have a plethora of health issues.
So ya. If you ain’t up to date on the healthy eating scene or whatever, lemme fill you in. Whole30 was sent up to earth from hell because Satan thought we weren’t doing a good enough job of being miserable on our own. Or something.
FOR 30 WHOLE DAYS I CAN’T HAVE ANY ALCOHOL (lol joke’s on whoever created this nightmare no drinky drink for me anyway), DAIRY, GRAINS, SUGAR, PROCESSED FOODS, SOME OTHER STUFF I’M FORGETTING BC MY BRAIN ISN’T GETTING THE SHEER AMOUNT OF CALORIES IT’S USED TO IN ORDER TO FUNCTION.
Pray for me, y’all. Or send whatever good vibes ya got my way, maybe just include my wish to be a skinny ass healthy lil vixen again in your daily affirmations, or whatever you’re into. I surely do appreciate it.
28 days to go.
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Self-Care Routine
for the person who spent years indulging every single whim they ever had and now cannot produce their own dopamine
(i wrote this in my journal a couple months ago + will type it up in the morning because i procrastinate everything. i have no dopamine.)
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little fragments
My coworker’s truck in front of my house, while he counts out Adderall for me. I am probably 9 beers in. It’s 11am on a Tuesday. Maybe Thursday. He asks how I’m doing, but it’s rhetorical. I am obviously not doing great. He hands my pills over and before he drives away, he says “and stop fucking drinking, goddamn.”
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accountability
I have to always be honest or there’s no point to any of this. I relapsed for a week from Sunday, 12.12, to Saturday, 12.18. Last drink at 7am that morning.
Learning from it and moving on – new sobriety date of 12.19.21 and plenty of lessons learned along the way.
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little fragments
Day two of my 2nd stint in rehab, morning meditation
A counselor is making his way through the great room, to the podium in the center, when he stops directly in front of me. Somehow recognizes me from my IOP program there five years earlier. Good memory. I can’t imagine how many clients have come and gone (and come and gone and come and gone).
I remember him too and I am sleep deprived and substance free against my will. No mood for whatever sarcastic shit I’m about to hear.
“What the fuck are you doing back here, Kirsten? Not enough fun for you the first time around?” I feel like this is a stupid question that deserves a stupid answer.
“Can’t seem to quit fucking my life up. It’s this goddamn booze. You guys gonna fix me this time?”
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32-year old has nervous breakdown at 2pm on a Tuesday
if you write your blog titles like news headlines, it really drives home how your life is meaningless + that most people don’t give a shit about the banality of the lives of others
so without booze, i haven’t felt much of anything besides general indifference. no pink cloud, no hopeless depression, no fits of rage.
until two days ago, one of those days where everything is just lousy.
maybe your body aches all over (by you i mean me). maybe you’ve been sleep deprived for several days in a row + your brain + body are realizing that. maybe you have a to do list so daunting you refuse to actually write it down because then it becomes something that actually exists + must be addressed, but you have no motivation to even jot down the top few priorities.
maybe all of this culminates in you (me) facedown, sobbing into your pillow, at 2pm on a Tuesday while your well-intentioned but decidedly non-alcoholic mother alternates between advice from Loving an Alcoholic 101 and trying to sympathize by talking about her meth stint in the nineties.
this only makes you cry harder. when she leaves, you text half like six people about how fucking badly you want a drink suddenly. one is there within minutes. you’re safe. no drinking tonight.
but what about the next time?
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lazy day
Pinterest rabbit hole day. while half-ass cleaning up some boards to justify how long i’d been on that timesuck of a website, i found a pin i’d saved about structuring your schedule when unemployed. i laughed + laughed + laughed before remembering i am actually trying to organize my entire life. i’d love to be stable someday. i briefly remember the feeling from back in 2013 or so. ironically, i started drinking again the next year.
it always amazes me that i can be as intelligent as i am (book smarts), yet willfully ignorant of the correlation between the periods of stability + my alcohol consumption or lack of.
anyway, now that my house renovation is done + i’m transitioning back to living there, i’m going to have a lot of free time. especially since drinking was a full-time job + i took that commitment very seriously. it probably wouldn’t kill me to put a routine in place in the next few days.
historically, an unsupervised Kirsten does not do well with lack of structure + ample free time. by that i mean, she does exactly what she wants knowing damn well that it’s the exact thing she shouldn’t be doing, nor will it benefit her in any way.
the good news is, i don’t think i am that person anymore. those things i wanted to do made me feel good, or at least better than before i did them, but they consumed me + left nothing. so i’ve committed to trying something different, even if it doesn’t sound fun. god this being responsible stuff is for the birds though.
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hi, hello (take 2)
Just skimmed my 2018 post, rolled my eyes the entire time. Must have written a hundred similar ones across dozens of notebooks, social media posts, Tumblr for sure.. always sure that I’d finally figured it out that time. Well, 3 years later, I’m here and sober for real, and I don’t know shit about shit.
So uh, been a rough couple years, yeah? 2020 was a turning point for a new and different world and here we are at the end of 2021 still trying to figure this shit out. I’ll just straight up tell you 2020 was a walk in the fuckin park for me compared to the shit 21 threw at me. Last December I joked about coasting through this year but joke’s on me because this year got me down real low, lowest I’ve ever been.
I am tired. My body, my mental health, my spirit, what I have to offer my loved ones in conversation, support – all tapped out. I have an autoimmune disorder that’s the worst it’s ever been and COVID did a number on me in September (I was able to quit smoking then, the one silver lining). At the end of the month I finally put that goddamned bottle of vodka down and got sober, thank you baby Jesus or ant man or faceless deity if one of y’all is out there, but also a big thank you to myself. Because I finally realized I am worth more than an existence centered around alcohol. I realized that I deserve sobriety and to be happy, and I actually believe I can stay this way (with tons of hard work).
Which is where this blog comes in. I got a lot of shit to say, ok? Lol. Guess no support group exists for trauma dumping on a bunch of anonymous humans for 60 minutes every week, and therapists want me to pay them for some reason.
So I’m cobbling together a raggedy ass toolbox of coping mechanisms, healthy outlets, to keep me sober and become better. FB groups, Scribd, meditation, BP meds for the damage my drinking has done, PINTEREST! I can’t praise Pinterest enough for all the invaluable resources I’ve found. Now, this blog, I guess, unless I promptly forget it again like the hundreds of neopets I abandoned over the years.
I’m gonna use this space for other stuff I wanna share too but I gotta figure out what exactly this account means for me so I’ll be posting again soon once I do just that!
I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable 