love is all there is...

Everytime I eat, I clean out the kitchen and end up b/ping for hours on end. I can't afford it, literally, right now.

I am doing great on my fast. Don't even want to eat. Just keep thinking about my throat being so swollen I can hardly swallow, and my face so puffed up I can feel it when I move it.. and the fat that I have layered upon me and any urge to eat is gone.

I may take my smoking just to 1 or 2 a day for a while and then go to none. It may be easier for me.

I started smoking crack when I was 16. I had, at this point, been sent away 2 times, lived in a halfway house, been beaten by my stepdad, and punished for it by being sent away.. and then getting beaten by my uncle and sent back.. I left one weekend and never came home. My best friend was running away because she didnt wanna go to jail(she had been in some trouble.. long story, I was involved.. not at fault however...) so I didnt want her to end up homeless in the street. I went with her, telling mom that I was going camping.

I never came home. Eventually, my best friend went ot jail and I had nothing, no one. She later turned her back on me after I had given up everything for her.

Mom told me to come home , so I went... when I got there they tossed me out in the rain with all my stuff in a trash bag, calling me a crack whore, nigger lover. My stepdad threw me against the porch wall..

Again I was gone.. out smoking crack with strangers and selling my ass and just turned 17 years old.

I hated drugs, I never even have been able to say why I tried it. I wasn't curious. I knew it was addictive.

What they dont tell you in school is that it makes you insane...oblivious...invisible.. First, you get emotional, helpful, sad, crazy, ... it makes you feel good, makes you feel more, makes you feel better. They dont tell you that later, it makes you hateful, scared, eventually so paranoid and alone that you cant sit down because you know someone is out to get you. They dont tell you that the paranoia sticks with you even after you quit. They dont tell you that you can't feel anything good without it, and eventually even with it.

They don't say hey, crack will ruin you , for real (not and tell ya why)... they don't explain that it will steal your identity. And ya can't quit. Cause you can't function without it. And then ya can't function with it.. so you are stuck in a paranoid limbo of fear and anxiety and attempted suicide at 17.

I stole a lot of money from a drug dealer I lived with. I put myself in a mental hospital, charter. My family never helped me pay for it. I paid for it. When they let me out, I wasnt ready. I asked the staff, my psychiatrist, not to let me out. Told them please, I was not ready... I am not *fixed*.

First thing I did was get high.. when the drugs ran out reality set in and , as usual, I paniced, hated myself for screwing up, wanted to screw up even more.... I needed more to not care what I had done.

I tried to kill myself. I was almost dead when the dealer I had originally took the money from (he forgave me.. ) found me, bleeding and out of it from the bottle of vistiril I had taken, and took me to the hospital. I had called my psychologist, asking for help.. saying I can't make it; Help me.. I will relapse; help please. He didn't help. I tried to die. Sometimes I wish I had died, sometimes I am glad I didnt. After that, I went back to charter escorted by police, for 2 weeks. My psychiatrist cried right in front of me, then, because I had almost killed myself with medicine he had given me to help me (not to mention the cutting, but he didn't cry about that...), and I lost all hope.. it was unbearable to me that someone who was supposed to help me, who should have been strong, so obviously couldn't. It didnt fix me.

There began my battle with sobriety. I got worse and worse before I got better. I am still not totally better.

I went through absolute hell to get myself sober and now, finally, I did it (though my mother tries to claim some part of my sobriety for herself, for her own glory...forgetting she turned her back on me numerous times while I begged time after time on the phone to come home) 7 long years of fighting my own fucking brain, my own body, my own mind.

5 years of the 6 I smoked crack and shot up crack and cocaine I spent trying to get sober. I made so many attempts to get clean that it is just sad. Thousands of dollars in clothing lost, several cars... many friends, and myself, my memory, and my soul all lost. It took me another year after that of fighting the demons in my head so that I could move around in the world, think rationally, try to function and I am still fighting those damn demons, still trying to function.. still trying to figure out who the fuck I am. It took me many many tries, many failures, many times of falling off the wagon. I wrecked my life and lost everything at least 10 times.

My point is this : Though I am terrified of getting cancer, of fucking ending up with a tube in my throat, really, comparatively, this is cake. Its not so serious. Smoking cigarettes doesnt make me go sell my ass when I run out. It doesnt keep me from working because I can't function (literally). I don't sell drugs to pay for my smoke habit. I don't hurt myself without a cigarette. I dont hide under a sink in a dirty hotel crying because I have no cigarettes and I hate myself for where the fuck I am at in life, only wanting more cigarettes so I can stop thinking about what the fuck I have done.

So yes, it will take work, and it will be hard. But I dont think anything will ever compare to the hell that is crack cocaine or heroine addiction. Nothing in my life could ever compare to the mental state, emotional state, pure pain and ecstasy and insanity of the last 7 years of my life.

I can stop smoking. It is ok to mess up. I will not lose my job, my car, my friends, my sanity, my cat, my clothes, my freedom, my soul from one falter.

I can not say the same for crack. One little step backwards took a year off my life, every time. A year of my life in that instant, from that step backwards going on.. was gone. Because it took me a year every time , or longer, to find the conviction to free myself from my prison of addiction... and If I didnt take that instant, if I let it pass, it was too late. I lost myself again, for a very long time... and this was my failure. I was drowning, and I couldnt stay above water long enough to draw a breath to call for help. I always slipped back under.

A cigarette will not make me lose myself. Not like that evil fucking fiend that I was (am) that would gladly push my head back under water and take everything from me.

I dont know really where I am going with this, other that to tell myself that it will be ok and that I can do this, and I have time. I can mess up, but as long as I keep on tryin, I can do it. And I have nothing to lose this time.

I believe I shall transfer this entry to my diary for safekeeping. So I can read it, so at those times when I begin to fall backwards, when the evil fiend I was (am) comes to try and trick me, I can read this. And here I will be, in these paragraphs, the real me.. to talk me out of being an idiot. And here, I can see, that it is ok to mess up; that I don't have to freak out if I have a few failures when I try to stop smoking. You see, in my mind, when I fail at something, I get just as fucking desperate as I was back then trying to get sober from crack. When I fail now, I freak and I see my world ending all over again. But it won't. Not for this, not for everyday little failures. I don't have to panic.

Does that make sense?

That being said, I am ok with messing up. I am ok with trying, and just trying. I can take it slow, or fast, or whatever I need to do. This is not crack, this will not spin my world out of control, or take my life away from me tomorrow (though eventually it has the chance of impacting it negatively and seriously with cancer, etc... ) I dont know why i want to post this here, but I think it is important to me. So these are my thoughts.. mostly to myself, to help keep me sane ( because I tend to get a bit dramatic. ) Now to deal with my ED... Maybe eventually I want to go at fixing it. I have had it along time... like my drug addiction. It will take as much work as my addiction to drugs did. But I am not ready to give up that part of me yet. It is too much right now. I cling to it still. It has the chance of serious repercussions, of ruining my life over and over, of taking everything from me, like crack. But I can't deal with it yet..

So I will deal with the smoking, and the remnants of my addiction. And my ED can stay, for now.

Sorry for rambling :) Just my thoughts.