Sometimes its just all really dark inside my head. There are days I don’t have words, energy, or much of anything to give. My therapist calls it “clinical depression,” I put a spin on it and call it the depressys. It’s cuter. Life can be really gray for me, and many others who are too scared to openly talk about it (rightfully so) because mental illness gets this weird rap around it as if we’re broken people. It’s actually humorous to me that I will tell a stranger I used to shoot heroin, but saying I take medicine everyday to help me function seems much more frightening. That is a stigma, that I hope to help smash.

“But your life is so perfect, you have the job, the house, the fiancé, the dog, you have it all.” Thank you for the reminder. I’m aware my life externally appears to be “perfect,” but that doesn’t keep it from getting dark. It doesn’t prevent me from needing to take my medicine every morning, and it doesn’t stop me from having these weeks that appear endless where I truly don’t want to get out of bed or do much of anything. The outsides don’t stop me from wanting to curl up in a ball and not participate in any of it. But I’m here. I’m writing, I’m releasing it, I’m setting the depressys free.

The depressys have struck again, and it is really hard to strike back sometimes. Lucky for me, I have a support system like no other who love me through the grey days when everything seems too heavy. A fiancé who asks me 30829 times what is wrong, even though I don’t have an answer, with hopes I’ll just have some issue he can fix—although we both know we just have to ride the wave. “Try this med, try this vitamin, take this, do this. More therapy, more AA, more everything.”-everyone in my life. It makes me want to scream. There isn’t more of anything that will take the cloud away, there is just riding the wave until it takes me back to shore again really. And trusting that God will be along for the ride with me. And that’s ok.

I’m not writing this because I want to talk about me, I’m writing this because I want to talk about you. The you who is in the depressys and feels they won’t end, please don’t suffer alone. Please open your mouth, pick up a pen, do something, LET IT OUT. Set yourself free. There is another side to be seen, when you appreciate the feeling of the sun on your skin, the sound of the silent night, when you have the energy to get up again. There is help available for everyone one way or another, you just have to seek it. I know the world is heavy sometimes, and I know it can be too much to walk through by yourself.

Stigmas are a real son of a bitch. I saw something one day that really stuck with me, and it was something along the lines of, “we live in a world where you break your arm and everyone wants to sign your cast, but you say you have a mental illness and everyone runs the other way.” That’s actually unacceptable to me. If you’re reading this, and everyone has ran away, I won’t. I’m here, and I will help you find others who will be here too because this is all too heavy to carry alone.

Suicide prevention hotline 800-273-8255

Everyone always talks about the good stuff happening for them on social media. No one discusses the hard, the ugly, the truth, the reality. I’m here to tell you – life isn’t always rainbows and butterflies, which means sobriety isn’t either. My last blog post I discussed closing on our new house, getting promoted, and planning my wedding.. What about all of the stress and fear that comes with that? Everyone says congratulations, but no one says beware. With a new house comes new bills, with a promotion comes more work and added stress, add in planning a wedding in a foreign country to the mix and you have yourself a chaotic few months which is why I’ve been quiet, which is why I haven’t wrote, which is why I have decided to write this tonight, because if I’m going to invite you all into my life; it can’t just be for the good times, you can see the scary times too.

I hosted my first Christmas for my family this past weekend, and I cried when everyone left. I still don’t quite know why I cried, but I think it was a mix of gratitude and also a fear of failure. I proceeded to call my mom two days later and tell her I’m quitting life and coming home to her house. Not because I don’t want any of the amazing things I have, but because all of the amazing things I have come with new fears that I haven’t had before. Fear is fear, and I know from experience that I’ll get through it but sometimes running home to mommy and curling up in bed seems really ideal.

Life can be good and bad at the same time. It doesn’t always have to be black and white. There is a gray area that things can fall into, that an amazing woman reminds me of everyday. The gray is scary, it’s a mix of everything being amazing and everything being terrible at once. It’s a combination of faith and fear. Anyone who tells you there isn’t room for both at the same time, is lying. I can invite God in, trust he’ll do all the work that needs to be done, and still have fear that it won’t turn out how I want it to be. That’s life, and trust me I’m here for the ride.. but sometimes I want to get off before the next upside down part if that makes any sense.

SO here I am, living in the gray. Practicing acceptance, and trying so very hard to trust that no matter how things turn out I know that one day it will all be mostly everything I’ve prayed for, because right now in this moment I do have all the things I prayed for. It’s here. Its happening. Its scary. But its also really good. In the gray we will stay, and I will try to remain grateful while it’s all happening.

This is growing up, and I’m just extra blessed that I have a chance to do it sober.

Talk soon, xoxo

Six years later and my mom still tells me how proud of me she is and that she is grateful I found sobriety. We just hung up the phone and one of the last things she said was, “I’m just so happy you’re alive.” That really hit home for me for a number of reasons, because I don’t wake up every day and think “I’m just so happy to be alive.” Not that I don’t want to be alive, but I just think I’m a healthy, regular 26 year old girl/woman who is trying to figure it all out. I thank God every night for another day sober, but I don’t always think about it – it’s more out of routine.

This past Friday my fiancé and I closed on our new house, and my mom walked in and cried when she saw it for the first time. I was confused at first, and then it hit me. She never thought she’d see the day I was a homeowner, or had a successful career, or was engaged to a man who truly loved every part of me inside and out. To be honest, I never thought I would see these days either. But they’re here, and they’re amazing, and they’re scary and I’m just trying to soak it all up and tell you guys about it.

I’m honestly sitting here crying writing this, in my almost empty apartment that served me so well this last year. We fully move into the new house later this week, so life is extremely chaotic right now. I knew I had to get something out on paper (keyboard) because of how riddled with stress I have been. In the last 30 days, I got a promotion, and was told our offer was accepted on a house (all in the same day) while sitting on my best friends couch. So you can do the math and figure out what the last 30 days of life have looked like – if your calculations equal insane, then you’re hitting the nail on the head. “These are problems you always wanted to have,” I try and tell myself, but sometimes that doesn’t cut it. Sometimes, I need to call my mom and get grounded back on planet earth and reminded that it wasn’t always going to look this way for me. Sometimes, I need to meditate and remember that I’m getting exactly what I prayed for—not on the timeline I wanted I, or in the wrapping paper I expected, but this is it, its here and it is all happening.

There have been a lot of tears shed this past month, tears of gratitude, tears out of fear, and just tears because I am who I am (if you’re my friends reading this you’ll understand). This last year has been really trying in some ways, and I’m happy to wrap it up on such a positive note but positivity doesn’t always equal not scary. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but I have the best people surrounding me, loving me, and rooting me on. All because I’m sober. All because I’m present for this today, and able to show up and see what God does for me. This isn’t a look at me look at what I’ve done blog, it’s a look at what God has done blog, it’s a look at what surrounding myself with people who love me unconditionally and push me to be the best me I can be has done blog, it’s a look at what sobriety can do blog. I hope if you’re reading this, and sobriety is new and scary and weird that you buckle up and enjoy the ride, because I’m just so happy you’re alive.

Every August I am hit with a lot of emotions. My sobriety date is August 8, which is always a time of reflection, and then for the rest of the month I see posts on every social media network in regards to overdose awareness and I am plagued with the thought that could have been me. I am a multiple overdose survivor, so I know for a fact I escaped being another heart breaking story by the skin of my teeth. It could have easily been me or any of my sober friends. I can toss around the, “why me”, “why am I here while others are not”, type of thoughts – and sometimes I do, but mostly I choose to live in a state of gratitude all (most) days of the year, not just the month of August.

Living in gratitude to me means a lot of different things to me. It has changed and morphed over the years. I learned early on that gratitude is an action word, if we move our feet our head will follow. The good old fake it til you make it, go through the motions until the motions are your daily routine. Gratitude is answering the phone when it rings with another struggling woman on the other end, and allowing God to speak through me to hopefully help her. Gratitude is showing up when I don’t want to, because I know I will feel better after. Gratitude is knowing so long as I keep doing what I have done the last six years, I will never have to be the girl I once was again.

To show my respect to those we have lost, I chose to remember them, honor them, and speak of them often. I also chose to recover out loud, and share my story with others in hopes of helping someone. I have learned that awareness is a form of prevention, so I am always talking, always remembering, and always trying to be “the hope.” I know that talking about overdose, and my experience with it could save a life. I know that Narcan is a powerful life saving tool, that I am consistently carrying- hoping I never have to use it, but prepared if I do. Most importantly, I know that I have learned over the years that getting sober is not a one size fits all process and what worked for me isn’t always going to work for someone else.

Today, I implore you to think before judging. I ask you to remember those we have lost, and say a prayer for the loved ones and shattered hearts they left behind. Each person we lose to this insidious disease is someone’s someone, leaving a trail of disaster behind them. Drug addiction does not discriminate. Overdose does not discriminate. Help is available, recovery is real and happening all around you every single day. I ask you to hug your addict, love your addict, and most importantly help your addict.

So if you are struggling, if your loved one is struggling, know I see you, I support you, and I am here for you in any way possible. Please know that there are armys of those just like me who share the same sentiment. Furthermore, please do not suffer in silence. Pick up the phone, talk about what you or your loved one is going through and ask for help. The one thing I know for sure is it takes a village, and we do not get better alone. Today, August 31^st, international overdose awareness day, I hope for not one more.

This is a question I’m faced with all the time. “What about your wedding?” “You really don’t think you can have just one?” Lolol no sis, I don’t. And no it isn’t hard. There is something about not drinking in your 20’s that scares people who don’t understand. Maybe they can’t have fun without a drink, maybe they don’t comprehend that if I have one drink it will turn into a potential second stint in the local jail, and maybe it just isn’t for them to understand. I know I stay true to myself, my beliefs, and the fact that a very long time ago I conceded to my inner most self that I am absolutely an alcoholic. But, by all means, have a drink for me if you feel so badly for me that I “can’t” drink. I use the word can’t very haphazardly because, I totally can drink. Today I just have a choice, and I choose not to.

Most of my friends are sober, some are not. I am not afraid of a “normal” person, I am not afraid to be around them while they are drinking, and I am not uncomfortable around people who drink. My life is for all accounts relatively normal. I celebrated my 21^st birthday, six months sober, in a club in New York City and I had an absolute blast. I drank red bull and danced my behind off with one of my closest friends at the time. I’m about to get married, sober. I have buried friends and family, sober. I got engaged, sober. I’m buying my first house with my fiancé, sober. I have traveled parts of the world I never thought I would see, sober. The list goes on and on. I can do anything the average drinking 26 year old can do, I just choose to do it without destroying my life now.

The choice didn’t come easy. I didn’t wake up cured from alcoholism, and I am in fact still not cured from alcoholism or addiction. I just have done the work that was suggested to do in a 12 step fellowship, with the promise of freedom on the other side. That freedom I have today is nothing like anything I have ever experienced. There are no words to describe the gratitude I have when I wake up and no longer have to put a substance in my body to function. (Besides my anti-depressant, lol)

It’s all possible and the choice can be found for anyone, but I’m not here to sell you on that. I’m just here to share my experience. So to answer your questions, “Is it hard?”. The answer is, it was but now it isn’t. My first 30, if not 90 days, sober were terrifying. They were hard, they involved a lot of tears, and a lot of feelings I had not felt in years. I chose early on to open up about those feelings to other women who have had the same trials I have had and was having. I opened up, I talked, I cried, I screamed, and I laid on the floor of my therapists office in the fetal position more times than I can count in those first 90 days. (Love you Tree) I was told very early on what is born in the dark dies in the light of exposure, and that holds true for me still to this day. Secrets do in fact keep you sick, and mine would have killed me if I didn’t open up about them.

It got easier, the pain went away, and it stopped being so trying. I continued to do what was suggested for me, and my life internally and externally improved in a very short amount of time. The thing about us addicts and alcoholics, we can bounce back from it all. We survived the very thing set out to kill us, and it lives right inside of us on a daily basis. We learn to play well with our demons, and we learn how to become the best versions of ourselves. Our lives improve and we very well may become whatever we set ourselves out to be.. So long as we do the work. Talk soon.

Growing up my mom always told me things like, “it is always about the quality of your friendships, not the quantity.” or “some people are in your life for a reason, some people for a season, others for a lifetime.” (see mom, I listen) Over the course of my life not just my sobriety, my friends have changed just like anyone elses would. I’m sitting here writing this tonight, because I feel so abundantly blessed to have the people in my life that I do right now in this moment. I have had good friends, I have had bad friends. I have been a good friend, and I have been a bad friend. It’s been the Melissa show at times and other times it has been all about the people around me. I’ve had give and take friendships, I’ve had friendships where I just give, and I have had friendships where I just take. I believe everyone has gone through times like all of what I described in their life, and if they haven’t I am sure they will. Lately though, it has been such a lovely mix of give and take with my friends, all of them. We give each other advice, we take advice, we celebrate the good, and sometimes we just listen when the other is having a bad time.

Tonight, talking to one of my best friends, I said “but when I love someone, I really love someone.” This is what inspired me to write this. It couldn’t be more true. I believe God gives us family, and I also believe God gives us friends. Some friends have been with me for the long haul, since 4^th grade. Others, since I have had just a few days sober. Within the past few years, I have made some new friends, that truly feel like they are my old friends. Of course, with gaining friends, I have also lost friends. Some of which has been entirely my fault, and I am sure I have caused harm as harm has been caused to me. I do know though that all of my friends serve or have served their purpose in my life, and I like to think I have had my purpose in theirs. If I ever said I love you, know I still do and love you all equally, and for different reasons. I have the girls I can bare my soul to, the girls I can go out and have a great time with, the girls who I know will pick up the phone at any hour and come to me if needed, as I would do for them. These girls are my sisters, not my blood, but by choice. Through hell or high water. I have been taught how to be a friend and how to receive a friend through them all at different times in different ways.

I sometimes find myself borderline resentful at my friends because I love them so much and to watch them suffer or make mistakes that I know are harming them, harms me. It might be selfish, it might be codependent, or it just might be plain old love for my people. I’m sure they have gone through similar feelings watching me do things they know will hurt me in the end, or that they disagree with. The thing is, we still show up and we still support each other. I’ve been told I do this because of my “insecure attachment style,” but what does that therapist know anyhow? (joking that’s literally exactly what it is) All I know is if you consider me a friend, know I have your back. I will show up and love unconditionally, we will kick scream and claw (or laugh) our way through whatever life throws at you, and we will get through it all together. In a way it all ties back to my moms little season, reason, lifetime saying. So this one goes out to my girls, may you know I will always be by your side no matter what the circumstances are because I know for sure you will be by mine. Love y’all more.

So yeah, about the crippling heroin addiction. I’d like to have one of those stories that starts out with I was an all star athlete, injured myself, got hooked on pain killers, and so the story goes. But that’s not me, that’s not my story. My story is – I was a bad kid, with a little bit of a messed up home life, who sought outside things to make me feel whole inside. I was 5 years old when my dad passed away, and I had my first drink at 12. The years in between my dad passing and having my first drink are a blur. One of my countless therapists over the last 20+ years of my life calls that a trauma response. My little brain couldn’t comprehend the grave loss I had just experienced, so it decided to shut down.

So let’s start at 12. I was at a party with my older cousin, everyone was drinking, and I wanted to be a part of. I took my first shot of cheap vodka, and I felt the warmth instantly hit my entire body – head to toe. At that moment, I knew this was what I wanted to do everyday, all day, presumably for the rest of my life.

I was attending a catholic grade school at the time which I loved but hated simultaneously. I had incredible friends who came from the most loving of families that treated me as one of their own. Only issue was, I viewed myself and my family as different than everyone else. Other moms drove Range Rovers and my mom drove a minivan. (This probably has something to do with my disgusting shopping problem, but we’ll get to that later) Side note about my mother, she did all she could when she could and what she did was more than enough.. I just couldn’t see the truth for what it was when I was a kid. The truth was, I was different, I didn’t feel different, I absolutely was. I did not have a dad, I did not live in a mansion, and I did not come from a silver spoon. With that being said my mom tried her absolute hardest to have us fit in. Love you momma.

Back to the story, so here I am, at a party, 12 years old in some little black dress I had no business being in, having my first drink. I proceeded to “black out” and fall down the stairs. I woke up the next day wondering when I could do it again, and how. This turned into dragging the local catholic school girls down as far as they would go with me. Stealing our parents cheap liquor they used to cook (sorry about the penne vodka that time mom) and drinking it wherever we could whenever we could. Fast forward to my summer going into high school and I was drinking alcoholically.. getting kicked out of graduation parties after being caught drinking and smoking pot there, and beginning to gravitate towards “new friends”.

From here, it’s the same story you hear.. Weed turned into Xanax, xanax turned into prescription pain killers, prescription pain killers turned into IV heroin and crack cocaine use daily. Throw in a few boyfriends, loss of strong life long friendships, and gaining of new friends that also did what I did and that makes up my short lived high school years. Probably a good time to mention that I’m a high school drop out.

I entered my first treatment center just shy of 18, I don’t really think there was some huge ordeal to get me in there. I basically came clean to my family that I was a heroin addict and I simply didn’t want to live this way anymore. It was no surprise to them, they just truly did not know what to do with me. I had totaled a few cars, gotten a DUI, and been arrested countless times at this point. I am sure they were relieved when I finally admitted something was wrong. But here is where it gets dicey.. I went to detox for 5 or 6 days. I got out, went home, and had no skills to live this new life I so badly wanted. So I picked up again, and again, and again.

Eventually my mom sent me off to Florida after another failed rehab attempt in New Jersey which came shortly a little stint in Monmouth County Jail. This probably seemed logical at the time considering I couldn’t get a minute sober outside of an institution at this point. (DISCLAIMER- Florida has incredible treatment providers, one I happen to proudly represent in my day to day work.. It just was not for me. I was not ready. I did not have any desire to get sober.) So, with that being said I flopped my happy ass around Florida for the next year and a half with over 15 admissions into numerous treatment centers. At this point, my family was done with me. My mom told me to have them call her when they find my body. A few months later, I found myself back in New Jersey. Like the good drug addict I am, I ran like the wind when I got home only to find myself overdosed for the 10^th or 11^th time in a year while entering what would be my final treatment center.

Everyone asks, “What happened?” “What changed?” “Why did you stop?” and honestly, I don’t have an answer for that now six years later anymore than I did when I completed that treatment program. I know I followed suggestions and shut my big mouth for the first time in my entire life. I know I did whatever I was told to do, kicking and screaming, but I did it. I know I dug into a 12 step fellowship and spilled my soul to another woman – good bad and indifferent. The only logical answer I can seem to come up with sitting here right now, is it was God. It was nothing short of a miracle, that I deserve minimal credit for outside of just listening to the voice inside of me that wanted to live more than it wanted to die.

That my friends, is my little war story for you. This is going on the internet, and I plan to have kids one day- so if you’re my kids friends mom years down the line reading this.. Don’t judge me please. I promise I’m nothing like the girl described above. This thing really works if you allow it to.

Talk soon. XO