Good Enough Isn't Good Enough

Triumphs and tribulations! Yesterday, apropos of nothing, and after a very bad day the day before, I spontaneously stopped drinking completely for almost two days! And it wasn't even a challenge! It was an interesting zenlike experience, an all-day sense of calm contentedness and a relatively quiet mind. The thought of drinking crossed my mind out of habit from time to time, but it was easy to set aside. It was as spontaneous a shift in my experience as what happened around Amy's birthday. I went to bed feeling elated. Could it really be this easy?

Today has also been a success, albeit it also more of a challenge. The heavy energy was on me all day, and it was making work less engaging and making me want to drink, but I held off until after work was done at 7:00 p.m. By that point, the negative beings were starting up on me again, and I felt that I had made significant progress and just wanted to relax. And two in, it has helped me relax, even though it has also triggered increased activity. Some of the beings are telling me that three a day should be my max until I can cut it out completely, which I felt was very reasonable. I know no one is happy about where I am in my life, but I appreciate that there are those among these beings, however small a minority they may be, who are willing to work with me for the greater good. Even if the good I can do is not what it could or should have been, I can still be of more good doing it than if I'm just condemned and abandoned for being a failure.

Okay. So ... I am being told I'm a piece of shit on a pretty much hourly basis, at least, and have been for the past two to three weeks. Except for yesterday, of course. Oh, and now they're threatening to make me lose my mind. And the thing is, that feels like it's totally within their ability, based on my previous experiences (albeit that was on a weeklong 24-hour bender, the last three days of which I'd gone without even a moment of sleep ... not to mention I had taken a medication I hadn't tried for years). So, I try to accommodate those who hate me in the ways that I can, because as was pointed out to them last night, they are almost in a parental role by default, because they know so much more than I do. I don't know how to navigate their world without guidance, so just like the teachers who hated me in school, they hold both the knowledge and the power. And I didn't do well with that in a school setting either, except academically of course - but how can I be an Advanced Placement student in my life when I didn't even know I was enrolled in the course?

My mental health is fraying, just as we're headed into what I'm hoping will be a life-changing trip. But now I am terrified of making even bigger mistakes and upsetting these beings - or worse, that it's dangerous for me to go to New Zealand at all. I feel so much shame. I feel so broken. They regularly tell me that I'm damaged. Some go so far as to say that I will never have the capacity to achieve what I could have achieved if I'd live my life differently. I don't know how to respond. The waves of shame and self-loathing are overwhelming, and they can keep me from being on top of self-care like showering and such, which only compounds the shame.

I still feel like I truly don't get it. What did I miss? Is it true that I'm just a fuck-up and a workthless piece of shit? Is that the only way through this: to just accept it? To accept that I have squandered my whole life on drugs, legal or otherwise, when I had a choice? They're telling me that I'm weaker than I think I am. But why do any of them tell me anything good if I'm nothing but a waste of time for all concerned?