Do you know what you’ve started? I just came here to party…now were on the dance floor acting naughty. Your hands around my waist, just let the music play boy hand to hand chest to chest and now we’re face to face – Rhianna

I remember how I hated this song the first time I heard it.  Look at this chick channeling Michael, she couldn’t carry his chamber pot.

Things change though.

If I spent my time recounting all of the ‘close calls’ I’ve had to relapse these 36 months I would get nothing else done. Period. On any given day I am one shitty experience from November 1. I have a lot of shitty experiences. I can’t say I have more than most, but I will say my recovery is fragile and I am always aware that without plan and at times intervention things can go bad.

Yesterday was one of those days.

I’ve been on edge for a few weeks now, the details will come eventually as they always do here, I spill it all. What’s important to this moment is for the first time in about 2 years I considered making a plan. I didn’t get too far, I at the least had the sense to see what was happening and I did what I don’t always do…reach out.

Those who love me constantly lecture me about my ability  to hide that which ails me. If they didn’t think I might enjoy it they would beat my ass. I might like it.

More often than not I will drop something in casual conversation, or they will read something and the lecture begins.

It’s not that I don’t know they love me its that I am still learning how to cope and manage and live. I have a friend who had a traumatic brain injury.  She needed to learn to walk again. This is how I learn to walk again, or perhaps for the first time.

At I sat at the table and the tears would not stop and I tried to figure out how to die without leaving the house or making this building inhabitable for my neighbors I also picked up the phone.

It wasn’t to say good bye – it was to say I need help.

I connected with a very unlikely friend. Well she is a friend and in ways that I won’t expand on at the moment.  This friend though is equally likely to say I will be right there or kill yourself. Now she doesn’t WANT me to die, or kill myself.  I knew though that talking to her would make me face some hard decisions and move me. I was gonna get over this crisis or get over me.

I hoped she was in Philly. She was. I hoped she would answer. She did.

What I didn’t expect was what actually happened.

I’m sure the details of events will find their way here, only they won’t be recognizable to you as what they were constant reader – life saving.

By the time the wolf pack ended up at my apartment door I was mostly  at the point of choosing life. By the time the wolf pack left I knew I would be here to blog again.

In the absence of the things I use to manage my stress, I’ve used S&M to keep me settled. When you haven’t been to therapy in a year, when you’ve been off your medication for 7 months, when you open up the mail and find…..sometimes a man with a Hello Kitty cane can make it better.

At the very least for a couple of hours you can turn off that portion of your brain which says the void is better than the life. I may not have cheddar biscuits like Red Lobster but I do have a pot roast which will make you wanna put a ring on it. As I watched him sit at this table I thought to myself, this is ok. I don’t plan on making it a habit, but he can have some more purple kool aid.

For me? I’m going to go back to 1 hour at a time. Until I can turn that hour into 2. 59, 58, 57…..

 

Aphrodite Brown