**CONTENT WARNING** This post discusses addiction, relapse, and a mental health crisis in detail. The feelings and thoughts shared may be distressing to some readers.
There is a special sort of hell that exists where you are forced to realize that no matter how hard you fight, you won’t be able to save yourself. It’s a place where your pride goes to die a loud, screaming death, and the floor is littered with the shattered pieces of your self-reliant identity. As if losing that identity wasn’t bad enough, when you see the creature destroying that identity is the one friend who refuses to let you fall, it’s somehow worse. You just want to be left to silently fade away, but they won’t let you. Just when I was about to give up after what I am now calling my semicolon year, I had a conversation with a friend that changed everything.
“Anyone else in your family you can lean on?” he asked over text. “And don’t shoot me for asking this, but… is your ex-husband an option?”
A moment later, another message. “And really, really don’t shoot me for this, but… Military enrollment?”
I had to smile at that one. He knew full well that I was not fit for the military, but I couldn’t blame him for digging so deep to find a solution. He’s a problem solver, but I was laying down a problem I didn’t want solved. This conversation wasn’t me asking for permission to pack up my life and move to the coast to live with my grandmother; it was me giving notice of my plans and for once in my life running my idea past someone before I pulled any triggers. He had been with me every step of the way since the breakup a couple months ago, not to mention the past 20 years of my life, so I couldn’t make such a big decision without at least running it by him.
As I was telling him just how far he was reaching, he asked, “Have you calculated how much money it is to get you some breathing room? Not solve everything, just to get over the immediate stuff?”
I hadn’t. Once it was clear my truck would be repossessed the following day, the scheming and plans had pretty much stopped. What was the point? But it was a necessary exercise, and frankly, a welcome distraction from the emotional roller coaster of the breakup I’d been riding. It was an impossible situation, but I didn’t want to feel any worse, so I just calculated what would catch me up in the most necessary areas. That was bad enough. I give him a quick rundown of the situation to show just how insurmountable the situation was.
As I was mindlessly flipping through reddit my phone vibrated in my hand. A familiar banner fell from the top of the screen. My heart jumped into my throat as my brain put the words together, and the reality of the moment hit me in the chest like that electric fence did when I was a kid. I saw his name. I saw the stupid Venmo logo. I saw the amount.
My vision blurred a bit. One word started spilling out of my mouth in a rapid loop, “No. No no no no no…” My brain short-circuited, torn between what I should have been feeling—unbelievable gratitude—and what I was actually feeling: the hottest shame and most furious anger I had felt in a long, long time.
Guilt crushed my chest as the embarrassment continued to flood from some dark place in my soul in the form of a fuck word filled rant into his phone. Realizing that I was making no sense and was simply an unregulated ball of fury, I told him I would come back to him once I digested everything. I stared at the window decorations hanging by my face as the sounds of Strangers With Candy filled the background. An hour and a half passed as I sat silently, not seeing the television, not hearing words, just watching the grainy VHS tape of my life playing in my head. He had trapped me in an impossible situation. I’d been so depressed and emasculated for months, forced to rely on my boyfriend for everything, living in constant shame since I couldn’t support myself for the first time in my adult life, and now this? This felt like a cage. I would never be able to escape this prison of perception, of people seeing how pathetic I was.
I finally looked down at my phone and saw his last message. “Your wellbeing is the most important thing to me. You’ve already said multiple times that you can lean on family, so this is that. I don’t think of you any differently.”
My own words came back to kick me in the ass. It was something I’d said a million times over the years: our family isn’t blood, it’s the people we choose along the way. In that moment a realization washed over me, the most obvious truth in the world that I’d never stopped to fully appreciate. He is maybe the only person in the world who knows the real me, who sees the man behind all the masks I’ve been wearing since I was a kid. It was, at the same time, the most comforting and violating feeling I have ever felt. I never wanted him to perceive me again, but I also never wanted to forget how it felt to be truly seen.
My anger finally dissipated as that truth settled in my heart. My “brother” was keeping me alive to fight another day, just as he had many times before. I messaged him back, conceding that even I wasn’t dumb enough to argue with an unapologetic asshole such as him. I thanked him for being so unbelievably stupid and said I wouldn’t be making any major life decisions today, that I would take his advice and stick it out. I was mad at myself for falling into such an obvious trap, but for now, I wasn’t going anywhere. Thus began the retrospection into how I ended up in this impossible place.
As 2022 was coming to an end things were probably the best they had ever been. I was waiting tables, money was good, I had just gotten a puppy, I was happy. So of course I had to shake things up after a talk with my boss and accepted his offer to take over the GM role at the restaurant where I was working. I swore I would never go back into full time management, but I hate letting people down, the consistency of a steady paycheck was enticing, and there are parts of the job I do enjoy. I took the reins of a well-oiled machine with no plans of shaking things up, so it seemed like a good idea. It couldn’t be that bad, right?
About a year in, we hired a new bar manager, and the countdown to my breakdown began. He had ideas, lots of them, and while the owner was all for them, the staff was not. I was stuck in the middle, pulling my hair out as I became more and more disillusioned. I didn’t have the testicular fortitude to be 100% honest with my boss, the staff were all in revolt, and I just couldn’t seem to do anything right. The work became my personal hell as a quiet, hidden addiction began to develop, moving from “occasionally with friends” to “nearly every day, because it’s the thing that is allowing me keep it all afloat.”
February to May of 2024 was a blur of trying to figure things out at work and never being able to get there. I withdrew from friends. Sleep became a waste of my time; there was always too much to do. My relationship was the only grounding force left and it was strangely going well. The impulsivity of my bipolar disorder, however, couldn’t sit quietly forever. That slumbering creature was beginning to stir. It was only a matter of time before he needed to stretch his legs and take me for a walk. That day came one afternoon during a manager meeting when my boss said just the right (or wrong) thing. I didn’t think. I had no plan. The words came out before I could stop myself. I looked at him and said I guess he would need to find someone else to run the restaurant, because I was leaving. The hypomania was either the catalyst that gave me the ability to do it, or it was the suit of armor I wrapped myself in immediately after. Regular me is still flabbergasted I did that. Quitting was never part of the plan, at least not like this. But at that time, I thought staying would have been the death of me, which is probably true. But there was some middle ground I could have explored first.
The hypomania was, as it usually is, my best friend at that time. And this time, he brought along his cousin, Addiction. The three of us felt unstoppable. I was coming up with the best ideas; every project was destined to take off. I was finally going to work for myself, do the activism work I’d always wanted to do, and my soul was finally at peace. It was amazing, in the worst possible way. Spoiler alert: everything failed. The grand projects never got past the planning phase. The contract work was a fantasy. A real emperors clothes kind of deal. As the intoxicating fog of mania began to clear, it was like waking up from a long sleep. Instead of being well rested and energized, I woke up in my worst nightmare: dependent on my boyfriend, no regular job, unmedicated, and losing the delusional grandeur the hypomania had provided as a shield. I was in a familiar place, but this time I had a new pet that decided to stick around: a secret addiction that was beginning to make me feel guilty.
I’ll never forget the day in my abnormal psychology class when we discussed addiction and my professor said that relapse is part of the process for most people. The research backs this up: 40% to 60% of people with a substance use disorder will relapse. That number sounds high until you realize it’s on par with relapse and treatment adherence rates for other chronic conditions like diabetes (30-50%) or hypertension and asthma (50-70%). From my perspective, addiction is a chronic condition requiring ongoing management. It is many things, but it is not an indication of one’s morality. In the same way we don’t look down on a diabetic friend for spiking their blood sugar, we don’t need to see relapse as a character flaw in an addict. It’s a predictable symptom of the disease, and we need to offer each other—and ourselves—grace when it happens.
That grace is easier to understand in theory than in practice. The inevitable relapse did of course come in the worst way at the worst time, and it took the only stable ground I had left. My relationship was over. I became a mirror of a horror movie he’d already seen, and I don’t blame him for not wanting to watch it again. The logical part of my brain gets it. But logic offers little comfort. Going from having what felt like everything one day to waking up the next to abandonment and a wall of silence was too much. The loss became gasoline poured on the embers of my addiction. I wasn’t ready to be tested like that. I never stood a chance.
A core lesson from all my years in therapy is the importance of finding the lesson in the mistake, of working to apply it to your future in the hopes of doing and being better. This process has led me, finally, to do some real work with the concept of radical acceptance. I’ve thrown the term around flippantly in the past, but now I’m applying it to myself in a real and sincere way, and I have to say: it isn’t wonderful. It’s not about finding happiness or peace in your situation but acknowledging your reality as it actually is, without bitching and moaning that it isn’t what you want it to be. Pain is inevitable but we create greater suffering by refusing to accept that pain
That acceptance is a constant battle. I find myself resisting it almost daily, reminding myself that I actually can’t do everything on my own, that sometimes I just have to shut up, listen, and take the help. But acceptance isn’t passive. It’s the key that unlocks the door to action. So, I have started to move differently. I am applying for work that I always had an excuse to skip over. I joined a program that brings Little Rock residents together to learn and engage with local government. I started talking with some of the old gang who actually could make things happen and we are talking about the old plans and how they might actually could work. I’m reconnecting with old friends. I’m trying to stay active and move forward with acceptance. I don’t have it all figured out, but taking things one week at a time seems to be working for now.
So what’s next? I wish this was an episode of some after-school special where I was your cool uncle who wrapped everything up with a heart-touching speech about getting back on the horse. I tried to come up with something, threw around a couple of ideas on how I could frame this into an inspirational story, but that’s not what this is. I’m still a broken man trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what comes next.
I found a note to myself I wrote in 2020 after my divorce. In it, I talk about growth and reflect on the ten years I spent with my ex-husband and all the ways I had changed, especially during my years in Wisconsin where I underwent some of the most profound changes of my life. It ended with a list of things I would not “just deal with” in future relationships, and a reminder of the ways I was better than I was before. I was at the top of my game then, and I feel like I have spent a lot of time regressing since coming home. That note has become my daily affirmations. I got there before, I can get there again.
I’ve had a decent life, all things considered, but it has its fair share of trauma. I was never going to enjoy a smooth journey, and gods know there have been multiple times that I wanted to just get off the ride. But I try to see every negative experience as a semicolon, not a period. It’s not the end of the story, just a pause as I figure out what to write next. I know there is a lot I cant control and I have a long way to go but no matter what comes next, I know that I don’t want it to be the end.