Day 18

I woke up this morning and had to take a shit. Well, I didn't technically wake up with the feeling of having to shit, but I did lay in bed for a while trying to materialize the feeling of realizing that I hadn't shit in a few days. Thinking about how much my body hates me these days makes me incredibly anxious. Mentally, I have been trying to find a fair balance between loving myself and hating myself, all while,physically, my body yearns to go back to the days where being "too sore" meant that I played long and hard outside the day before. My life is one big paradox right now and every day is a struggle to just hold it together. I sat in front of the computer this morning adjusting the layout of my new blog and I couldn't help but be reminded of the days where I sat in front of my computer screen for hours building homes for my Sims. After countless hours of picking the perfect floor tiles and googling the best money cheats, I would give up, never allowing my Sims to grow and build relationships with their neighbors and have promotions at work. I felt that feeling of lost interest this morning after I tried so desperately to find the right code to add a picture into my blogger header. To no avail I gave up and decided to eat a stack of pancakes my dad cooked for me instead, changing the channel immediately to Malcolm in the Middle as soon as I saw its contents on my TV's guide. But, this morning I didn't give up. With a full stomach I lifted myself off the couch and walked back to the idle computer screen. With a quick shift of the wrist, I moved the mouse enough to wake my computer from its somber rest and decided that today would be the day that I accomplish something that I started. And here I am now, thinking about how great it is to be home and know that if I run out of toilet paper mid-wipe, I can always count on there being extra under the sink. I am grateful that if I am hungry there will always be food in the fridge to consume and that if I feel lonely, I can lay my head next to my dog and he will silently comfort me. I have a doctors appointment tomorrow and I am going to, hopefully, get prescribed a drug that will save my life. A drug that, no matter how heavy a craving, it will prevent me from using Heroin. Heroin. Heroine. With the addition of one letter the word Heroin goes from a destructive presence in my life to the person I want to become. And the difference is only one letter. The difference between my day today and my day yesterday is that I am going to work harder to feel better. I am going to work out and stretch because I have to. Because I have to. I have been okay with doing the bare minimal for so long that I have literally accepted failure into my life with open arms. I am 23 years old and I can't imagine having to be this miserable for the next 50 years, which is why I am trying to get better. I am going to try and find either an NA or and AA meeting today somewhere in the area. Because I have to. I am going to put on my headphones today and bundle up and force my aching, weak body to run around my block four times. Because I have to. And then, when I have done what I wanted to accomplish today I will go into my kitchen and open up a pack of Hostess cupcakes because I am not working out to lose weight. I am working out to build self-discipline because for as long as I can remember that is not a trait that I have possessed. On the way home from New York Friday night I was explaining to my dad the problem with my brother. His heroin addiction is based so much deeper than the internal struggle of either wanting to get high, or not. Heroin has programmed his brain to believe that he truly needs it to survive because his self worth is non-existence and nothing else will ever be as important again. But his brain, just like yours and mine is a muscle that can be trained to break it's own habits with self-discipline. That's where I am at right now. I am in boot camp training for the war that is the rest of my life because I am not like the majority of America. I can not drink recreationally and I can not occasionally do drugs on the weekend. Just because I am sober at this point, doesn't mean everything is automatically okay. It means that everything is worse because for the first time in three years I am seeing the world without finger stained glasses. But that is okay. It is okay because as long as I keep trying, I will stay clean. And as long as I stay clean, everything will eventually be okay.