Listen, if you are going to go crazy and lose yourself and your shit to drugs and alcohol and have to flee an abusive relationship in the middle of the night, it is best if first you were a good person so you have people to call to come circle the wagons. Drug friends are no good for this, trying to get drug friends to circle the wagons is like herding cats. No, you have to reach back for your good people, and whether or not I deserved it when I did, I reached back and I had those good people and it is because of those good people that I am here today. That is not an exaggeration, they saved my life.
I stayed for a hot minute in my friends' house, where they didn't make me pay rent and they didn't ask me for anything and they watched me with nervous eyes until I insisted on my own place and then they helped me move again.
That was a bad time, even with all the help I was getting it was a bad time and I'm not real proud of it. I was not yet in recovery, I'd fallen down a deep hole and had yet to even try to dig myself out but kept insisting that I was. That's the thing about crazy, when you have truly gone crazy you can't even see sane, you have no idea what sane looks like anymore.
I didn't have a bed. I don't think I had a bed since I moved out of my parent's house to go to school when I was eighteen. I slept in a dorm twin at New College, then a futon matrice that fit in my truck bed, then my new husband's bed, then another futon, then a boyfriend's bed... Well, you know, in your twenties it's pretty easy to sleep for years in beds that you don't really own. So when my world fell apart this last time I moved into an apartment and the only furniture I had held my clothes. And goddamn no money, I had to borrow money from my parents to pay my rent and get my utilities turned on, there sure wasn't money for luxuries like beds or shower curtains or say, food. (Stay away from drugs, kids.)
Another old friend of mine just happened to have a twin bed that her daughter (a girl I used to take care of) had grown out of, and they gave it to me. I didn't even think about what a miracle that was at the time- not just a bed but clean sheets as well! The whole shebang, ready to ride! Mama and I set it up and joked that it was a nun's bed. "Nun shall pass" I said, "You aint gettin' nun" says Mama.
I didn't even realize how uncomfortable the damn thing was until I got sober a little over a year ago. Even then, with my broken body and learning how to sleep through the night, well, it worked. It was a bed.
But then, oh glory, a couple of weeks ago, just for sweetness, my dad bought me a New Bed. It is new, it is big, it is wonderful. Honey, it is a Queen. It came wrapped in plastic and everything.
I felt a little funny about accepting such a large gift. I feel like I should, at age 30 and 2/3 be able to buy myself a bed, but the thing about buying yourself something is that there is always something coming up that takes precedent over it. There's Christmas and birthdays and car insurance and the economy's bad and tips aren't good right now and what have you. And I don't live like an addict anymore. I have a shower curtain. I have back-up everything- toilet paper, paper towels, q-tips, shampoo, lotion, toothpaste, bars of soap. When I mop my floor I use a real bucket, I don't have to empty the trash so that I can use the trashcan for that purpose. These may seem like small things but you know most drug addicts don't have a spare roll of paper towels if you come knocking, they just don't. So I swallowed my pride and said, "Thank you, Daddy" like a good girl should regardless of her age and I am so glad that I did.
Did you know that it is possible to sleep all through the night? That when you wake up to pee at four in the morning you can go BACK TO SLEEP? I thought I had insomnia but really I just had a shit ass bed.
Now I'm not saying that the bed has changed everything in my life, but it wasn't but a few days after I got it that I went and quit my job. Look, the bed is paid for, they can't take it away from me.
After getting enough sleep I found that I was not more able to deal with the craziness that goes on at my job. Instead I had the energy to be angry. More and more my boss was reminding me of that crazy drug addicted man that I left a couple of years ago in the middle of the night. Same walking on eggshells, same irrational bursts of anger followed by remorse, same super hero complex. Same me, running around trying desperately to put band aids on everything just trying to get through the day without everything falling apart. Everyone else just sitting tight and trying not to make too much noise, scared she might flip out over the least little thing. No thank you. I will not let another person's insanity run my life, I've got enough of my own to deal with.
I've got a couple more weeks there and eventually, when it's up and running, I'm going to help work that bar that my stepfather is building. It's time I hitched my wagon to the ones that would circle up if I came calling. And I'm going to go back to school. It may seem like utter foolishness to quit a job before another is ready, especially with the economy being as it is, but my hard won sanity is far more important than the one dollar raise that I've been offered to deal with the shit that I've been dealing with. Sugar-Babies, I'm making my bed and I'm sure as hell gonna lie in it.
