I don’t know what hit me this weekend. Last week went fine and it seemed productive and progressive in a positive way. The plan for Friday was to get a workout in and then come home and relax. Work went late and I came home to rest for a bit before the workout and I didn’t leave the house till today, with the exception of a couple trips to fast food joints to sooth my incredibly dark mood.

It scares me when this happens. These are the emotions that lead to drinking and they seem to come out of nowhere. “I’m a failure”. “I’m incapable of finding love”. Unworthy, despicable, without hope…

Where does it come from? My old therapist would say that it stems from mother never picking me up and dusting me off when I was down. It’s hard to tap in to that and understand it. I know when the mood hits how to describe it, just as I did in the paragraph above. But I’m sooo tired of feeling that way. I’m sure that even when I’m feeling ok, as I was last week, that feeling of worthlessness is simmering just below the surface, just waiting to say, see… I told you so whenever it seems my own expectations aren’t met.

Weekends seem to be especially tough and have been ever since I quit the part-time bar manager job over a year ago. I know what I’m wishing for and even here, in my anonymous blog that few people ever see, it is hard to admit. I want to be in love again.

I want to go to the gym together and eat healthy food. I want to go for walks in all seasons of our upper midwest weather. I want to visit art museums and talk about what the artists might have been trying to say through their work. I want to explore meditation and spirituality and have open discussions about what it means to be human. I want to make love and feel skin on my skin.

I want somebody to think I’m special.

I know this is a fantasy as long as I continue to sink into self-loathing. Or so I’ve been told by therapists and treatment programs. But the loathing never seems to let up. Good feelings do come but then weekends like this happen and hopelessness overshadows it all and I then think to myself, what’s the point in trying.

It’s like my unborn identical twin lives inside me and ridicules me with sneers and disgusted chuckles when the possibility of something more seems just over the horizon. See… I told you so. When he comes around, my heart burns with shame and I do anything to make it go away.

Last night I finally went to the grocery store to buy healthy food and I wore my baseball cap low over my eyes; I couldn’t bear to look people in the face lest I burst into tears. I walked outside with my full cart and everything seemed so bustling and alive around me. It was early evening on a Saturday night. But I felt separate from it all and just wanted to slink back to my basement and crawl under the covers. The liquor store was on the other side of the parking lot and I thought about stopping, but didn’t.

This morning I went to the gym and transcended The Mood. Then I went to my dad’s to watch football with him. I felt dirty in his presence. He doesn’t know about the relapse and DUI. I’m worried when he finds out he’ll cut me off again for another year, like he did the last time I got one 3 years ago. I was waiting for him to ask if I had been riding my motorcycle lately and thankfully he never did. Lying about anything just pushes me deeper into the loathing and I don’t know if I could’ve taken it. But the problem is that the self-loathing is better than his loathing. I’m used to it coming from me.

One of my goals is to try and write here on a weekly basis. I think I’m done for tonight and can’t say that I necessarily feel better but at least the weight on my heart seems a little less. I’m not going to go back and read this now or edit it. The therapist would probably have a field day with some of this. My guess is that it sounds like I’m really feeling sorry for myself. I don’t care. It’s raw but at 6:31 pm on October 14, 2018 it’s real, at least to me.