starting over.

My life has been a rough one. By the grace of god i made it through this last one. -- I've struggled with addiction since I was fifteen years old. Although i know I was an addict long before my first use. I've always searched for something to make me happy. Growing up I felt as if I never fit anywhere: not with my family, not at school, not with friends. I never seemed to be a loner, but I was on the inside. Drinking in Highschool was accepted and was all I wanted to do. From the use of my first mood altering substance, I thought I had found what I needed. I was happy. I was introduced to opiates when I was fifteen. Hello drug of choice. When I first started using them, I was completely who I wanted to be.  I did have dry spells in my addiction. Such as pregnancies, and June 12- September 13. After Lenix was born in 2011  I thought I had hit my bottom. Postpartum depression had introduced itself to me & I self medicated. I still functioned in daily life, even keeping a 3.8 gpa, & raising two kids. Casey came home from his deployment and I came clean. He had always known I had a problem, but never knew I'd take it to extremes of 50-60 norco or lortabs a day. My day consisted of finding pills. That's pretty much it. We went home to ND again until his deployment in September of 2013.  I moved home again, which was probably the beginning of my mistakes.  --- & just like clockwork as every addict does, I picked up right where I left off. Not only that but I picked up a new drug as well. Methamphetamine. ---- even the name is shameful and hurts to even type. There's a reason people call certain drugs "hard drugs". It's easy to sit back and look down on someone who uses it. I've always thought it was a trashy drug myself. I even hated it while doing it. I'd sit there while high, look up horror stories of children found in meth labs, look at before & after pictures, then put my phone down & hit the pipe, sick to my stomach. It doesn't make any sense.  I ll skip all the stories about me staying up for 12 days at a time, because I don't like to glorify it. I've noticed that I sometimes glam it up like it was fun, and then I remember the last two weeks before Mother's Day of this year. I began isolating myself, putting my babies off on other people, and hurting my loved ones beyond repair. All I cared about was that next high. That shit took me down really fast. I contemplated suicide because my life was worthless and I didn't have anything left but my drug & that was even getting slim. I went to jail in may & spent Mother's Day in jail; I found god that day. I'll journal about that in a different post. - I went to rehab at the Mississippi State Hospital. I felt so relieved to be there. I noticed that I was slowly starting to feel again. In active addiction, I used to feel numb. I had suppressed past issues and events in my life that I shouldn't have. Physical pain isn't a problem, it's the emotional pain that I can't handle. In rehab i forgave people for things that had been done years ago. Things that I had hidden deep within, that made me form hatred for people who probably don't ever even think of me after all these years gone by. - I began to feel whole again. I had my mind back. They say as recovering addicts we live in a fourth dimension.  And I fully believe it.  Today I like to wake up and drink coffee outside. Just to stop and take note of gods creations. I've been humbled. I've never been so thankful for anything like I have my sobriety. The ability to see things in a way that I haven't been able to since I was fifteen years old. Even my personality is like it was in jr high. For eight years I walked on this earth as something like a zombie. I didn't feel emotion & I had lost all personality. I was a miserable being.  - Now little things such as a good laugh, seeing a butterfly, or even being in the summer rain just make me feel alive.  I live everyday in complete amazement of Gods wonders & blessings. Since I've been at my secondary rehab in hattiesburg, I've made friends with people who relapsed. I've heard of people my age overdosing. To be honest, I'm so afraid. For the first time in my life I'm afraid of drugs. I know something as simple as a bad day can trick my mind into using. The term "ones too many & one thousand is never enough" comes to my mind. I know one use isn't possible for me. I'm not a functioning addict, and I had no control over my addictions. They had consumed my life. I'm so afraid of losing the new found happiness I now have. It's important for me to remember I have a choice. I never have to use again. I never have to live the miserable life of chasing that high again. -- addiction is a disease. It's just like cancer to me. Once you have it, it's always there. But you can recover. Some recover just for short amounts of time followed by worsening relapse,like a period of remission. Addiction is even deadly. Even though this addiction thing has pretty much destroyed my life as I knew it, I'm so grateful. Because now I'm learning how to live again & this time I get to experience all of these emotions. I get to "stop & smell the roses". I get to feel happy& now when I laugh I feel it inside of me. The happiness and joy of life amazes me. I'm not ashamed of my past because it's made me who I am today.