Alone

I've never experienced this before in my life. Not loneliness or being alone, like basically everyone I have experienced that on more occasions than I'd like to think about. I've never had a community tell me I need to leave because they need space away from me. Later, I'll go into details of all of that but this is about understanding that and coping with that.

I've been working in my Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills workbook which I was told would help those who have borderline personality disorder, as well as others who have just struggle with controlling their emotions. That is a big one for me, my main control of emotions in the past has been substance abuse which doesn't control anything, it makes things worse for myself and everyone else around me.

A recent tool I picked up was called REST which is an acronym meaning Relax, Evaluate, Set an intention, Take action. In relaxing you're "doing your best to remind yourself that you have an opportunity to behave differently."p9 I've put this into practice for things that have happened in the past and how it could have worked differently.

The other main one is radical acceptance which in this move has literally only been 4 days now but has been tearing my heart apart, is changing my attitude and being able to better tolerate distressing situations, "being overly judgemental of a situation or overly critical of yourself or others often leads to more pain, missed details and paralysis."p14 Which is true.

This leads to me to the two sessions I did with a kind friend in Austin who gifted me two EFT sessions which stands for emotional freedom technique. She told me in that room it wasn't about others, it was about me and how I am internally and how I can be better and the person I want to be. Our first session had tapping on meridian points on the forehead, chest, side rib area, and hand. She also did what she called shadow work which was going through my mind essentially guided by her but using metaphors which were incredibly helpful.

We did another exercise where we talked about this negative thing inside of me and what it looked like and for me that was easy. If any of you are close to me you've heard me bring up Sarai, especially in terms of drinking. But it was clear to me that she was one negative aspect of my life. In the session, through questions, I realized that she hadn't always been with me and for some reason, I had never thought of that before. I honestly had started to consider her an alter of sorts, an alter ego, and it was terrifying. Through tapping and positive affirmations and other words spoken out loud, I realized she came into my life when I really needed her.

TW: Abuse

When I was close to 19 years old I was dating a man named JoAnthony. At first, he was very sweet and loving but that relationship quickly turned to an abusive one. I was terrified when I heard loud cars because he had a very loud car. He would punch me and kick me if he got upset. Eventually, the catalyst was me eating a few mushrooms one day and at first, having an amazing trip, he wasn't around or anything, then my roommate came home and she was upset that there weren't any more mushrooms which led me into a bad trip. I felt really sick, I tried to take a shower. I tried to sleep but nothing would help. Eventually, my phone starts ringing and I see it's Jo. I don't answer but he keeps calling over and over and over. I was terrified. I knew if he found out I'd eaten mushrooms he would hurt me so I got in my car and started driving away from my house. Nobody knew I had left.

As I'm driving and pull out of my neighborhood I see a car pull up super fast behind mine and I think, "I'm  getting pulled over by the cops!" But no sirens come on, nothing. Quickly I realize it's Jo. He is so close he is almost hitting my car with his. I turn down a well-lit road that had a bunch of shops and should have pulled in there but I wasn't thinking clearly. I was still tripping and I couldn't comprehend what was happening. I drive into a side neighborhood and he gets next to me with his car and starts nudging my car with his. Pushing my car. I slam on my breaks and scream, "Okay! I'll park. Just stop." I pull into a side street and frantically grab for my phone, he gets out of his car and my window was cracked a tiny bit and he lunged his arm inside pulling my hair to the window and unlocking the door. He pulls me out of the car by my hair and slams my face into the asphalt. He then starts kicking me over and over and over and I just start screaming hoping someone will come outside. He grabs my hat and phone throws it into a gutter, he grabs my car keys and grabs me by my hair again and drags me into his car.

 He starts driving into the middle of nowhere, blood is dripping down my face and it's hard to see, I start to plead with him saying I can't see, please pull over, I won't tell anyone. Please. We lived in a small town at the time so driving into the middle of nowhere didn't take to long. I started to think I was going to have to crash the car. I was about to pull the steering wheel really hard to roll the car when he slammed on his breaks and told me to get out. I did and he took off and I took off running in the other direction as fast as I could thinking he was going to come back and hit me with his car.

I walked for hours until I saw lights of cars passing a somewhat busy road up ahead. I was too scared to knock on a neighbors door because the houses were so far apart and they all had no trespassing signs and it was 3 or 4 in the morning, I was tripping mushrooms and profusely bleeding from my head. I got to the main street and started trying to wave cars down and eventually an older Mexican man stopped and instead of taking me to the police station or to the hospital, he took me home.

After that night I started drinking heavily, Sarai showed up and when she was around I didn't give a shit about anyone. I had to get my keys from Jo and Sarai was with me. Every other man I was with after Jo for a long while, Sarai was with me.

She was with me when Chris got sick and I spent a month in the hospital praying he wouldn't die. But I'll talk about Chris later.

She served her purpose but I don't need her anymore and EFT made me realize that and I'm grateful.

I love Roots. I know I need time away to be healthy and get a better understanding of my purpose. But I know I'm a good fit for that place. I know because I helped build it. I helped make it what it is and those people have become my family. I can't dwell on my past. I can make things right. I can prove what I need to prove and come back better than before. Our past shapes us but our present is what matters the most. What we do now and the choices we make now are important. I'm trying to switch my mindset of being lonely to just being alone and being alone is okay. You can grow being alone.