#30YearsRolling – Day 6/30 – Reflections on the 30th Anniversary of my Injury
The change of schools and the deep immersion in music certainly helped to take the edge off the deep despair I was feeling.
For a while.
By the end of year 10 I had stopped getting stoned.
The feeling of getting foggier and foggier was not pleasant and the momentary escapes were not what they used to be so I gave that away and haven’t touched it since.
I continued drinking whenever I could though and loved the feeling of the heaviness being lifted more and more as the alcohol took effect.
In between those escapes I was going through the motions every day.
Still struggling to find my identity.
Still struggling to feel motivated or inspired.
Still struggling with the feelings of anger and resentment directed at myself.
Some of the times that the anger was triggered most was on school sports days.
The Athletics Carnival, the Swimming Carnival, Cross Country Day.
The school insisted that I go even though I couldn’t participate to “cheer on my peers”.
Attending those days would have been one of the most painful things for me to do.
Right in my face reminding me of who I used to be and what I couldn’t do anymore.
The mere thought of watching that ripped my heart out and thankfully Mum wrote sick notes for me to stay home on those days.
Other than a stint attempting wheelchair footy, where I felt completely embarrassed by how slow and uncoordinated I was, I continued the resistance I had to sport that started with the pact I’d made with my 12 year old self back in the hospital bed years earlier.
The recollection of where my rock bottom moment happened on the timeline of my journey is blurry and hard to pin point.
The moment itself is neither of those things.
I have to remind myself to breathe now as I take myself back into that moment.
I was home alone in my bedroom with the door closed and I felt like the walls were closing in on me.
I’d been crying hysterically for what seemed an eternity and it felt like there was no end to it.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and hated what I saw.
The years of bottled up despair had boiled over.
Rather than being a feeling of relief, it magnified the pain in a way I was unprepared for.
In this moment I wanted it to all be over.
It scared me that I found myself in that space.
The space that so many judge and never think there could ever be something so terrible that leaving this world seemed a better option.
Yet here I was.
Alone.
Crying.
A bottle of pills in one hand.
A water bottle in the other.
Ready to not feel anything anymore.
Then a wave of fear swept over me that was greater than the pain in that moment.
What if my parents came home and found me before I was gone and I ended up worse than I was?
If I had a guarantee in that moment of the intended outcome, I wouldn’t be here today; the fear of that happening was the only thing that stopped me from taking a handful of those pills.
I put the pills aside and took slow sips of the water as I slowed my breathing down.
It was time.
Time to decide whether to give up or get on with it.
And get on with it I did.
The song that represents this time for me is “Fine Again” by Seether.
#rebirthday #ToMyYoungerSelf
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