i think the most common cause of insomnia is simple, it's loneliness.

So the last week it has seemed almost impossible to fall asleep. And when I finally do, I end up waking up around six in the morning and then cannot fall back to sleep. It drives me crazy because by the end of the day I am absolutely exhausted, yet I can't seem to convince my mind to shut off and let me fall into that blissful state that is sleep. Sleep has always worsened my depression which is why I was prescribed sleeping pills and Xanax at such a young age.

But now since I'm sober, I don't have the option to take pills to just go into that wonderful land of dreams and nothingness. Well, I do have the option, but I have chosen not to take it because I know for a fact that it would completely ruin my sobriety and send me right back into the arms of my beloved Oxycontin. So every night it has been a struggle to get to that place where everything is perfect and calm and just is.

I don't know what to do. Not sleeping worsens every bad feeling I have. Every trigger, depressed though, craving, anxious thought, everything is exacerbated by my insomnia.

If I don't sleep soon, I think I'm going to lose my mind.

it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

*I am in no way endorsing dog fights with this title, they're horrible. Just a good quote.

 A week ago, since I posted last. Things just got increasingly worse. Before I get into that, I think there's a background story that needs to be interluded here:
 Me and my boyfriend have been together and madly in love for two years. We live together, we're always together and we're happy. But we fight a lot. We 'break-up' a lot and then everything is fine by the net day. We make up and are back to normal. We love hard, and fight hard. But this time I really screwed up. He just left me and that was that. I don't think we can bounce back from this. Maybe this is the time he never comes back. He really hurt me and broke my heart.  So this is where my week of drug binge and drinking drinking started. That's also the week I cut myself. And the week my Cymbalta or situation made me want to die.

Continuing on, my last post, I was crashing. I slept forever, and woke up feeling horrible. Depressed. Hopeless. Anxious. Shaking. Ryan still didn't want me, my other friend has a new girlfriend, and my best friend doesn't know I'm a drug addict wreck. I have nobody. So I rush to the LCBO, buy this HUGE bottle of vodka, get some more sleeping pills, and whatever else I can get my hands on. And so, my drug and alcohol binge continues, my non eating continues. And despite how heartbroken and sad I am, when I'm fucked up, I don't care. My drugs and whatnot is all I need.

Ryan ended up messaging me, and we talked for a long time. We decided we were going to work on things. Take it slow, do the whole best friend thing until everything's okay. Yet for some reason, as completely happy I am that we have the chance to fix something that should have never been broke, I couldn't stop myself from thinking what about the things that are already broken and always have been broken. Like me, I'm broken, always have been. And my idea of fixing myself, is a fix...of drugs, purging, starving, whatever. So I keep breaking myself more. Will I ever be fixed? Do I even deserve to be fixed? I'm afraid he's going to come back expecting the girl he loved, the one he met, the one who was sober before all this. And what if we try, and he changes his mind, and I have to go through all this heartbreak again. I cannot handle that.

So I spent my nights talking till him until he went to bed, then I'd begin my nighttime drug routine. I kept getting worse, and it wasn't until I drank and drugged myself do death that I realized I'm becoming an alcoholic too. My mom found me, puking my guts up, incoherent, eyes rolling back in my head. When I did finally wake up, I was still drunk. I couldn't remember anything, my whole night was a black hole. I decided I couldn't drink anymore. My mom was furious, pointing out what I never even knew, you aren't supposed to drink while on antidepressants...I'm on two. I felt like shit for a few days recovering from that night.

Things with Ryan are getting much better, I think we're going to be okay. We've been hanging out, getting intimate and I'm so glad. He also helped me realize I've been misjudging weed the whole time. I personally think it's therapeutic. It gets rid of my anxiety, I can relax, it helps me sleep, and I don't even need all the other drugs. I still will have all the other drugs for now, I'm not ready to give them up, but maybe it'll help me slowly get off them. It's a lot better than drinking, sleeping pills, xanax, percs, coke, you name it that I'd do.

I'm not giving up. It seems like I've relapsed again and want to stay an addict. I don't I just need to get my life a bit more in order, build up the strength deep down in me. It's me against a monster, I need to build the fight in me before I can fight something that size. But I will do it. I've gotten clean before on a lot worse, I can do it again. Just give me time.

'the monster likes to talk; he jumps into your head and opens your mouth, making it spout your deepest darkest deceptions. making you say all the things you'd rather not say, at least not in mixed company.'

I'm just waking up fully now. When I first opened my eyes this afternoon, everything was hazy. I felt really confused. My head was pounding, my body shaking, and my eyes refused to focus. So I closed them and tried to drift off again.

It wasn't until I woke up again later that I felt the burning pain on my arm. It scared me, all the red inflamed gashes on my arm. I touched them, they were scalding hot and the touch sent pain shooting through my body. I almost passed out, needles and cuts bother me. When did I do this to myself?

Everything is still so hazy, almost like it was a distant childhood dream, that you can't remember if it's real or not. But it was, the whole thing was terrifyingly real. I don't remember much of it either. The last clear memory is from last week or so. I went to the doctors, he put my on another antidepressant to help with my anxiety and recommended a psychologist. Next couple of days I spent in bed, trying to accept the fact that my relationship is over. I thought everything was going to be okay, and then I felt it. This overwhelming urge to die. As depressed as I've ever been, I have never felt anything like this. It was horrifying and I tried to keep calm, but I couldn't. I couldn't feel like this. And then I started drinking and smoking pills. That's the last thing that's clear.

It was like my bulimic alter ego Jenna and my unnamed addiction joined forces and became this horrible monster in my mind that led me through days of hell. I was drowned out as they took over my mind. But eventually they couldn't even take it, and that's when I guess I finally crashed. I can still feel them, whispering in the back of my mind. It's almost exactly like Ellen Hopkin's book Crank. I can;t let their voices get louder than mine again. I need to go back to sleep, crashing's a bitch.

Guess I will be seeing that psychologist after all.

imagine trying to live without air, now imagine something worse.

it's funny, one moment your on your road to recovery, the next your staring death in the eyes, hoping he wins the stare-down.

have you ever watched blood trickle down your arm? the stinging pain is almost as good as snorting 10 pain killers. i never want to feel again. every time i let myself feel, i end up hurt. fuck, i miss oxys. i miss the mind and body numbing feeling. i miss the rush that lulls you into a sleep. hell, i even miss the pain of withdrawal, creeping up my spine, stealing every ounce of strength and happiness from my soul. i'd do anything for even just one.

it's been a week and a day since he left me. it only took a week for me to fall so low, i think this is what they mean by rock bottom. except, i want to dig six feet deeper. i haven't eaten in days, i don't even know how many. it feels amazing. too bad it's the slowest death i could choose.

but of course, i wanted to feel better. to feel nothing. why did Purdue have to do this to me? to decide that oxys are a problem now, and to replace them with garbage? you couldn't have given me a couple more months? an easy out?

looks like I'm settling for percs again. but snorting them isn't going to do the trick, neither will eating them. god forbid i binge and puke up a perfectly good high. tin foil, a straw, a lighter, and crushed pills. that'll do. it's weird, it's worse than any oxy addiction. once the first hit of chemical smoke hit my lungs, i couldn't stop. it was a constant cycle of crying, drinking, smoking and then snorting sleeping pills to knock me out. i used up 2 lighters, and have burns and blisters all over my thumbs. if i don't have smoke in my lungs, i can't function. i haven't stopped shaking in days. i tell myself it's because i haven't taken a hit in a while, so i do. the shaking doesn't stop.

the thing is, when you've been up high for days, completely out of your mind high, your mind starts to play tricks on you. first, it told me how good the burns feel. how that's all i could feel. then it told me if it was worse, i wouldn't feel a thing. i held them over an open flame. then it told me that wasn't enough. it made me so preoccupied with death for days. i listened to suicide music, fell in love with Kurt Cobain, thought about my empty eyes when i died, and how nobody would care. how i wouldn't hurt anymore.

but how? i didn't know how i could do it, how i could go through with it. so i grabbed the sharpest knife i could find. i just wanted to see how it'd feel. it's the weirdest thing, it hurts so badly that you can't feel it. now i have 8 perfect gashes on my arms.

if i wasn't so fucking high when i did it i would have done it somewhere nobody could see.

i need some help, i have to talk to someone.

this will be the last time, everytime's the last time.

So, I haven't posted in anything since the night I said I was getting clean. Not because I didn't try, but because my computer was not in operating condition.

But the big question is, have I stopped using? Not totally. I wanted to cut back, and like, wean myself off of them, because I thought that if I stopped cold Tofurkey (not turkey, I'm a vegetarian, haaha) that the withdrawal would be so horrible that I would give in too easily. I know how weak I am, and I didn't want to put myself in a place where I'd succumb to my weakness.

Anyways, to summarize what's happened over the last week, I wrote my last post, got high, crashed and went to bed. I woke up feeling awful, and had so many things to do. I got high again just to make it through the day. I made a plan and cut all my drugs into small pieces, promising to cut back more and more each day. This went okay for a few days, but then I came into a bit of extra money, and I figured, hey, why not have a little bender as a goodbye to my addiction. So I started using like it's going out of style (ahaha, Mariana's Trench Lyrics <3).

Fast forward to yesterday: I totally ran out of pills. Like totally. My whole city is dry, because of the new Neos, which are the replacement that makes it impossible to use to get high. So I had none left, and no way to get more.

This is when I realized that as much as I want to be clean. I also still really like using. It makes me sad to know that I'm only going to be clean because I have no other choice. It's depressing to know that I couldn't do it, and that I never really even tried. That I will get sober, but not because I chose to. And the problem with that is, if I don't stop because I want to, as soon as they're in my face again, I'll be crushing and snorting.

You might say, "Well, maybe you won't. Maybe after you're clean you'll decide it's not worth it."

Haah. Wrong. Because somehow, I found some. And guess what? As soon as I got them tonight, after not having them for a day or so, I had it in my mouth sucking the coating off, dying to feel it burn my nose.

But again, I don't have much. And I'll probably run out all over again. And then I'll be sober by force, again. Maybe that will be the last time. But everytime is the last time.

when you can stop, you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't.

It's funny how that works. I don't know about most people, but for me, it was a conscious decision to start using. I never really thought I would ever touch any type of drug. I mean, my whole life (twenty years) I hadn't even taken a sip of alcohol. When I went on my meds for depression and anxiety, I guess that's when I really started, but that wasn't the start of addiction. I was so used to feeling so high strung, so up, with my mind racing all night long, with days and days of insomnia. And the less I slept, the more depressed and anxious I became. So when I was prescribed anti-anxiety meds and pills to help me sleep, I guess that's the first time I realized how fucking awesome it is to be fucked up. Because for once, my mind just shut down. My whole body was down, and I felt nothing. It was like all my tension, all my worries, all my anxiety was just gone, pressed down so deep in my body that I didn't even remember it had ever been there. I was so naturally up, that I wanted to go down. My boyfriend would talk about coke, how if he were to use, that would be his drug of choice. I asked him why, and he told me that you feel so awake and clear, and amazing. I didn't understand, it sounded horrible to me. Why would I want to be amped up when I'm like that all the time, and it only drives me nuts? I guess when you don't sleep and lie in your bed for hours with your mind running for days, you don't really have the desire to use something that will just make it worse. My mind moving so quick was the problem, I just wanted to be gone. To feel calm and sleepy and numb. My normally tight body was suddenly loose. I'd take a couple pills, and put on some music and just fucking dance. All I could feel was the beat of the music, and the sway of my hips. And then, when the music finally lulled me to sleep, I would surrender to it willingly. Oh yeah, and did I mention that when you feel this good, the only thing that could feel better, is sex? So that's all I wanted, to fuck, get fucked up, and to dance. But I was single at the time and not a slut, so you do the math. The funny thing is, that sleeping pills and Xanax would still be my drug of choice. That is, if I had a choice anymore.

You see, even though I don't like my current selection as much, it's what I'm hooked to. Something that at first was a choice I made. It's what was there when I didn't have another option. It was there when I needed something to numb the pain. But now, without it, it's my biggest source of pain. And not just psychologically, but physically. Sleeping pills and Xanax, although a better high in my opinion, never had me hooked. I never needed them, and still don't. If they were in front of me, I wouldn't turn them down, but if they aren't then it's still no big deal. I mean, I think about them from time to time, wishing I had some. But not desperately wishing I had some.

So after my dad died, and I was lost and hurt and aching and rotting from the inside out, I would lie in bed, wondering what I could do to kill the pain. And then it came to me, pain killers. Plain and simple. By association, I knew tons of people totally addicted to them, and they weren't hard to find for nothing. You'd think after seeing these people's lives torn apart by it, I would have thought twice. But I didn't. Yep, I actually planned for a couple of weeks, to start using until I couldn't feel anything. And that's what I did.

At first it was small, even just a little and I was fucked up. There were times where I thought to myself, "Nah, there's no point in doing any today." I could have stopped easily, but the other voice in my mind, Jenna, always said she didn't want to stop. And to be honest, I didn't either. I could have easily walked away, but I wanted to stay. And so I did.

But now, when I need more and more to keep me leveled, when I wake up with pain shooting through my entire body, mind dull, I wish more than anything I could stop. But how do I stop, when the whole reason my body hurts so bad, is because I've gone without for more than a few hours? It's like in exchange for killing the pain in my mind, I've had to taken on the physical pain of withdrawal. I want more than anything in the world to stop. Even more than recovering from bulimia. And believe me, I've tried. I've spent the last couple of weeks waking up and trying. But it's so hard to quit when you can barely move, and know that you probably won't be 'functioning' for another week without using. When people around you expect you to be up and about doing things, keeping up your responsibilities, and you can't even stand up, how do you quit? If they knew, it wouldn't be so bad. But not only do I have to keep my using a secret, but if I'm withdrawing, I have to keep that a secret too.

So it's become this vicious cycle. I want to stop, so I don't have to hide anymore. But stopping means hiding something even more obvious, so to hide that, I have to use. And so it goes.

I should have walked away when I had the choice.

No.

I should have never fucking started.