litfrombelow

[litfrombelow]

I'm a U.S. Marine Military Police Officer in Okinawa, Japan. I'm also a rehabilitated and recovered alcoholic, sober 7 months.

I lost my girl (High School Sweetheart of 10 years) from my alcoholism a year ago and it still makes me feel bad every day. That, and my nephew (who was my best friend and more a little brother, who grew up in the same house as me because his dad also walked out on him) died in a car accident a little over a month ago. I'm not suicidal or anything, but I'm back off of leave from the funeral,and despite having plenty of civilian friends and buddies back home, out here I remain friendless, bored, overworked and alone. I was dating again for a while but I lost interest in trying ever since my nephew died. That, and my ex moved on like, instantly, and has been dating someone ever since a week after she broke up with me for relapsing on my birthday. I dont stalk her and it's strictly no contact, but I at least know from a mutual friend she's just happy as can be and celebrating every single one of our 10 years of holidays with another guy like it never happened. So even though I badly ache and yearn for love again, it's so hard to move on and even fall in love again. Like, who am I going to fall in love with out here? I dont date for hookups, or that short term BS that does nothing but torture the human soul - I LOVE love. I love cuddling and movies. I love gifts and surprises. I love taking photos and making memories and dancing. Above all I just LOVE dancing. Swing dancing, slow dancing, you name it. These are the things that make me happy. There is essentially nowhere to dance here in Okinawa since like, half of the place is just a base anyways. And I'm completely sober and I've learned how to STAY sober very easily, and how to journal my feelings out, so I can't go out with like, ANY other Marines or Sailors since all they do is drink and hit on the locals. (All I'd be is their bored babysitter and then their designated driver.) And I want to date because I LOVE dating, but only for the feeling of being in love, which I can't here because like, what, I'm gonna meet someone and then they're just going to get out at the same time as me and move specifically to my hometown of Bumfuck Nowhere, Montana and marry me? My ex was my first love and we were together for a solid decade. How do I even begin to just start replacing that? How close and comfortable we were? And losing my nephew has completely flipped my entire view on life and death. I handled every single previous death so well. Everyone I ever lost was either old and of natural causes or not that close to me. But losing my nephew? My boy, my baby brother, my best friend who I held in my arms and watched grow up and played video games with and taught life lessons I expected him to pass on to his own children. Even though it's irrational it's just made me automatically start to feel like building a relationship with someone for years has absolutely no point if it can just end like nothing. And I guess that's ALSO fucked with my desire to start dating. My drinking got really bad, yeah, as well as my generally introverted and depressed nature, but otherwise my moments with her were all the happiest ones of my life. My happiest YEARS. And I SACRIFICED being home with my family all those years and losing like SIX years I could have spent with my family and nephew because I moved to NYC to live with her. And then I decided to pursue a great and important dream of mine and I became a US Marine. I didn't fully know it or accept it at the time, but this was also me sacrificing my years with HER as well, and then losing her. And then him, because still, I'm thousands of miles away from home. It feels like everything I pursue just ends with pain. Constant pain so punishing that it doesn't at any point even make the dreams I pursued feel even moderately worth it at all, when I could have been with loved ones. I keep asking myself, is the constant pain stronger than the things I accomplished.

And the more time goes on, the worse I feel. My punishment is more than I can bear.

[litfrombelow]

I ran into the issue again. I can't get myself to be creative anymore. I barely have the willpower to write this right now. My brain used to be flooding with ideas. Plotlines and characters, character arcs, organized series, hell I even wrote a couple of entire books. It was gods gift to me - and endless rainbow waterfall of stories and imagination. But something changed in me, or some THINGS. When I try to sit down and be creative - the main medium being writing - I can't get myself to sit down and write anything fictional. I get this feeling of "Why bother" and/or then the fast paced, humorous and action packed story in my head seems impossible for me - like my control over myself and willpower is too low for me to actually even come close to telling the stories I want to tell. My writing in the past had always been so slow and awkward and clunky and unusual that it worked kind of for the slower scenes, but the action and higher paced scenes feel just boring to me, and even in my prime is was a great effort for me to write and to even sit down to write at that. I want to write long interconnected stories that all feed and lead into each other, and although I have a good sense of it all in my head, I think I just stagger and intimidate myself too much to even start it. Like it's a massive undertaking that I don't even feel like will be good.

I had a thought just now - back when I was first in New York City I was working on a book called within fields of hue and it was very fun to write at first but became difficult and monotonous for me to finish. I started procrastinating every chance I got and even had some days where I literally didn't even think about the book at all when I'd set out for this to be one of my defining stories it has so many elements I believe are unique and special to me but not enough story and imagination there to actually keep anyone engaged not even myself I have no idea what story I meant to tell just that these aesthetics came to my mind and that there's a story I'd like to tell in them. I felt so guilty about not finishing the book by any of my constantly pushed back deadlines that I made a cryptic contract with the Lamppost and wrote out this entire long manuscript of all the passive goods that will come to my life if I finish it and edit it until I was proud of it and then inversely if I didn't finish it and gave up on it that I deserved to have my life torn apart and to live the rest of my existence in hell.

I didn't think about this until recently but my life has been completely destroyed and downhill ever since then I went through ego death because of too many edibles I destroyed my relationship with a sweet love Annie because of my alcoholism I destroyed my potential career in the Marines because now I have no motivation and in the first place I only joined the Marines because I was so bored and felt so trapped in my life in New York that I felt like it was a convenient way for me to get out without having to break up with Annie hurt her feelings or mine. And my nephew died, and I thought it would bring the family close together and it did for maybe two or three days before all the drama and bickering and tribal behavior suddenly flooded back into them.

That contract was signed with blood by the way and I don't truly believe in that much spiritual or divine nature in this world but I'm starting to wonder at the synchronicities that my failure to finish that book is what has led to my life turning into hell. I declared the lamp post to be the symbol of myself and my soul but never truly had a permanent definition partially the point of the Lamppost is that it's definition and significance to me changes symbolically the changing events of my life in my time but I signed that contract with blood on top of the lamp post so it feels as though the light in that lamp post may have gone out and now I'm just fumbling my way through the darkness when before I had planned and structures story lines would come to my mind dreams of what I could accomplish in the future flowed through me like like white water rapids down the rocks and slopes of a glacial mountain. Now everything just feels stuck I manage to get sober and stay sober and it's one of the primary prides in my life right now and I finally accomplished contact with Annie again after almost a full year and it was cordial which gave me a little hope but at least gave me some kind of closure always wondering you know and a letter sell my things and keep her money and she only going to ship one box to me and her mom was cordial to and said she'll give me the opportunity to gradually pay all the money I stole back from my worst days of alcoholism that way Anna can get her money two of them can see that I've at least changed for the better and I could believe in myself that I change for the better and also that I had found some form of redemption and all that noise. But with Redemption comes closure and if something closes on you you're stuck. So many battles have been one or survived so many doors have been walked through or opened in the end they all lead to the same place which is me right now right here not ready to go back to the life I excited myself over being a military police officer in Okinawa the little amount of work I've done in this job is completely unfulfilling I don't like any of the people I work with because none of them are anything like me not saying I'm better and just saying that I'm different and I always appreciate other different people especially the ones more different than me because then it makes me look and feel like the same one and I also get the opportunity to do something somewhat meaningful when I help them out or try to teach them new thing or just even let them be my friend and secretly be grateful that they let me be theirs. I don't express it enough but I'm deeply grateful for every person that's ever returned love to me even though I never express it and I wonder if perhaps the reason I never expressed that love through actions or words is because it's because I spent so much time of my life especially in my childhood completely and isolation and I guess I just never learned how to show gratitude.

When I'm trying to get to is that I've been incredibly selfish and foolish and I started digging myself a hole further into hell but recent actions that were more positive have at least stopped me from falling lower Annie and I are to stable the families in an okay position I'm in a good relationship with my family even if they aren't in a good relationship to each other. On top of that I'm completely sober for the first time as a legal adult which is an amazing task I never thought would come to me I assumed it was going to be something I dealt with all day everyday Non-Stop the rest of my life but a change of mindset therapy and some good friends and Rehab permanently changed me in a way that I genuinely feel in my heart is not going away so now I just need to figure out how to start digging my way upwards climb my way out of this hole back into a future where I feel like I belong the future where I get to once again experience the joys of creativity and feel content in my work whatever that means and once my stories are told and I'm completely out of ideas just to spend the rest of my life making peace with my mortality. Because even if I don't I will be happy that I spent my life telling stories.

Just that I'm having trouble telling stories right now and I'm not sure where to start but one idea I had is that the book I signed the contract over with blood that I wagered would damn me if I breach the contract never got finished part of me wonders spiritually psychologically somehow anything if I finish that book or started over completely and made a piece of art that I was proud of and happy about maybe the contract would be fulfilled and I could finally go forward in life.

And it could be good.