Day 60 of 100

“Because you deserve it”

When I was little, a baby really, I used to stick bobby pins in electric sockets and get shocked. I’d then pull the bobby pin out, cry, and stick it back in.

There is no better story that outlines how I have lived my life prior to recovery.

I never self-harmed in the classic sense, but I constantly punished myself. Eat something deemed unhealthy? I was a piece of shit who better eat until I was sick. When I was using drugs I would punish myself for doing drugs by doing more drugs until I felt sick or hurt or more likelihood completely and totally hated myself.

This was my pattern. It was like the human equivalent of putting a puppy’s nose in its poop when it went to the bathroom in the house. Completely and totally ineffective and did nothing but leave me depressed and broken. There was no one that hated me as much as I hated myself.

It wasn’t pleasant, but like any pattern was nearly difficult to end. In fact, it is not always gone. I still binge eat on occasion. I overspend. I still punish myself when I am depressed.

Today I learned about reward hypersensitivity in bipolar disorder, which when something goes right it’s a triumph, and when it goes wrong it’s a catastrophe. When living a life where I was constantly putting myself in situations where things went wrong, it’s not a surprise that my life was a catastrophe and my steady state was depression.

Medication has helped this a lot and has brought my steady state to stable, and sobriety has taught me that I don’t deserve to be punished for mistakes, and those instances are much less frequent and severe.

And I no longer live a life of putting bobby pins in light sockets.