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Feeling Helpless

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

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If I get to five o'clock, I can have a drink.

The mantra of the day. If I do this, this means I'm not addicted. This means I'm not dependent. This means I'm not helpless.

But I am. Was.

Just to get me through the day, to ease the thirst clawing at the back of my throat. Job application after job application couldn't take me away from you, though searching for work that wouldn't lock me in even worse isolation, well... That was another task itself. There was no support there, of course not. You didn't want me to have full-time work anyway.

Maybe you wanted me to fail. In the beauty of hindsight, it doesn't really matter all that much anyway. But, back then, it was all about being helpless and keeping me that way.

Work, work, work. And stop when the alcohol starts flowing, easing the ebb of the evening. Days blended into one another and there was little to distinguish between them, except when I went to interviews, travelling across the country, willing to broaden my horizons, just to find somewhere where I fit.

Those were good days. I was invested, driven: there was no alcohol on those days. My focus was absolute and I knew that something was pushing me forward, even if I would be exhausted afterwards. And that was a normal sort of exhaustion from spending several hours on a train, interviewing and then returning home afterwards. It was a clean exhaustion.

I was without you then and I loved those days. I kept going, kept digging, kept driving. I knew I had to do it but, oh, how I wanted that drink. It softened things when I had to deal with you, which, if I was home and not out striving for a career,

I never missed an interview. I never missed an exam. I never missed a deadline. Despite you. In hindsight, I can be proud of that.

One interviewer said there was "a steel in me". I didn't get that job but it's always been a fond memory for the experience it gave me and what was said. I felt like he saw something in me that day. I didn't feel helpless.

The rest of my days, struggling to get up, taking my pills, morning and evening... They were monotonous. They were helpless.

Just a drink, a drink to get me through the day.

I wanted that lightness, the feeling that I wasn't with reality. Maybe I wouldn't do anything bad to myself if I was intoxicated, hiding the wine bottles down the side of the bed. I was alone there, pretty much, but, still, I hid them, taking them to the dump when no one was looking. Fact was that no one was paying much attention to me.

Down, down, down. The bubbles streamed, drowning and yet not caring to swim back to the surface. The darkness was comforting too and the darkness never denied me a drink.

A dry throat after a glass of water, food holding no interest. Food was just for looks then anyway and I hated how I looked. "Skinny-fat" - what a stupid term. Just "fat" was more commonly used, though I wasn't fat in the right ways, I knew, for you. There were parts of a woman that were supposed to be highlighted and with a flat chest and moderate hips, I'm afraid I just didn't hit the mark there.

One drink. Come on. It'll make everything better.

But it won't.

I know it won't, because the reason I drank was still there and I couldn't escape. Arguments every day, draining me of my will to live. There was probably something when I was out and away interviewing but I was so grounded and focused on interviewing that I didn't even notice half the time. The other half, well... Those were the nights that I fell asleep and woke up the next morning with tears on my face.

Those didn't matter. No one cared. But I cared.

Helpless to leave, helpless in staying. I wanted out, oh... Oh, how I wanted out. Anyone should be free to leave a relationship but, strangely so, even the times where I thought I'd done it, when I was out and free, there was something that pulled me back. Not every time, not the last time. But every time before that.

Sometimes there were threats. Sometimes there was spiralling, a falsehood of it not on my part either. Sometimes I didn't know where else to go. Every time, I believed I was the bad guy, the one who had to come crawling back. I had nowhere else to go and the fact is that being helpless in isolation only leaves you with the subject that drives you to the worst parts of yourself time after time again.

I was only the worst parts back then. Anything good had been stripped away. Maybe I could find that good again at the bottom of a bottle. Or forget about it for a little while.

Day after day, night after night. There was no difference in any of it, no change, all the same. Be there, do that, pay attention, don't annoy. Oh, there were rules, so many rules, all of them designed, in hindsight, to make me even more helpless than I already was. In being helpless, there is no rock bottom, only darkness and more darkness as the bubbles stream in breath that gives nothing but goes on forever.

More and more bubbles, each one holding a different hope and wish and dream. You popped every last one of them. But bubbles can be born again, because all it takes is one breath, one little drop of air.

To not be hopeless is to not be helpless, everything wound into everything else, everything holistically intertwined. Sculling, swimming, I needed to take back my control - even though I thought that made me the worst person in the world - and save myself.

A therapist, when I finally sought out therapy and treatment for what plagued me, told me that a drowning person does not behave as their best self. When your lungs are burning, you will fight and claw and kick and shove anyone else around you, frantic to get back to the surface, survival mechanisms kicking in. When you're that deep in mental health, or the lack of it too, a relationship that drowns you...why would anyone expect it to be any different?

You will do anything to make yourself not helpless, to save yourself.

Feeling helpless and being helpless are two different things and the answer was never going to be in any number of coping mechanisms, whether they were healthy or not. But they're never the be-all and end-all of a life, of everything. There's a way out. And it's better than dulling the experience to make it through, even if it's understandable why.

I'm not helpless anymore. He never liked that, me being at all confident or sure about things. But that's okay now as I don't have to live through those days anymore, sorting through the flashbacks and setting them in a place where my mind, finally can process those memories.

Feeling helpless is the symptom, not the cause. Yet it's also the route out, a map for seeking out the cure for the root cause of everything.