It is good to be back in this wonderful place that is Hive and to be able to sit at this table to share with people as unique as each of you what was my own struggle with my demons, before I wrote a post that talks about a part of this battle, I leave you the link @mbdonzella/fighting-the-demons-did-they-win-one. And well here we go once again, I hope that writing about my process helps someone or you can just know and be part of a way of what has been and is my life.
It only remains to start how everything is done from the beginning, some years ago when I was only 11 years old and entered high school, I started to go alone to parties (without my parents), of course I have an older sister and that helped me to go out at such a young age, here I started to smoke cigarettes to look good and pretend to be a bad girl or one of those who were with the most popular (yes, Yes this is idiotic but my personality was fragile I have no excuses) and alcohol was always something normal in my life my dad was an alcoholic, in my family they drank too much alcohol and played with us since we were little giving us sips of some liquor, and at this early age it was not uncommon for us to do it on our own, and without understanding it I became addicted to alcohol and cigarettes since I was very young.
Oh what a difficult stage, it is horrible to be a slave to some vice, and I do not mediate the limits of anything. To that we add the great internal battle of adolescence, where we die of heartbreak, where we want to look good and be accepted sometimes by people so silly, everything looks great, no one understands us, in the middle of all this I drowned in alcohol, besides I was really very shy and with very little self-esteem, I used every drink to give me courage and ended up doing so many things that hurt me, I ended up being a clown, damaging my life, my body. The feeling that alcohol generated in me made me feel strong, more beautiful, more graceful, I just took one after another drink, that was fast, bottle after bottle, coupled with boxes of cigarettes. Oh how many times did I wake up all stinky distilling alcohol out of every pore, drooling, same clothes, unexplainable headache, how many times didn't I wake up trying to remember the things I did, and you know no matter how disgusted I was I was done...horrible. To further help what I was, I lived in a building until my 20's where we were born many kids and grew up together, there were at least about 30 of us, we did everything but there was always a lot of alcohol, and drugs were not a taboo in my life either. Thanks to the fact that I was one of the smallest in this group, they took care of me a lot, especially that they did not sexually abuse me, imagine a little girl who sometimes was unconscious drunk that they would not have done to me, but generally they protected me but at the age of 15 I went out more with other groups, I had never been interested in drugs I really had enough with alcohol, but one person gave me a lot of marijuana to celebrate this birthday where we were supposed to go from girls to women .... I was celebrating that birthday in a beach club that my parents took us, I was with my sister and a friend and all those vacations we smoked one after another joints and joints of marijuana, and I saw pink elephants, I laughed like never before in my life (I even peed myself), but it made me go to sleep and I definitely liked alcohol more to continue the party as much as I could. Plus afterwards it leaves a really bad dry mouth feeling, ohhh and the monchis (hunger it gives), you can even eat who you were smoking with. I tried it several times until I decided that alcohol was much better, I could spend a lot of time drinking and doing stupid things. Already at this age of 15 years in a binge I lost my virginity and what one dreams that we will save for the man with whom we will marry, which will be the best thing in life, ended up being a drunken experience, I remember little, on a staircase and with a boy I had just met (I tell all this in case any girl is reading and identifies understand that what we do has no reverse and only remain with the consequences), guaoo now I cry to remember the next day when I woke up and went to the bathroom with a horrible pain, there I remembered the night before, how to explain what I lived inside me, I had rage with me, disgust, pain, and the only thing I could do was cry put a shield and make me strong ahhh I am not a virgin anymore, that was the frame of what came after, it was as if it was no longer important and I started to drink more, to be very promiscuous (I never sold myself, or anything like that), but I did it because I did not love myself at all, and every time I woke up ohhhh it was horrible, but I did not know how to stop all that. Then at a party I tried cocaine and as I mention in the other post as it didn't make me hallucinate I thought it was useless and at that moment I didn't use that drug anymore. I didn't stop, I did so many stupid things, so many things that hurt myself, that made me suffer under the supposed happiness and laughter of the parties, the only thing left the next day was loneliness, a very big pain, no finances (that's another thing the money that is spent) and although I studied and worked I lost too much time between parties and recovering from them.
I lived in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, when I was 20 years old we decided to move to Margarita Island and here everything was increasing, the Caribbean life is even more unbridled and I was already older. Here it is day and night, alcohol, sex, drugs... at 25 years old I married Fernando, and if I stopped promiscuity I was always faithful to my husband (although on his side it was not so), but my stage of joining alcohol with drugs began, I became addicted to cocaine, this made me more powerful, more durable and creates such a degree of anxiety and unstoppable addiction... I could start in the afternoon with cocaine without anyone noticing it, I did my activities and of course as soon as the night arrived I already had my great reserve of alcohol and cigarettes, it is so difficult to explain what cocaine creates, I only lived for the next pass, one after the other, until I felt as if my body would explode from so much that was inside, accompanied by glasses and glasses of alcohol and cigarette after cigarette; When I remember what that made me feel, it makes me feel repulsed, as if I wished no one had to live as a prey to these vices. My whole body and being felt what it was doing to me. How many times I went through tachycardia attacks. My face transformed, my skin became horrible, my nose, my lungs, my mood, we stopped growing in so many things, achieving so many goals, just to put the party first. I was a mother in the middle of all this and I loved my son, and took care of him according to me well, at least he had this kind of insufficient love, fed, with clothes and toys, he was a happy child, although he lived our drunkenness and excesses. Everything is done as half-heartedly because the days of the holidays makes all kind of cheerful but focused on that, and then the number of days to recover, you work badly, you are in bad character.
Almost 10 years after this, I started to get disgusted with my condition, the drugs, what I didn't accomplish, seeing Cristian growing up in that environment... and it happened, my husband died of an overdose. Oh I don't think I assimilated any of that, 2 weeks later my dad had a stroke (he recovered soon after) that didn't let me focus much, at that time the group of friends came very often and always to drink and do drugs, it was what we knew how to do. One day at the end of one of these parties, after everyone left because everything was over, it was already dawn and I ended up lying on the floor, hugging the toilet (yes in that same bathroom where 1 month before I found my husband almost dead) after vomiting my soul, seeing myself alone, without money (I spent it buying alcohol and drugs), I cried like never before, I cried to God (I believed in God but I did not know him as a Father), I remember turning my eyes to heaven (from the floor I could see the sky)
and shouting to God that I did not want to die like my husband, I felt so much tachycardia, I felt so much fear, so much loneliness, but I told him that I did not know how to do it, I did not know any other way to live, I wanted to be a good mother for Cristian. And there looking at that sky, I saw a big hand stretching out, I heard a song inside me (later I looked up the name of the song, I knew you loved me by Marcela Gandara) and I just cried like never before, yes, I felt it, I felt it, I felt it, there He was, my God, my Father; I never felt something like that, I felt peace, I felt safe, I felt loved, I felt accompanied, I felt so much, I can't tell you how long I lay there but now I felt the sun touching me, it was like I could feel Him hugging me and lifting me up, then I went to sleep in bed. And that awakening was so different from all, from that day I began to be another and the only reason was that I turned my eyes to God and asked for his help, never, never from that day I went back to drink alcohol or touch cocaine, or any drug. That was in June 2013 when I was 35 years old.
What came next: learning to be a new person, the old friendships were removed (I WAS EVANGELICAL, I DID NOT DRINK OR DRUG), they judged me so much (human beings are so weird, if they judged me for having managed to be free of all vice). Party friends stopped coming and staying, because I was now talking about God and no longer did stupid things, nor accompanied them, nor encouraged them to continue... (maybe I imagine that I bothered them by talking to them about God and how I felt). It was a time of loneliness, but at the same time I felt more accompanied than ever. I am free because of my God and I will never tire of giving glory to Him. No human helped me out of this, they didn't even accompany me. I am so fortunate, blessed and privileged I only received mercy and a perfect love that has no understanding from my God and Father.
Life being Free. Without anxiety.... In truth it was a very extreme time, more extreme than living at the limit of vices, it was like living the ecstasy of a fullness of freedom, to remove a thousand kilos of weight (pain, uncertainty, fear, please no more anxiety of wanting more), I felt light, joyful, I felt victorious, and yes, ALIVE, I do not know why but God allowed me to continue living (not everyone is, few can count having lived in two worlds, the world lived with vices and the free of them).
I discovered that I had only been a half-hearted person, that I did not know how to love myself, let alone really love someone, I had not known how to be a good wife, I had not encouraged Fernando to be good, I gave food to my son but I did not really value the time I had for him, nor the example I gave him (what life would he have, what would Cris be today if I had continued), I simply did not think that I could have finished and I could not have enjoyed every day seeing him grow and become what he is today.... and children don't learn just by teaching them words, the way they learn the most is through example, and what an example I was giving him. How could I fill my mouth saying that I loved him, when he only did what he wanted for me, how selfish I was, when what he always deserved was my 100% love, that decision to live in the best possible way for me and for him. I decided to give him a living mother and not a mother absent because of death, to decide to give him a mother who would push him to go beyond and win, a mother who was there when he himself went through the stage of alcohol and drugs and today he is a young man clean of all vices, focused on being successful, a young man who likes to exercise and take care of himself, a young man who helps around the house and takes care of his grandmother (the one who brought us to live after the death of my father, 5 months after the death of my husband).
Yes, it is true that there are people who just have a drink or smoke a joint and that's it, but the line between that and falling into vice is so thin that it is not even worth trying, because the moment we cross the line without realizing it, believing that we have control we are falling into a hole and you know what? You can not always go back or get out, and many times if we do, the consequences are great, never small, we lose families (in my case the death of my husband), we lose a lot of money, we lose so much time, many times we harm others (I crashed in a car that was drunk and almost killed several people), damage our bodies, acquire so many diseases.... No, it is not a game, nor is it worth it. There are so many tasty things, there are so many things that make us feel so good and don't harm us, so why do they? Trying drugs or alcohol, is like playing Russian roulette with a gun... and putting our own head.
Then I started to forgive myself, that was the beginning, I had so much rage, I just hate to look back, how disgusted I was and what I did... but God and focusing on my present and how I would live my future made me heal those wounds, it is not easy, even today after 8 years there are still wounds, both physical and inside me. One day I woke up and said well I have to get in shape and start taking care of this body that I damaged so much, I almost burst my lungs trying to jog smoothly, even walking fast was so hard, my lungs were collapsed. I had to be constant and little by little I persisted, and I managed to do every day a little more exercise, until I managed to do 40 minutes of a very fast walk and many kilometers (even today I can only jog for a few minutes). I made it, oh I am alive, I am so grateful to be alive, to be able to BREATHE while I do my walks, to be able to wake up and open the door and see the sun, the sky, hear the birds, see the green of those great mountains and all that I have to go through, and there is nothing I am more grateful for and God knows my heart, than to have the privilege of watching Cristian grow and become the wonderful man he is.
Now my life is not perfect and I much less, I still have damaged the left side of my nose by so much cocaine, my lungs, but now I value myself and I know that I am one of the few who has been able to be in a world of dead here on earth and get out. And I take advantage of every moment, to thank God, to give myself to my love, and to take care of Cristian and my mom, to give to others what God has given me, there is so much that is still missing... I just want to enjoy life and enjoy others. Today I am blessed with the arrival in my life of a wonderful man who I am enjoying loving and soon to build a family by his side.
If you are reading this and are going through something like this, I am a living witness that you can be free. You can, you just have to make a decision and get help, I know you will make it. And if you need my hand, my advice or just to talk, I am here for you. In the midst of all this I came to the City of Refuge Foundation Lives with Courage who is presided by my Pastor Wilfredo Cova, and yes it is a place where many can spend time and go through a process of restoration (I did not need to be interned thanks to God, I lived my process by the hand of God), but I came to this place to strengthen me, and to see that there are many like me. And if many of us have achieved it, you can also achieve it. If you need our foundation we are in various parts of Venezuela. You can write me and I will gladly guide you. You are not alone in this.
"Everything is allowed to me, but not everything is for me well. , but I will not let anything overpower me." 1 Corinthians 6:12
I remain of you, for what there is to read, write and restore.
The photos and design are of my authorship