Do you have a pair? I do. Lord knows I have tried to get rid of them a million times, but they just keep on turning up. Almost always when I am at a low point.
The old rose tinted spectacles! So powerful, so convincing, so compelling to look through, where everything was golden and beautiful and fun, where life was amazing and joyous and I was young and fabulous.
They draw me in. They eat me up. They lie to me.
They try to show me that I wasn’t an alcoholic at all, I was a young woman enjoying life, I was fun, I was happy, I was the life and soul of the party. They try to show me that I could go back to that life if I stopped being so silly. They try to convince me that I can recreate the carefree, happy drinking days of my youth.
These days I try to not look through them for long. Its like a war with my honest recollection and these rose tinted spectacles. It was bloody awful in reality, I wasted my youth on endless drinking binges, seeking solace from what I now know was a serious psychiatric illness (I didn’t know it then). I wanted help, I chose booze. I wasn’t young, fabulous and fun, I was a drunken mess. I was over emotional, crying at the slightest thing, I was aggressive, I was dramatic, I was ill. The hangovers, oh my! They crippled me, but like most I always believed in ‘hair of the dog’ and off we go again…..
When wearing the rose tinted spectacles I feel angry and envious of those who can still enjoy life drinking, I envisage that they all look amazing and can have a marvellous time without ever getting hangovers or suffering consequences of drinking. I mean…..really?! Of course that’s absolutely ridiculous.
A few times in sobriety these rose tinted spectacles have derailed me. Sent me spiralling back to what I knew. Yesterday was a bad day, one of the worst I have had in years, and there they were, glistening spectacles for me to look back in fondness. And you know, for a while I indulged in it, I cried and I wondered and I reminisced. But, what I didn’t do was leave the house, and most importantly what I didn’t do was drink.
What I did do was spend hours through the night counteracting the memories as I saw them through the rose tinted spectacles. Remembering how it REALLY was. Remembering how happy I am to be exactly where I am today, and rather than look back dreaming of youth, be grateful that I lived through it to tell the tale. Feeling grateful that I haven’t crumbled, feeling stronger.
The rose tinted spectacles are back in their case. I don’t know how long for, I never do. But I prepare myself. The last 24 hours have been truly exhausting. Mentally, I feel absolutely drained and physically, I feel like I have been kicked all over. But, I live to fight another day.
Serenitea_Total 