I would like to introduce you to my friends, Shame and Guilt!

One of the most difficult and important things about life, I have recently learned, is you have to be able to forgive yourself, and like Jay Z said, you've gotta learn how to live with regrets...

Let's talk about things that one might consider regretful or shameful.  I remember one Sunday, at the end of my drinking career, I didn't have any wine left, or airplane bottles in my freezer, cooking sherry, nothing!  Just kidding about the sherry, but I am sure someone, somewhere has tried it.  I was shaky, dizzy, anxious and was focused on only what would make me feel better; which was not open for another 3 hours.  The desperation led me to remember that my neighbors had told me if I ever needed anything to come on over, well I did.  I went over, in my pj's, not for sugar, but for alcohol, at like 9 in the morning, terrible!  I once went to the gas station to buy beer in the morning, not realizing what day it was, it was a Sunday, you can't buy beer until noon on Sunday's.  Luckily, drinking is socially acceptable, you can even get it through drive thru's now, so Spangles Margarita slush, here I come.  I don't know how many times I searched and searched for just a little bit of wine left in a box somewhere, "space bagging it", as I liked to say when I didn't NEED to space bag it.  But now, shit was really getting out of hand.  There is a liquor store close to Central and West with a sign on the door and it says, ABSOLUTELY NO LIQUOR SALES BEFORE 9AM!  I always saw that and thought, why do you need a sign for that?  Apparently, I am not the only one, turns out, who liked a "good beer buzz, early in the morning"- if you don't know that's Sheryl Crow! :) 

Those were all really low points in my life, and those aren't all of them, unfortunately; and they happened in a really short amount of time, without even realizing I had slipped on that slope.  The funny thing is, I think about all these little signs throughout my life that might have been trying to tell me something.  Like when I was bartending and I saw my first ever regular with cirrhosis; he was yellow, bloated stomach, weak, shaky; I thought, why is he still drinking?  Or when I would get the regulars that just came in and had a shot every few hours to get through the work day.  I had watched people go through withdrawal, I had slept on the hospital floor for a week while loving someone going through alcohol dependency and addiction.  What I realized, from the sign on the door of that liquor store, to myself lying in a hospital bed because of excessive drinking, was just because you feel invincible, doesn't mean you are.  The fact that I was blessed with two amazing parents that always made sure I had what I needed, was happy and felt loved, didn't mean I couldn't turn into this person that they couldn't recognize. 

I am very ashamed of how I treated my family and friends, I am ashamed at how some people saw me, when I was at my worst.  Because you can't erase that.  I can't erase anything I did or redo anything.  I will tell you that from all the bad, all the shame, the ugliness and especially the guilt, that I will probably always have, I started realizing how special relationships, no matter the capacity, can be.  I used to only think about romantic relationships, because I thought I needed a man.  I don't, that's something I realized.  Don't get me wrong, I want a man to share and experience life with, but I don't need a man to get me through life.  That took me a long time to realize, but for the first time, I am actually trying to focus on myself, not worrying about what people might think of my past or what I went through.  Because we all have regrets, I think, and that shame and guilt made my days long, my nights longer, and living with myself almost unbearable.  But it's getting better everyday, and I finally realized that when people say, how do you expect anyone to love you if you don't love yourself, there's a lot of truth in that.  Oh and we're all going to make mistakes, just try and make those mistakes that don't try and kill you, or give you an incurable disease, you can't always bounce back from that shit!  But in all honestly, thanks to everyone reading this who stuck through it with me, and if I ever hurt or disappointed you, please know, that I am sorry.