BIPOLAR SOBER / ADDICTION / PERSPECTIVES / PRESS SEND
THE STORIES / 03
PRESS SEND.
DRUNK TEXTS.
IMPULSIVE WORDS.
SOBER CONSEQUENCES.
01 / BEFORE YOU HIT SEND
ONE TEXT.
TOO MANY WORDS.
There are things you say when you're drunk that you wouldn't say sober. Sometimes you mean them. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you wake up and wonder what the fuck you were thinking.
A message takes seconds to send. The consequences can last considerably longer.
02 / THE STORY
THE THINGS
I CAN'T UNSEND.
PERSONAL JOURNAL
The time is 3AM. Like faulty electricity, I’m browning or blacking out. My feelings are running away from me—I’m either angry or crying. I’m sending my friends Stephen King novels, saying things I don’t mean. I’m emotional. I’m being mean; I’m acting like my life is the biggest tragedy and that I have been completely abandoned by everyone that I love. I am acting like nobody loves me or cares about me.
I’m being ridiculous.
And I believe everything I’m typing.
I’m being ridiculous. And I believe everything I’m typing. I’m typing and typing. I keep going, word vomiting and making errors in spelling, with word choices, and grammar. I think I’m being slick, but to the sober observer, it’s plainly obvious that I’m intoxicated.
I’m crossing boundaries and breaking rules.
“Don’t text me at this hour.” “Don’t say this to me.” “What are you doing?” “Why would you say that to me?” “Did you really mean to say that?” So many things stirred up just because I was drunk and decided to have false feelings, my brain playing tricks on me in the moment of drunkenness. Causing a ruckus, making others upset by what I sent them. If this were an Olympic sport, I’d have more medals than Michael Phelps.
I'D HAVE MORE MEDALS
THAN MICHAEL PHELPS.
I texted friends after I felt wronged by things they did that were in their best interest.
“Why did you do this to me?” I asked. Then I proceeded to attempt to go for the jugular, trying to hurt them as much as they hurt me, once again saying things I didn’t mean in a pathetic attempt to cause them pain that matched mine in that drunk moment. It didn’t work. It backfired, and communication was cut for awhile. So, the heartbreak only increased. Drunk ideas are never good ideas.
Drunk ideas are never good ideas.
And the shame and regret. After waking up from a blackout, the dread of looking at my cell phone and wondering who did I text and what did I send them. Who did I call? Picking up the phone, I half cover the screen as I open my inbox. I occasionally breathed a sigh of relief, but normally that was not the case.
WHO DID I TEXT?
WHAT DID I SEND?
WHO DID I CALL?
It turned out to be generally harmless, but sometimes there would be messages that I regretted. I needed to do damage control; I needed to answer for those messages. I needed to begin to do repairs for what I said or for the time I dialed someone up.
I couldn’t even list all of the times that this happened, so I wrote a general story to encompass them all.
03 / THE AFTERMATH
YOU CAN DELETE
THE MESSAGE.
NOT THE IMPACT.
The messages were sent. The arguments happened. The boundaries were crossed. And the people receiving those messages had to deal with the consequences of my intoxicated behavior.
I may not have meant everything I said, but the words were still mine to answer for. Apologizing was only part of the repair. Whether someone chose to forgive me or continue the relationship was ultimately their decision.
PRESS SEND.
THE MESSAGE WAS SENT. THE STORY IS STILL BEING WRITTEN.
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