Cheers

The thoughts that will soon pour onto this page have been rumbling through my head for going on 8 months now. One minute, I want to shout this from the rooftop and another I feel like it’s no one’s damn business besides my own. For a few months, I’d come to terms with the idea that this was not an announcement worth making to the internet but after hours upon days upon months of careful consideration, I have come to realize just how important this next sentence could be not only for myself, but anyone else who reads it.

I am an alcoholic.

Two years ago, driving home from a baby shower, wasted, I totaled my car. The following day I stepped into the rooms of a well-known 12-Step meeting for the first time ever. Unfortunately, that stint didn’t stick. I lasted a whopping 32 days in the rooms before I decided my relationship with alcohol was not yet over. I went back to the 12 Steps about a year late for approximately 1 week. Yet again, I wasn’t ready to be sober. It wasn’t until April 10th of 2019 that I decided I needed those 12 Steps in my life and was ready to stop drinking. This time, nothing as catastrophic or crazy happened. Nothing other than I’d had yet another guy tell me that he didn’t want to be in a relationship with me and I decided to numb the pain that comes with a breakup with a bottle (or two) of wine. Downing an entire bottle+ of wine per night was becoming a fairly normal part of my daily routine. I might go a day or two throughout the week where I’d only have a glass or two, but a bottle didn’t last in my home much longer than 24 hours.

When I realized how bad my drinking had gotten, I had this very odd outer body experience where I could see myself sitting on the couch, slouched over from being so drunk. I could see how pale green and droopy my skin was. It had happened a couple of times in the past 2-3 years where I’d start vomiting in my sleep; sometimes someone was there to wake me up, and at least once, no one was there but someone or something was watching over me and I’d be lying on my side and the vomit would land on the floor rather than choking me to death. I knew if I didn’t stop drinking, it was only a matter of time where someone would find me in a pool of my own vomit (or worse) after a night of out of control drinking.

The first 3 months of sobriety were such a rollercoaster. One minute, I’d feel on top of the world and would want to tell everyone I knew that I was getting sober and wanted to help anyone I could from ever consuming a drop of alcohol ever again. Then there would be times where I would scream cry in rage at the fact that I’d had such a rough, frustrating day and I couldn’t relieve those feelings with a glass (or bottle) of Trader Joe’s two buck chuck (my personal drink of choice).

There are certain things one is not supposed to talk about as it pertains to previously mentioned well known 12-Step program  and while I respect the principles that Bill has put in place for us drunks, if it weren’t for my other sober friends being so open about their sobriety, I don’t know that I would have had it in me to even make it to my first meeting [back]. Which is exactly why these words are out in the open for you and anyone else to read. I hope that if anyone I know (or don’t know) is struggling with addiction, you read this knowing that you are not alone, and that sobriety isn’t as bad as you might think.

Thank you to the people I knew from my past who have been open about their substance abuse issues (and their recovery), you helped get me here today. To the family I’ve been able to open up to about this, thank you for loving me in spite of the hot mess I was and will undoubtedly continue to be, even through sobriety. To the people who were hurt as a result of my drinking, I’m sorry. I owe a great deal of people a longer more thoughtful apology and hope to have the opportunity to do that someday.

To anyone reading this who has ever tried or even just considered getting sober, I hope for your sake as well as all of your loved ones around you, that you can find the strength. I won’t lie to you, some days are really, really hard. Some days you’re going to want to say, “fuck it”, and go pick up the bottle. But when you’re ready to fight back against all of that and try this way of life, even if it’s just one day at a time, I will be here for you if you need a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, someone to yell at or laugh with… Whatever you might be feeling in that moment.

Not every day is sunshine and roses now just because I quit drinking. But as I sit here and write this on the 255th day of my sobriety, all I have is gratitude for everything that led me here and infinite gratitude for everything that has kept me here.

If you were someone who needed to read these words to have the courage to walk into a meeting, I’m thankful this hit home for you. If you are a normy who doesn’t need to work a program to keep your drinking at bay, say a prayer for the rest of us who do need this and be thankful it’s kept us alive.

My BII Story

Since I was a young girl, as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted was big boobs.
I got such a schmorgus bord of my parents genes, but the Corbett boobs was not one the good lord blessed me with. It didn't matter to me how many times my big breasted friends would say things like, "you do NOT want big boobs", I didn't believe them and always felt like the grass was greener on their side of the yard.

For approximately a decade, I'd meet with different doctors to determine if they were the ones I'd trust with my hard earned money and my life, to implant me with these magnificent lumps. For a variety of reason, I never pulled the trigger... Until 2015 when I decided that enough was enough and I wasn't going to wait until after I had kids when at that point (and still), it was looking like kids may never happen for me.

When I look at my pre-op and post-op before/after pictures that were taken within 10 days of each other, I already see a noticeable difference in my waistline. I even remember looking at the photo with my doctor afterwards and saying, "wow, I've already gained weight just from a couple of weeks without exercising". He shrugged my comment off and gave me info on when I could start exercising again.

My recovery from getting implants was incredibly hard. Much harder than I anticipated. Most of my girlfriends who I knew who had them all said that they felt more or less back to normal by about day 3 post-op. For me it was much closer to day 10, if even at all, to this day. I used to love running and the first time I tried running post-op I had to stop and walk home almost immediately. This past year I begged my body to get back into running and it fought me every step of the way. Five years ago when I was running regularly, I was running around a 9-10 minute mile and now I'm lucky if I can get down to the snails pace of a 12 minute mile.

It was maybe about a year after I got my implants that I learned about Breast Implant Illness, or "BII". I wish I could remember how I learned about this, but I immediately fell down the rabbit hole of information. To condense what BII is in simple terms, it is our body's way of rejecting a foreign object. At this point, I'd only gained about 20 pounds, but when I saw on the list of symptoms "weight gain, with the inability to lose it", something in me clicked and I knew it was my implants that were the root cause of my thicker frame. At the time of writing this, I have gained almost 50 pounds since I went under the knife and I hardly even recognize myself anymore. I see pictures of myself and unless I've scored some awesome angle, I am disgusted. Even my fingers and my knees look swollen. My KNEES people!

In the grand scheme of things, I count myself as very lucky that my BII symptoms are minimal. Other women suffer far greater than I have. These symptoms have shown up in other women as autoimmune disease, chronic pain, hair loss... The list is a mile long.
On top of the weight gain, I've also had monthly yeast/bacterial infections. I've stopped going to the doctor for antibiotics because I don't think it's any better for my body to be on those every single month. While I previously had depression and mild anxiety, my anxiety has been through the roof this past year and I even had a full on panic attack the summer of 2016. My brain fog and bad memory is so bad I cannot remember anything unless it's written down and even then I'll probably forgot that I wrote it down. Lastly, I noticed a serious uptake in my drinking post-op and not just drinking, but blacking out almost every time. It didn't seem to matter if I had only 2 glasses of wine, or the entire bottle, I wasn't going to remember parts of the night before the next morning. More on this topic in a later post...

On August 4th, 2015, I got 475 cc's of toxic silicone implanted and on August 27th, 2019 I will have them removed by Dr. Rodgers in Katy, TX. Just over 4 years later and honestly, this could not come a minute too soon.

The words on this page did not pour out as eloquently as I'd originally hoped, but I've started and stopped 4 drafts and honestly don't know if any of them are any better than this one. I share all of this with the world NOT for pity or attention. Those that know me well know that while I'm honest when people ask about my implants, I will confirm I have them and talk about them if inquiring minds want to know, but I don't flaunt them like a Playboy bunny. The main reason behind sharing this is because this was not something I knew about before getting them and I can't help but wonder if I'd discovered BII 5 years ago, if I still would have made this decision. We will never know, but I do hope that by sharing this information with you, it will stop at least 1 other woman out there from getting their boobs done. Or maybe even get 1 woman to realize what her implants are doing to her and inspire her to get them removed.

If you're the praying kind, please say one for me this coming Tuesday and if you're not, maybe just throw an extra fuzzy thought into the world. Even if having these removed does not heal me back to where I was 4 years ago, I know that I am making the best decision for my health and my future.

Please ask any questions that have come up for you, I'm an open book!