When I left Virginia, I left behind friends, family and a community who supported and fought beside me for years to live with someone I had been in a relationship with and loved for 3 years. When I came here I didn't know anyone and didn't really make friends for the first year and a half. Meant me and k would spend pretty much every night inside drinking. I was putting all my time and effort into organizing campaigns that felt like they were going nowhere and getting beaten back again and again. Things started to feel meaningless, I started to spiral into a more and more severe depression and addiction. My relationship started to fall apart since I was almost totally absent mentally from illness and alcohol. As things felt more meaningless in my life, I started throwing myself as hard as I could into organizing, thinking I could get something back through fighting. It worked for a while, we started winning, I felt like it was worth something. K and I had only planned on being here for a year and then going to philly. She couldn't find work in the city and her friends were all leaving, but I thought the only way I could be alright would be to stick it out in the campaign here until we won. So I asked her again and again to stay longer. I could see what it was doing to her. Her friends had left, she was working from home, I was working 2 jobs, I was barely there from a lack of dopamine and an abundance of alcohol. There was absolutely nothing for her. So when I said to her last April that I needed to stay here "as long as it takes" (read: indefinitely), she told me even though it would make her miserable, she would stay. The hardest thing I've ever done is tell her she needed to go to philly by herself, that I was leaving her. I drove her there and came back that day. After that, the floor dropped out. May through December were a blurry haze. I didn't leave my apartment except to go to work or buy beer, I locked myself in my room for a few days at a time. There wasn't a moment when I wasn't drinking if I wasn't working. I started feeling unable to organize, the whole reason I wanted to stay there, I was afraid to talk to anyone. I had become the main worker leader of the campaign, so when I stopped, the company went on the attack and fired about half of our committee. I was wallowing in guilt over that, curled up even tighter into myself and into my apartment. On my walk to work I always spend a couple seconds too long looking over the side of the overpass. I don't know exactly what changed. I decided to get into therapy and get medication. I got sober. I fell in love. I don't know why, but instead of letting myself sink further and drown like I'd let myself, I started thrashing and grabbing out for anything I could hold onto. I think I was mostly afraid of dying. That's what they call rock bottom, right? All I know is that I feel tougher than I ever have. I hurt more and try and live with that hurt. Every time I wake up I have to convince myself to fight against despair and dependency. Yesterday one of the union organizers told me I seemed like my old self again. He's wrong, I've never been this person before in my life. I'm afraid if I went back to Virginia you wouldn't recognize me. 1 month in recovery.
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