Grief

I am free now.

I have broken free from the cycle.

I have done this before….and gone back.

How could I have lived that misery…then broken free…and been happy…and returned? Why??? I am a smart woman…it doesn’t make sense.

Well…it doesn’t make sense if this is simply a BEHAVIOR problem….which it isn’t (see the science of the brain problem)….and in THAT context…it sort of DOES make sense.

I gambled to escape my life.

Now that might be a strange thing for me to say…considering…my life was pretty d*mn good…some people would look at my life and say…escape from WHAT???

I didn’t suffer any sort of neglect or abuse as a child… I mean…my parents weren’t perfect…but whose are? I didn’t endure some event so traumatic as to ‘damage’ me emotionally….until the death of my mother.

Many compulsive gamblers will trace the beginning of their gambling problem back to the death of a loved one.

Surely it’s not that simple…and there were many other factors involved for me (feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities, being compulsive by nature)…but Grief…that was my ‘tipping point’…that was my ‘single traumatic event’.

Once I broke free, I did not gamble for 20 months….at which time I had just lost a baby…and I was helping my father in law to die.

I gave myself ‘permission’.
Who could blame me?

I could go off in so many directions right now…talking about the fact that…this line of thinking shows that I still felt like I was being DEPRIVED of something that I enjoyed ….that…I stopped gambling back then so that I wouldn’t get in ‘trouble’ (I wanted to keep my family)…. But what was really going on at that moment was…I was hurting.

I was hurting…and I wanted it to stop.

I found myself back in the cycle….and it was nearly two years before I broke free again.

My THINKING needed to change…if I want my life…and I do…I need to understand that gambling is NOT going to ever make me happy…and it will only lead to my destruction.

Today I have to understand that people that I love are going to die.

People that I love are going to die.

Unless I die before them…..I am going to have to experience that…that many people that I love..are going to die.

It is part of life.
Everyone experiences this….grief.

And…when that happens in my life again…it is ok for me to gamble.

It is ok. I give myself permission.

It is a legal activity….it is wrong that I gamble according to WHOM?

As a matter of fact….why wait for an ‘excuse’? If this is something that I enjoy….something I am depriving myself of….why not just go now?

Indeed. Why not.

It is ok for me to go….

But…

There will be consequences.

If I just go on a whim….because it sounds like fun…or if I wait for some ‘event’ that seems painful enough to justify it.

There will still be consequences.

Gambling does not…gambling can NEVER…GIVE me enough…to justify those consequences.

No matter the reason.

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If you're going through hell, keep going. ~Winston Churchill