Letter to a Friend October 2007

*posted with permission of addressee

Funny...I feel so good these days...LIFE feels good...and I am happy and free....I am so far away from the feelings that you describe and often it is difficult for me to even recall ever having felt such things...but occassionally, someone will post, or write to me...and it all comes flooding back...your words do that to me...and I thank you for that....I need not forget.

I don't want to suffer any more....but...I need never forget what it was like.

I'm just gonna ramble on for a while...about your note...if that's ok? I mean...when I post on gamcare..and I say (as I do, over and over and over) that we are not alone....what I am really referring to..is...the feeling that I have when I read what others write...and IT IS ME....

you say that your instinct is to say that you're ok....even when you're not.

gamblers anonymous literature says that this is an 'emotional illness'.

i was so offended when i first read that.

emotionally ill? they are telling me i'm crazy?

well... lol... maybe i am...but....it really pissed me off that someone would imply that.

there were many many things in the literature that i disagreed with or took offense to (and some things I still do)...but...from time to time, a lightbulb comes on...i have an 'aha' moment...

it seems that, just like we have many 'symptoms' in common...we also have other character traits that many of us share....for instance, many of us do exactly what you said.... we 'stuff' our feelings...pretend like we're ok when we're not...

i don't even know how to NAME my feelings....i probably had fewer than a dozen 'feeling' words....bad and good...of course :) and angry, lonely sad, happy, stressed..hmmm that may be about it.

anyway....one day..i have this aha moment...about how...FEELINGS somehow play a part in this addiction thing...emotions...

emotions?

emotional illness??? AHHHHHHHH

shit

almost every cg that i've spoken with has had some kind of real trauma in their life that they haven't dealt with in a healthy fashion.

ok...i'm rattling on and on --

it sounds like you feel that there is no reason to try. i will tell you this...i have met people..i have met quite a few people...who had less of a reason to try than you do...who smile now...who have happy lives.

i understand it seems hopeless.

i get that.

i know.

but

what if

what if you COULD be happy?

what if the possibility exists that you COULD break free from this?...and that life could be good again...or...could be good for the first time ever.??

i am not sure what happens for some people...how we go from where you are right now....hopelessness...to where i am right now....joyful....i wish i did know...what the key was...how..for years...i was hopeless...and eventually wanted to die...how did i go from there to here?

i wish i knew.

if i understood what happened..what changed in me..and why...well...i would be shouting it from the rooftops, no doubt...but...i DON'T know...all i know is that it is possible..it CAN AND DOES happen...

and it can happen for you.

try????