The Abyss of Addiction

Originally posted on Dec 2, 2019 on medium.com/@shamandao

Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash

I’ve always admired people who grew up with a sense of self and purpose. Especially those in my high school who knew what major they wanted to have in University. I mean, how did they know?? I was still trying to figure out if I wanted cheese bread or Taco Bell for lunch most days.

Being born into a Catholic family, I spent most of my Sunday’s praying to an invisible God on my knees. I also spent most of that hour counting down the minutes to the free coffee and donuts afterwards served by the church volunteers. They were always so friendly.

A seeker of answers and truth my entire life, I later became a volunteer at a Korean Christian church in my twenties. I wasn’t a Christian or Korean but my mom supported my decision because I told her I still believed in God.

“Are you happy?” she asked me afterwards.

“Yes, mẹ, mom in Vietnamese,” I replied.

“Good, that’s good,” she said and with that came the end of our conversation.

I spent those four years being happy and clapping my hands to many Christian rock bands. I swear I felt the Holy Spirit beat move through me or it could have been the bass, either way, I was rocking and rolling. I even took my Dad along with me, but he was more of the solemn and serious Catholic services type, the singing wasn’t for him.

I invited my parents to join me in a Buddhist chanting meeting five years later and boy, did they have a holler of a time laughing at the invitation. Their daughter, who they raised Catholic, turned volunteer Christian is now a practicing Buddhist? They laughed so hard I could not, not laugh with them. My goodness, I love my parents.

All along the way, there had always been this voice inside of me that nudged me in this direction and that direction. A feeling inside of me that would calm me down in the middle of angst, a knowing that I would be okay. And you know what? I ignored that voice and chose to direct all my attention to the black abyss of void within in my soul.

Instead of facing my truth and what was going on inside of me, I spent my life distracting myself. I distracted myself from all the emotions that didn’t feel good. All that anger, sadness, guilt, shame and fear, so much fear running through my esoteric veins. The moment I would feel them bubbling up, I wanted to jump out of my human skin suit and leave.

But I didn’t know how to do that then, so instead, I did what a majority of our society does. I distracted myself by eating too much, drinking too much, smoking too much, working, working out, doing drugs, and doing a bunch of shopping. Yet, I still wasn’t happy.

At one point in my life, okay, the majority of it, I even valued my worth based upon the zero’s I had in my bank account. I valued my worth based upon the clothing I wore and the cars I drove. An accumulation of growing up poor and in an environment called Orange County. Where the original series of the Housewives came from, you get the picture.

I filled my life up with material things that now do not mean a thing to me.

I became so good at distracting myself that my distraction drug of choice for many years became cocaine and per Rick James, “Cocaine is one hella a drug.” Yes, Rick, it is one hella a drug and it was very expensive, too. I was so good at proving to the world that I was okay that I even started to believe it myself.

No one could tell me what to do, I was better than okay, I told myself. I wasn’t hurting anyone and not only was I showing up to work on time, but also hitting sales goals after sales goals. I paid my bills and helped my parents out financially, I was their A+ daughter.

Yet, there were only a handful of my close friends who could tell how much I crumbled everyday behind closed doors. My outside world did not match my inside world. The facade I put on for others blew away any empathy or sympathy for me because why would anyone feel sorry for me? My life seemed very well put together but was anything but. No one really knew what I was feeling inside, not even myself. I was a functional addict and in my opinion, the ones whom are the hardest to help.

Because functional addicts don’t need help, we can do it all ourselves. Because we’ve been doing it all ourselves this whole time.

There was a part of me that would never feel complete. Because the more I fed this black abyss of my deep soul of a sea, the more it wanted. And by God, I was such an overachiever I made it my mission to feed it.

Morbid much?

Remember that gaping hole inside many of us that wants us to feed it? Before you start trying to feed it all the love and light that will disappear into the abyss, figure out your why. Figure out why it exists in the first place, then plug it up and begin to fill it back up with all the goodness you deserve.

After all my years of seeking and still learning, I figured out my why and started to listen to the voice within my soul. Which some might call intuition, I now honed into a solid knowing. I plugged up that gaping hole in my soul with self love, self worth and the remembrance of who I truly am and was.

Your why is the bottom and once one understands and owns that, anything is possible.

I don’t have a need or want anymore for any of the things or people who used to rule my life because I’ve taken back control and my dear, I know you can too. We all have the power to take back control because we were ultimately the ones who gave it away in the first place.

It is the remembrance of the self that one can transform from darkness to light. It is in the remembrance of self that one remembers who each one of us truly are. We are the soul spark of love from Source. Each one of us is God in human form and the connection we have to him/her/it has always been there.

We are love in our truest form and when we drop our distractions, when we go inward to our own truths; that is where we find the part of ourselves we’ve been missing all along.

That or contact a shaman to retrieve the part of your soul that fragmented off a while back.

The moment you find your way back home in the self, is when you become whole and there will not be a need for anymore ‘too much’ behaviors.

Blessed be.