Song 1: Everything I Get

Click the audio player above to listen to Michelle talk about the story behind the song. Or read it below.

Everything I Get- The Story

I wrote 'Everything I Get' about one of the lowest points in my life. I distinctly remember being in this horrendous headspace - I was bitter, resentful and angry at life. But mostly, deep down I was angry and disappointed in myself.

I felt corrosive. Like everything I touched would be destroyed. The opposite of Midas touch where everything he touched turned to gold - everything I touched turned to shit.  I was afraid to be around people because my ability to filter was gone. The anger would just spill out of me. I was so reactive.

I felt like I would just hurt everyone around me with the venom that was constantly building up inside. I felt destructive.  All the resentment that I had built up my whole entire life was still being carried around with me. I hadn’t developed the ability to let things go so every last bit of it, my childhood trauma, the resentment towards those who had hurt me or abandoned me. The anger I felt towards myself for letting them. Anger at those who had hurt people I loved. Anger at myself for hurting the people I loved. Anger at the injustice in the world. I was just full to the brim with anger. Well, that and a solid sprinkling of guilt and shame. 

I didn’t know it then, but there were solid reasons I struggled with all this, solid reasons I felt so inept and different, all of which I came to understand much later in my life. All I knew back then was that everything was hard.  Every emotion I had, felt like too much. I was too much. 

I was still drinking back then, and that was like adding fuel to an already raging fire. Alcohol and I are not friends. It’s like giving water to gremlins after midnight. I have no control over what will happen but the odds are that it will be chaos and destruction followed by a morning of shame and guilt and more rage but this time aimed more at myself for blowing things up and making things worse.  

The crash after drinking was brutal.  I am super sensitive to even my own body's chemicals and the low that would occur after drinking was so intense that at times I felt so anxious and depressed and empty that I felt like life was not worth the effort of living. 

I was so wretchedly ashamed of myself for not being able to get my shit together that I felt like everyone in my life would be better off without me.  In my mind, good people, sane people, don’t want to be near that. I didn’t even want to be near that. So I would push people away, afraid that I would do or say something to hurt them or to make the situation worse.  To some degree, it was because I cared so much that I couldn’t be around people who cared about me. I had no capacity to control my own emotions.  I had no idea what to do with that. 

I also felt like there was no way out; like life was like a game I didn’t know the rules to, or have the skills to play, and it didn’t seem to matter how hard I tried, I’d just end up in the same place over and over again: the bottom of the shit pile. 

I tried so hard,  to get my life on track, to be able to just feel comfortable in my own skin. To fit in, and “adult” like others seem to be able to do naturally when I just couldn’t. 

I would get super motivated, buy all the folders, the notepads, the new stationery (convinced that the new notebooks and pens would help me get my shit together). I’d try and get organised, I’d write out my goals, I’d try to make progress toward them, I’d make lists, super long lists, and three days later I’d be so overwhelmed that I’d just want to escape all over again. 

I’d want to be social but without alcohol I didn’t feel like I could talk to people. I couldn’t look people in the eyes, I couldn’t ‘make contact’ with the humans. I was desperate for company, desperate to belong, you know, community, connection - I had that craving, but I just couldn’t do it. So I would drink, I’d go out and talk my head off like the world would end if I didn’t get all the words out in time, but then like always, I’d hit a point in the drinking where I was no longer there. 

For whatever reason, alcohol never seemed to affect me the way it affected other people. I'd go from being fine to completely gone. One minute I'd be there, and the next I'd be replaced by the after-midnight gremlin, blowing shit up, making an idiot of myself, and digging a ginormous hole to wake up in the next day. So I wasn't even starting from zero anymore. I was starting even lower than that. I clearly remember waking up every morning with the feeling that vultures were circling above me, just waiting to pick at the dead. 

I am so grateful for my pattern-identifying brain. If it wasn’t for my ability to see patterns and recognise them, I don’t think I would have ever found a way out of that cycle. I would have just thought I was a unique anomaly that couldn’t be helped. A broken toy that should just be discarded. But thankfully I knew enough about alcoholism to know that it is possible to recover, that most people don’t get out of it on their own, and perhaps there was an easier, softer way. Eventually I put my hand up and asked for help. 

I’ve been sober for over twenty years now. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for myself. Actually, it’s the best one. Because anything else I’ve achieved or been able to enjoy has come from being sober enough to do it. I wouldn’t have the relationships I do now if I had kept drinking. When I think back, given the situations I got myself into, and the way alcohol affected my mind and body, it’s fair to say I would probably not have even survived if I kept drinking. Learning how to live life on life’s terms hasn’t always been easy, but sobriety has taught me a lot.

Some of the best lessons I’ve learnt over the last twenty years of sobriety are:

1. I’m not worth more (or less) than anyone else. No more than. No less than. 

2. HALT — never let myself get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired.

3. I’m not the only one who struggles the way I do. I do not have terminal uniqueness. I am not alone no matter how much I feel like I am. 

4. How to let go of resentment. How to stop carrying the past around and letting it poison my present.

5. How to make amends but also how to forgive myself for my mistakes and shortcomings. 

6. How to not take on everyone else’s shitty life choices and try and save them at my own expense. Which leads me to…

7. I am not the messiah.

8. How to take life one day at a time (or five minutes at a time if the need arises).

Plus a whole host of other things I can’t even begin to rattle off here. Honestly I have learnt so much in the past twenty years, so much even in the last several, that that’s partly why I want to create journeys like this. So I can share some of the things I’ve come to learn. 

If you struggle with alcohol or drugs (or relationships, or anything else you use to escape yourself or your feelings), just know there are programs out there that can help.

Author and researcher Brené Brown has said she never quite fit neatly into any one twelve-step programs. She talked about having a bit of a "poo-poo platter" of addictions. It wasn't one thing. It was all the things. And I think a lot of us can relate to that. It doesn’t have to be drugs or alcohol that we hide in. 

There are many recovery programs and support groups available, and whatever path you choose, the principles of recovery can help with all sorts of behaviours we use to numb ourselves from life. Too much scrolling. Too much working. Too much people-pleasing. Too much anything, really.

All I can tell you is that getting help worked for me. It taught me how to deal with the stuff I'd been carrying around for years so that I only have to carry what's happening today. It taught me how to let go.

I still pick things up from time to time, but at least now I know how to put them back down again. 

My life is infinitely better since I took my last drink. Instead of continuing on the downward spiral, making things worse, hating myself a little more each time, I’ve learnt to deal with my past. I’ve learnt to accept myself and work on my defects at the same time, and I’ve learnt that things really can get better if you take small steps in the right direction one day at a time. It’s certainly an easier job looking after a cute little fluffy gremlin than the psychotic life destroying version. 

And it's not about whether or not you deserve to get better. It's not about whether or not getting better is possible. It's whether or not you're willing to do what it takes, even if that means swallowing what’s left of your pride and asking for help. 

Which is what I had to do, and its what changed the entire trajectory of my life.  So when you listen to this song, if you do relate to it, remember that wherever you are, just because you are somewhere doesn’t mean you have to stay there. 

Live Performance of the Song

Listen & Download

Click the audio player above to listen to the song. Or click the download link to download it to your own device.

EVERYTHING I GET

I don’t want your eyes to meet my gaze 

I’m busy hiding here in all this shame

I don’t want someone else to take the blame

Cos I did this, and we both know it 

I don’t want your pity or your help 

I know I only brought this on myself 

And I don’t want to take it out on someone else 

I’m destructive, it’s safer for you just to walk away

CHORUS:
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do 

When everything I touch just turns to shit 

I don’t know how I’m supposed to deal 

When everyone knows everything I did 

I’m only reaping what I sow, and I guess deep down I know

I deserve everything I get. 

I don’t want to see that look upon your face 

I can’t stand it when you look at me that way 

So leave me with my sorrow and my pain 

I’m corrosive, we both know this 

I don’t know that I’m ever gonna change 

But I also know that I can’t stay the same 

I guess I’m getting comfortable with pain 

Cos I keep finding, ways to create it everywhere I turn 

CHORUS:

I’m defeated, that’s the truth

I don’t want to play this game 

When I know that I’m only gonna lose 

What’s the point in showing up, 

I know I’ll never measure up 

I know I’ll never overcome what I’ve been through

CHORUS END. 

WORDS & MUSIC MICHELLE CASHMAN