This is my memoir

To start I am 27-year-old women, I have never done anything like this before, as I’ve never seen the point, to be honest, but I am going to give it a try and see if I can get some therapeutic benefits from it. I am going to start with my back story for gambling and how I think my life has influenced it. I have posted a few times on this site but never in so much depth.

I have just gambled away £30 I did £160 on Saturday. I am so down at the moment, I am nearing the end of my Degree, I also work with people suffering from addiction problems and to be honest I feel like such a fraud, I help them recover but yet I can't help myself. I have had therapy before for life problems but never for gambling. I have decided that I going to come and write here every and hopefully I can build a picture for myself.

The start of 2017 started just as badly as what 2016 had ended. I went back to my vice, my trusty right-hand man? No that’s not even the right word as it isn’t even human. It’s virtual, I’m a virtual gambler and when times get tough I gamble. Some people drink, some people self- harm. I gamble. Well, not in the real world only on the world-wide web. Somehow gambling online doesn’t seem as real as handing over £100 to a bookmaker and saying I’ll 2-1 on Red Rum, please. And that is probably one of the reasons why I gamble online because it doesn’t seem real it is an escapism from the everyday life in which I live. I am transported from my dull, 20 something life into the world of flashing, singing and dancing lights. That won’t tell me I’m not good enough, they won’t tell me I have only got a 2:2 on an essay I have been writing. They won’t even tell me that I stink. Which most the time I do when I am gambling I give up on everything else that is going on around me and I focus on the task at hand which is to lose money. Which when I am sober from the gambling I find hilarious because I am a student and I don’t have any money. I am pretty much on my a**e 90% of the time. But I choose the most expensive vice that I could.

I grew up surrounded by addiction from a very early age, my dad always smoked and my mom was an alcoholic through no fault of her own. She used it as a coping mechanism when my sister died. As a child, I watched my mother’s addiction slowly ruin relationships with everything that she once loved. And that included me, I still loved my mother regardless of what she put me through but I didn’t like her. I didn’t want to be in her company. I didn’t want her to do anything for me. I spent as little time as I could with her. And that was detrimental for me because I ended up becoming secluded. I would spend vast amounts of time on my own just watching television in the comfort of my bedroom. From around the age of eight. Our family unit became split completely, my dad would do his own thing and I would do mine and my mother would do hers. We lived separate lives. Which I believe has been detrimental to my health, I don’t have a close relationship with either of my parents, I couldn’t really tell you much about them both as they didn’t really speak to me. I know their ages and past occupations but that is it in the grand scheme of things. Which really upsets me as these people I lived with for so long are just strangers.

I believe these relationships I have with my parents have had a knock-on effect in my adult life. I don’t know how to express myself and my emotions. I keep them to myself and I let them build and build until I can’t take it anymore and then I blow. But my way of expressing myself is to go online and gamble.

I had a blow out at Christmas, it was Christmas day and I felt so lonely. I had been at work and I finished at around 4 am. I came home and decided to drink. I didn’t have very many only around two. I then went to sleep at around 6 am and awoke on Christmas day night at around 5 pm. I wasn’t having Christmas dinner as the oven was broke. Which I didn’t mind too much about as I wasn’t in the mood for cooking. I went downstairs and wanted to engage in conversation with my parents but no sooner did it start it ended. I felt deflated, I had tried but my mother wouldn’t allow me to talk she would continue to change the subject. Which quite frankly really annoyed me. So, I took my cup of coffee upstairs and got back in bed and that is where I stayed for the rest of the night. I didn’t partake in any other conversations with the human species on Christmas day. I just went to the virtual world of gambling and that is where I stayed until boxing day when my money had run out. When I had finished, I felt dirty and ashamed. I had been clean for a good while. Which quite frankly I found remarkable. I swore to myself like every other gambler does that would be the last time.

Fast forward to Easter 2017, did I keep that promise? Of course, I didn’t I am a compulsive gambler who has had a few bad months and needed to let off some steam.

Leading up to Easter wasn’t an enjoyable time for me. I suffer from a skin condition called HS for short, it was/is getting progressively worse. I fear that by the time I am 35 I won’t be able to carry out the same day to day tasks that I do now. Because it will just be too much for me. I am waking up each morning with a new puss filled lump somewhere new on my body or an old scar has refilled. I find myself physically repulsing at times, I can’t bear to look at my own body because of it, it disgusts me. It smells vile and looks vile, I don’t participate in sexual relations because of it. It’s gotten to the point where I wouldn’t want anyone seeing my body without it being pitch black. Because I don’t understand how anyone could find looking at my body attractive.

Moving on from that, just before Easter I also had a traumatic time at my smear, it came back that I severe abnormal cells and I needed to have them removed via loop excision. That was a very distressing experience. I spent 4 weeks recovering from it. Luckily, I got the all clear for another 6 months but I spent four weeks of the term thinking the worst.

When it came to going home at Easter I didn’t want to go as I was scared that it was going to set me back as I hadn’t gambled since Christmas and I was worried that by going home and being in total seclusion when I was in the house that it would make me gamble again. And it did during the week that I was at home, as soon as I got back and stepped through the door my mother made a hurtful comment to me and said she thought I’d got fat. I had only been in the house for 20 minutes and I already wanted to leave....

There is more to this story which I shall continue but right now my finger tips hurt. I don't honestly think I have written something so quickly in all my life.