There’s no way of escaping the hard reality that times are dire now. We have tens of millions of individuals who are newly unemployed and with no hard deadline to know when society will fully open up again, at least in California where I live. Over 70,000 of our fellow Americans have tragically died due to COVID-19 and the daily headlines seem to compete with each other on which one can be the bearer of the worst news possible.

Personally, I too have experienced some tremendous losses during this pandemic. I lost scheduled jobs. I’m now unemployed and I’ve lost a lot of money in my Roth IRA. Most importantly, I lost physical custody of my 11-year-old niece, whom I’ve been caring for during the past couple of years.

Two years ago, I had started caring for my niece because her parents divorced and they needed time to rebuild their lives. Fortunately, my niece’s parents remained actively involved in their daughter’s life by maintaining regular weekend visits and they cared for her individually during the summer and holiday breaks. We had the arrangement that I would return my niece at the end of this school year. Because of the school closures and her classes went digital, I returned my niece back a lot sooner than planned. I lost out on three months of watching her grow up in our home.

I cried the day she moved out and for days after. My partner didn’t cry but I could tell he was affected. It was as if his internal dimmer switch was lowered. We talked about her sudden absence. We were grateful to have had her with us for as long as we did and glad that her parents are in a much better place than before. But still. We felt a loss.

My niece was okay with this transition even though she was very sad to leave us. She moved out almost two months ago and she’s been doing great, considering the shutdown. We see each other every other day on our computers but it’s not the same. The loss of her daily presence is still deeply felt. There is a silence and emptiness now that she’s not in the house, waking me up by playing the piano, seeing her bounce as she walks, humming songs to herself, giving us random hugs and kisses, asking questions, and puttering around. Losing her so abruptly has been the biggest change for me during our collective health and wealth crisis.

Underneath all this is a trigger. I grew up in foster care. I have the muscle memory of sudden shifts in routines and navigating fogs of uncertainty. I am physically okay because my partner is sustaining us, but if we broke up, who knows where I’d end up? There are some friends I could stay with but would they accept me? Wouldn’t I have to be quarantined somewhere for 14 days before being allowed into another person’s home? How would I get there? Fly? More risks there.

Unlike a lot of our fellow citizens, I am not facing imminent homelessness thankfully. I’m truly grateful for that and I do not take my situation for granted. But combined with my sudden losses, my general anxiety, and partly out of boredom, I started to drink and eat more than I normally do. At first, the uptick in consumption was subtle. I lost myself in Netflix to chill out. But then, I kept the party going. Around the end of week two of our quarantine, I started drinking more every single day. By the end of week three, I was sipping Bourbon in the mornings and not counting calories when I ate through my feelings in all hours of the days that bled into each other.

I wanted to feel good and I wanted it now. Food and drink can always provide you with that instant gratification.

In the process of consumption, I felt wonderful. I was gorging myself with melted cheese pizzas and chug-a-lugging cold bottled beers. I was eating until I felt my stomach ached. I’d drink to get a buzz. Sometimes I got inebriated, and when I did, that’s when the tears started to pour out of me. They came out either for no reason or for dumb little things. When my partner didn’t want subtitles on a movie we were watching, but I wanted them there, my eyes would get watery. A small disagreement quickly escalated into a cataclysmic indictment of our entire relationship. We spent half the day apart stewing.

There were other alcohol-soaked moments. I kept bumping into things. I slept a lot. Dishes piled up in the sink. I wiped the dust off the treadmill but continued to not use it. I was texting ominous messages to close friends when I was swimming in hurt. I was losing control until the night I really lost it. I spent a long time in the shower, vomiting, crying, and wailing over all the pain in my life. The pain I was born into and the self-inflicted pain as a result. I was purging so much that it felt like I was going through an exorcism.

That night, my partner was in another part of the house. I didn’t want him to hear me. I didn’t even want to hear me but I decided to let it all out. Just release in that long hot shower. It had been a very long time since I’ve done that.

Thankfully, this spiraling had been short-lived. It lasted for about 10 days. The morning after I got really sick in the evening is when I turned a corner. I just made a cold hard decision not to continue the road I had been on. I told my partner, “I feel awful. I can’t keep going on like this.”

Before the pandemic, I would drink socially and only once in a great while I’d get stupid drunk—away from my niece. I could also go for many months without drinking. There’s never been a time when I couldn’t just stop. Eating has been more of my issue.

It’s been almost a month since I stopped drinking completely and eating so much. I started to cleanse for a couple of days but the days grew into weeks of intermittently fasting and on some days, I only drink herbal teas and electrolyte water and take vitamins and mineral supplements. I’ve been using the treadmill again, lifting weights and going outside in our backyard, spending hours in the sun plucking weeds out and clearing ivy. Forget milk, exercise, and nature really do a body good. I’ve already lost all the weight I’ve gained on this pandemic. I’ve also been drinking a lot of green tea, reading books, I started writing a sequel to my book, Foster Girl, a Memoir, and I’m reconnecting intimately with my partner. I’m feeling really good these days and I am oddly glad I have that temporary insanity so recent in my memory. That off-the-rails week and a half is a reminder of where I don’t want to go. Maybe sometimes we have to lose control in order to regain it?

Anyway, I’m back to being myself again. I can’t let that detour become my highway.