Don’t fail the test

It’s a lot easier to be on “this side” of the drinking/ sobriety equation, wondering about drinking – even romanticizing it a little bit at times – but staying sober. Than it is to be on “the other side” of that equation – wishing for/ wondering about how to do/can I even, romanticizing sobriety very often – but still drinking. Especially when I don’t even want to – it’s just such an ingrained tired old basic habit that is so boring in reality and unpleasant. There is an element of “talking myself out of it” – but what’s wrong with that? If I have to talk myself out of it rather than just go along like an impulse receiving robot – why would that be better? It’s definitely not.

Also – there have been tons of times – even the very first time I ever drank, that I wished I’d either not drank as much/ wasn’t so negatively feeling about alcohol/ wished I were sober and that I had a long solid stable sobriety underneath myself. Just like (but it’s not at all as aching – not at all – especially after the 1st 3 months – when I’m finally sober) after all that work and effort and strain and stress and trying and one day at a time-ing it – I have wondered about drinking again.

Point: From either perspective I entertain thoughts of or ache for the other side. But again – note! When I’m drinking and/or hungover and/or Done just so done with drinking and so wanting to stop and not to be tormented by it anymore – I ACHE FOR SOBREITY. I am so envious of people who have stable enjoyable sobriety that they are proud of and stick up for, that they see real value in maintaining. I also see that those same people have doubts sometimes, even with lots of sober time. But they stay the course and get their minds back on track and stay sober and are very glad for it.

The thoughts/ feelings/ ideas of drinking, while sober, as very slight and faint in comparison to the desperation/ the deep desire to be sober when drinking.

When those ideas/ feelings/ thoughts come up in future, which they probably will, I will know how to deal with them. Since I can’t avoid them all in advance, get them all done and gone now and no more forever (sigh) – I need to only know how to deal with them.

It will just mean that I’m having thoughts. It does not at all mean I have to do anything at all. I am not a robot that just concedes to all the damn feelings/ thoughts/ ideas/ emotions that pops into its head. They do not make the choices and decisions I DO.

Ending with words from Jocko Willink:

Imagine if you wrote down tonight everything you know you should do tomorrow. Then imagine with you did those things the next day…and the day after…Imagine how you would feel that day. Then imagine if you did those things the next day and the day after and the week after…Where would you be in a month? In three months? In a year. Your life would be in a totally different trajectory…

Don’t use the bullet on yourself, use it to fight the enemy.

Don’t fail the test.

Jocko Willink

Clinging

It’s been a long road, and the road continues beyond here. Long story short on this long road – clinging is the root of all of it. I thought it was the food (and it is), I thought it was the depression (sure, it is), the alcohol (yeah, it is), the childhood the anger the exercise the place I live in, the place I don’t live in, the boredom, the too much to do, the lack of hobbies, the gardens, the memories, the other people, the ___. And it is! It is. But it’s the CLINGING.

Depression is an enactment of clinging. Anger – the same. Ruminating…fussing over other people’s behavior. Returning again and again and again to drinking or not drinking or grains or relationships or mini skirts or how much I can deadlift or how much I used to be able to deadlift.

Stop clinging to that dead thing. No more looking back over your shoulder as the dead city. There’s noting left there for you that is not simply idiotic clinging. You are not there anymore, you are not that person anymore, that thing is over, the words passed, the day gone, the night is gone too. You do not have to go through any of that again. You don’t even want to. So just let it go. It’s gone now. You are here now.

7 month check-in

Issue: The feelings are coming up again, the desire to drink. Thoughts of lunches outside on decks on lovely spring summer days with sushi and my husband happy and us having a good time and smelling the ocean.

How am I thinking about the issue?

Like I could handle it at this point. (Sigh..) Or that I wouldn’t even try to handle it anymore – I would just drink and stop driving myself crazy about this all the time. I’m so sick of thinking about this and feel like the thoughts will just never go away for good. I’m so tired of them returning after however long. I just want to feel solid in sobriety and never question it and just be done with it. And I’m still upset a lot and feeling out of control with the food again and feeling fat again and old and blah and stuck in a bad way inside of myself. Reaching out for a positive change of feelings and thinking.

The realities of all this thinking:

• Drinking again is not going to make your thinking any more clear or less difficult or less negative or more positive or feel more free or less stuck and sour.
• Drinking will actually make you think about drinking more and feel less clarity and more confused and tired and fat and unhappy. It will make you feel less free inside and in your actions. You would be tied to it again, more.
• These feelings or thoughts are just as temporary as the times when I did not have these feelings at all.
• You made the decision – the choice – to not drink anymore – for reasons. For small reasons and for big reasons + those reasons have not changed.
• You are considering drinking again because something in your life is bugging you and you want to slap on a band aid – but you even know that the band aid wouldn’t help actually and that it would just annoy you in other ways.
• Drinking is not letting go – it is clinging.
• You can’t drink to cling or to let go.
• Drinking is only a waste of time, energy and money when it really comes down to it. There will come a time in the day/ night/ week/ month/ year – that you will have to stop drinking. Even if it’s just until the next day. It does not last. You will have to go to bed, get up, exercise, clean up, work, go and do.
• Not drinking leads to:
  • Less anxiety.
  • Less drama (hopefully).
  • Being less reactive.
  • Being able to trust yourself and count on yourself more.
  • More clarity – at least the potential for it
  • Weight loss – same as clarity
  • Ending this tiring and boring topic
  • Bigger and better life options (as a possibility at least).
  • Eventually not having to think about it/ deal with it as much/ at all – anymore. It will come a time when you finally leave it all behind. But you have to leave it alone and walk forward in order to get there.
• It’s what you decided and chose to do and for good reasons.
• Going back to drinking would be for not as good if not bad reasons.
• Alcohol is self sabotage in whatever way – small to big.
• Aren’t you sick and tired of this conversation by now? Yes. I sure am.
• These feelings will pass – all of them – the good ones and the bad ones.
• You can’t cling to anything either way.
• Drinking is clinging (I’ll say it again) and it’s not freedom. You may not feel freedom, given your thoughts and feelings, but you’re more free than if you went back into that relationship with alcohol again. Either way you feel troubled inside, wrapped up in fishing line at times, unfree, toiling for nothing that feels like it’s helping your inner world. But you are actually at the very least – freer without alcohol. Drinking again would only make you less free even than you feel inside yourself right now. It would not free you up. Your energy, your space, time, actions, thoughts – it would put you right back onto that hamster wheel. Right back where you were before you exerted all this effort.
• Respect yourself, respect your choices, respect your reality and do not gaslight yourself like – oh it wasn’t that bad or oh it will be better this time.
• You are doing great + this is the only way forward.

half year

It seems like I woke up and it was February and I’d passed 6 months of sobriety (again, hopefully for the last time). Obviously it did not go that quickly nor was it easy, no. I can say that yet again the months 3-4 were the toughest. Those months were the inner yelling of “what’s the point? Who cares? Why does everyone else get to do whatever they want?” and so on.

It definitely helps me to celebrate the milestones, to also gift myself something I really would like (an object like handmade jewelry from someone who I idolize in a cool place or a new supplement or even just expensive nail polish rather than buying a cheaper one that the color isn’t exactly what I had in mind, since an experience like traveling isn’t really in the cards right now for anyone). I would prefer to spend money on fulfilling experiences like traveling or staying in a warm place for the winter – always prefer that over “things”.

But this post isn’t about what helped or didn’t help, as I’ve written that all out already, multiple times.

This post is more intended to put down the time passing and note that I am proud of this accumulation of sober time. I see that it is a Miracle and that I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for God + Mother Mary’s Guidance. I am very Grateful to be showing up for myself and I hope never to have to go through this ever again.

That in and of itself is definitely a good enough answer to “what’s the point?” Just so I never have to go through this again. Because it was just hell and hell for a long time.

Life in my head still is hell sometimes, but it’s not THAT particular hell. I thank God for that.

OPD

On the Home Podcast (thank you Holly Whitaker for being my idol for 5 years) – they had an episode called OPD – meaning Other People’s Drinking. Though I loved the topic, I didn’t really understand their response to the letter, though I’ve listened to it multiple times. I think they are saying something along the lines of:”Yeah other people are on their own path with alcohol and that’s got nothing to do with yours”. Which is an good answer of course, but for some reason it’s never seemed like, solid enough for me.

Over these last 5 years in particular and since the very beginning of my abusive relationship with alcohol – other people’s drinking habits, methods, whatever – were something I noticed in one way or another. Get up from the table at a restaurant with a few sips of wine left in your glass? No-sir-ee! I’ll finish it for you as we stand up to put our coats on. Nowadays it’s – how long did someone wait to open that beer upon arriving home from work? Is that other person being delusional about alcohol effects in general? How much energy am I going to put into changing their damn minds and showing them how wrong they are? Sigh…

So I’ve gone through all that shit again and it’s been really hard on me and gotten me no place in the end. They go on their merry delusional way and I go sit in the corner and seethe and tell myself “I do not want wine I do not want wine”. Just like any other day haha.

Those swirling thoughts and dark feelings have continued, but have gotten quieter and softer. Thank God. Though it never felt like they would and it seemed here and there like the only way to shut them up was to start drinking again. But thankfully there was also the definitive knowledge in my mind that uhh..you’ve done that whole thing, for those same reasons, about 25 times in the last 5 years alone and every single time you have had to get back to stopping drinking again. Again! And that cycle is EXHAUSTING. So you must cut out the middle events of going back to drinking, thinking it will be different this time, that you can be like you are now BUT with drinking again (which is actually impossible, because I am how I am now because I am NOT drinking). It would be like uhh…is there anyway I can ride a bicycle without getting on a bicycle. No – you’re either on the damn bike or not.

So at this point – I am very grateful to have the clarity of repetitious BS to acknowledge – I do not want to go through all this shit again and I just never felt good at all when I drank. I felt ill and hallucinated and was out of my mind and on and on and on. Depressed + suicidal. Bored and trapped. And if I make positive strides in my life – I can’t add alcohol back in, because it will have all these negative physical and mental effects and so on – just maybe from a different vantage point. A detrimental thing is a detrimental thing and that’s all there is to it.

Another metaphor – I could be living in a town I really dislike (let’s call it Gray Town) – and drinking, and it would all suck. If I get new clothes, still living in Gray Town and drinking – it would still suck. If I move out of Gray Town, with my nice new clothes even, to let’s say Spring Town (a town I do like), and keep drinking – it would still suck for me to drink, even with my nice new clothes and in the nice pretty town with lots of flowers and birds singing and all that loveliness, it will effect me in the same crappy way. I’d just be crappy in Spring Town.

I’d be moving forward in XYZ ways but trying to keep the thing I can’t manage or accommodate in my life. For whatever reason, in whatever amount.

How about another metaphor because I guess I’m in the mood for metaphors. Let’s say I wanted to keep cotton candy in my life – hey – everyone LOVES cotton candy no? It makes the world go round..it’s fun it’s pretty, what’s the harm? It’s so nice to just REALX with a nice big ball of cotton candy at the end of the day. Just eat it in moderation!

Totally I get it. The thing is – every time I eat cotton candy I hallucinate faces, voices, crawling things on the ceiling and who knows? I just might act out all crazy too! Roll the dice! Who knows?? Whee!

So even though everyone on earth loves them some CC on a stick – well..I just can’t abide it.

Which brings me to todays self lesson.

I have been avoiding people on social media (and will continue to do so) who drink or eat meat or whatever. That’s fine. Sure. But today I happened upon a lady whose hair I liked plus I liked her life style and the fact she went to this nutritional school I was looking at – so I pop over to her IG and as I’m about to do it I get this feeling – like – I’m not going to like what I see. I little flutter of “danger”. And there it is – she’s a fun enough active nutritionist, with auto immune disorders and feminine areas issues – who also “enjoys her burgers and wine – in moderation of course!” “Celebrating with my husband at the vineyard!” And I’m like “ahh..yes..I thought so”. And she goes into this whole explanation about all of it. Sigh…

But what I did was, I just let myself read at little of it and let that little “danger!” feeling come, stay for a moment and then go. It passed by. Because as I was reading her words I thought to myself – “Ok…self..look..she is a different person than you. This has nothing to do with you OF COURSE. She eats meat. Ok that’s her. She drinks wine and wants to chit chat about it. Ok that’s her. She also likes to ski. You do not like to ski. There is nothing inside of you that’s like oh gee, maybe I should go back to eating chicken. Or – huh, maybe I should try skiing again. AHH-NOPE. So that’s how you can think of the “drinking if I feel like it with my hubby and my doggies teehee!” or the “drinking because I’m a human who likes nice things at the end of the day” – thing she wrote or the “drinking in moderation thing works for me!” as well – it just is what someone else does and that’s got nothing to do with you…nothing to do with you…you are your own person“.

And you know what? I lived.

I lived through it and my vague anxiety and ambivalence calmed down into just like “this is information.. information about someone else…” I did not internalize it. I did not reflect it upon the lake of myself, what I know about myself. I did not look into the lake, leaning over the pier, searching for my own face in the ripples…And that was a much MUCH less painful thing for me.

And now I can say much like what was summarily intended on the Home podcast that day years ago – yeah…so like…people are on their own paths with alcohol and that has nothing to do with yours. And I can say that though it’s not solid it’s all that’s actually needed here. That’s all that it’s worth.

So…whew. Made it through another moment. Made it through another invisible and in reality fake, meaningless, non-interacting and yet often influential interaction that we call social media.

Thank God, I’m making it up the road. One casual caption comment at a time.

The easy way out

Looking back over the years since 2015, I see that every year, about this time, I get fidgety. Maybe it’s the season, maybe the change of one year into the next. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve still not made what I would call progress on certain important aspects of my existence. I have made some progress though, this year perhaps especially. But still, those clouding thoughts had set up for an overcast day in my mind. No wind.

The thoughts were things like – so does this mean no more wine, like ever? And – how about we chop all that hair off, that would be cool right? You could be this fun pixie cut hair person! The thing is – well , one thing is, that I’ve had to painstakingly grow my hair back out each time. And I’ve had to painstakingly claw my way back to sobriety each time. Even when I was like “Ok THIS time I’ll just keep my hair short and I’ll like it forever that way; THIS time I’ll just be a drinker and not fret about it so much and drive myself crazy”. Ah yes, silly me with the craziness.

So I’d noticed that and written pages and pages on it. Jogged and walked thinking I’d go until I stopped thinking about wine, whilst thinking about it the entire time I’m out on the jog and once I’ve finally made some space, it’s right back up my ass again. I mean, like a dang yo-yo – lightening fast.

Thinking and then not thinking about it and feeling the feelings and wondering when the heck they would go away. Pages upon pages more of scribbles about it. Would like a sober community for especially time like this, to support and be supported, but have never found one that sits at all well with me – whether online or in person or on zoom. I’ve tried 5 meetings in my area of an hour distance. It’s just not happening around here on that. Done multiple online programs, even moderated one myself. Talked about it all endlessly to myself and husband (poor guy) and my books and in prayer.

And I was very perplexed as to why the heck I was still having this swampy thinking that I couldn’t seem to get free from and for good. But it seems that that is just how it it. And certainly the thinking is not going to get me to drink, unless I drank. Like – I don’t have to follow every stinking thinking that comes into my mind. I’m not the servant of those thoughts. I make my own choices. And I made my own choices, so why were the thoughts back?

Well, turns out that still I’d not completely closed the door on that in my mind. Not shut it, locked it and thrown away the key. Apparently, considering the mental gymnastics of the last week or so straight – apparently I had still kept the door open JUST a crack, so I could peek at it once in a while I guess.

Months ago, knowing myself and how this whole thing works, I’d written in bold letters in multiple spots – You will have to Choose this and Choose it over and over and over again, until this is just what you are. And sure enough I was right. So though the thoughts come, of varying intensities, none of them are going to “get me to drink”. I had expected the thoughts months ago. I guess I just forgot I knew they’d arrive some time or another.

So that’s Fix One of squeezing the sponge out.

Fix Two – Acknowledge and Accept – this thing in and of itself – is never going to improve or change.

I’m reading a book called Tweak by Nic Sheff. This is after watching the movie and it hitting me so hard. The book is even better than the movie. Like way better. And the movie was great.

In the book, he had been sober and living in a sober house for 18 months, then one day after a very rough breakup with someone he really cared for, he got drunk, got pills, got high on meth. Just dominos falling down. He did that on repeat for around 30 days, homeless, swollen tracks up and down his arms, with no shoes on his feet at the end, barely able to walk onto a plane to get to LA for help. I mean I do not know HOW he managed another moment. But he did and he got out of it. And he gets back to his same apartment that he’d been living in about 30 days previous, using his same key to get in the door. And he says “And there it is, exactly as I left it”.

I put the book down.

WHY did he go through all of that horror? Why do WE go through all this horror? Alcohol, drugs, whatever – THOSE things are Never. Going. To. Change. Not ever. We are the ones who are capable of change. If we go back to XYZ – it will be THE SAME way it was before. But if we don’t go back to XYZ – then we save ourselves the TROUBLE of going through it all, just to end up in the same place again. It’s such a waste of time “to go back out”. It just hit me as so clear.

He later talks about the amnesia of addiction, how we are all set with the sober trail and then months later like – Aw gee – what was I so hard on myself for? I can totally do XYZ. And that which he says there, is a couple more months after he’s gone through the “no shoes at the airport, his last money for a ticket, barely unable to get off the floor that’s covered in his vomit” thing. Haven’t we all done the same at one time or another, at one level or another? Then, came along Fix Three.

Fix Three: Yet again (yet again!) I see how – oh man – it’s so much trouble to drink. Like. So much WORK. You gotta think about when you can drink, how much, with whom or alone, don’t drink too much, don’t get sloppy, do you have enough supply? Will you run out? Are you going to get very depressed/ hallucinate/ lash out/ become violently bored or worse. How is your partner/ friend/ coworkers/ friendly neighborhood liquor store owner thinking about this? Do you look drunk? Do you care? What about work tomorrow or your workout or the money it costs or your weight. Can you resist those other days? Do you have to try to stop again? Can you stop again? Do you care? What about all that anxiety?

As I was thinking on this and ruminating in my journal, gradually moving upwards to that higher level that we all look for in our self-reflections – that relief – the kite of knowledge going up..up..until finally we understand the thing – I literally rolled my eyes and exclaimed “Oh my God it’s so much WORK to drink! UGGG! Screw THAT”.

Like for real! If nothing else – I’m seeing – it’s just truly THE EASY WAY OUT to NOT drink, to NOT do the drugs or overeat the food or whatever it is that is picking away at your + my mind or life. If you are a lazy person or you’d just like a simplier life or a life of less drama or stress or orchestration? Stop drinking. Your life will get simpler immediately. (As long as you don’t have to medically detox – if you have to medically detox, then please take care of that first).

People do though, think it’s hard to not drink and that it’s so easy to drink. They are like “Oh, I’m really living free over here, I get to drink after a long week of shit, it’s YOU who has the RESTRICTIONS you must be so HARD on yourself or you must have had a real PROBLEM”.

But actually – from the standpoint of perspective and knowledge – it’s actually so much easier for me, for so many of us (perhaps all of us, but I’m not about to insist), to just take the fricking stuff off the table and then it’s gone and it’s not WORK anymore. It takes WORK to use.

Either way, it’s hard to live this life, no doubt about it. So I’m not about to sign up to make it harder. And that reason blew those clouds away; shut that door again + locked it. And that’s true freedom.

100 Days

I am so proud today at 100 Days of sobriety from alcohol. It is also almost 80 days sobriety from grains, sugars, overeating. I am still occasionally, like a couple times a month, overeating something or other – usually like I’ve had 6 tbsp of organic sugar free peanut butter instead of just 2 or had 4 grain free corn free tacos (which are amazing btw), instead of the 2 I intended to have. But it all feels like a win still because it’s foods that are still within my parameters of grain free sugar free, with the intention to not overeat them.

Something I’ve reflected on several times is that I do not know if I would still be sober from alcohol were I still eating sugar, grains and overeating food in general. I just don’t know about that. I’m totally inclined to say perhaps no or at least say – I might be – but I’d be gritting my teeth resentfully and in biting anxiety a whole lot more. That I can see from previous experience FOR SURE. The Gratitude and Grace that I have been allotted in gaining the knowledge that the food was a HUGE issue is deep and wide and I cannot Pray and Thank God enough. If anyone is sober from alcohol and or food addiction and struggling on either side of that, please be extra open and read these books that I was Graced with coming into contact with a couple months ago: Saving Sara: A Memoir of Food Addiction by Sara Somers, Overeaters Anonymous, 12 Steps for Overeaters by Elizabeth L. and Damaged Goods by Shelley Louise.

Those books – especially Sara Somers’ book – opened my eyes wider than they’d ever been and showed me that the alcohol was the same thing as the sugar, which was the same thing as the crackers, which was the same thing as the yelling which was the same thing as the crying and desperate reaching out for “fun” and on and on and on, never ending and always leading back to misery. I could not give up the alcohol, but keep the crackers in my life (3 whole sleeves of crackers, every day). I couldn’t give up the crackers but keep the 4,000 calorie dinner on Saturday nights. I couldn’t get rid of those huge food binges but keep the yelling and compulsion to defend myself and explaining and ranting for hours at a time. I couldn’t get rid of the anger and overreacting but keep the brown rice. I couldn’t get rid of the brown rice but keep the obsession about moving to another town/ state. I list so many examples, but these are only a few I’ve come to terms with these last 100 days.

I wish I’d had this knowledge a long time ago, I know it would have helped me then. I also know I have a long long way to go and I’ve by no means figured it all out and can clap my hands. Being connected, plugged in, to God is not to be underestimated. And I know for sure it was God’s push that brought this knowledge to me, after 20+ years of struggling with food et al. In the recovery circles, so often it’s suggested to just focus on not drinking and that if you eat a gallon of ice cream or a bag of twizzlers or 3 pizzas or whatever you eat at any given moment, it’s ok! Just stay sober! But I am certain that this kind of advice, though meant well, is actually a majorly destructive allowance. Especially if the person has struggled with any kind of food disorder, which so many of us have, if we see it or not. Why take a chance anyways? And then how many of us – if we do manage to stay sober – have to then deal with the “food thing” later on down the recovery path? It seems like it’s a short term solution for one thing and also it’s not really a solution since it creates a whole other set of problems: “I quit drinking and I was told I’d lose weight, but I haven’t so what’s wrong with me and now I’m eating all these mood altering grains and sugars and I’m even more down in the shits.” Or: “Dang, I quit drinking but I have constant food cravings and every time I give into them I feel totally out of control and the binges make me feel as depressed as I was when I was hungover, but at least I’m sober I guess but I hate myself and hate life?”. Everything just cycling into itself. The B Vitamins deficiencies that drinkers are all too often unconsciously drinking to relieve the symptoms of, are further depleted by the alcohol. And on top of it, when we stop drinking, if we fill it with sugar and grains, those low levels are further depleted. And the sinking quicksand chase to feel better continues.

I heard on https://asobergirlsguide.com/ podcast with Dr. Jasmine Hall, that there is a place in San Diego that injects iv’s of NAD: B3 – into alcoholics (for like 10 grand, versus 30+ grand for regular rehab where they feed you white bread and jello = sugar hell) and the patient is saved from this cycle of awfulness that so many of us never even get out of, myself almost included. I really had begun to believe years ago that there was just no hope for me, not ever. Since no matter what I did or didn’t do, I was a shaking exhausted hungry angry sobbing overweight out of breath mess, one that lab tests did not offer reasons for.

I am eternally grateful for the Grace of knowledge and how taking into practice this knowledge has helped me untie the knots and finally things make some sense. I hope anyone else who just knows something is wrong, so wrong, that they find these books and put them into practice, to gain some bit of relief and peace, after such a long dark struggle. Some relief, so small, but so big on their journey to betterment.

And here I am now 100 Days and I am so proud. So short a time but so encompassing for me and ones that are feeling more healing than ever before. I saw an article recently by a psychologist who was recommending his severely depressed patients to try giving up refined sugars and grains for a while: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-depression-cure/200907/dietary-sugar-and-mental-illness-surprising-link and he writes: A few have had the courage and determination and given it a go: they’re reported remarkable improvements in mood, energy, and mental clarity.  

When I read that and got a bit verklempt: courage and determination – who me? Who us? Us those “weak addicts?” Praise God.. that’s all I really know.

Reflection on a spiral

This is an entry from my journal 09/05/20, which I wrote at the end of the night on the same day.

Tough day. I’m in bed now thankfully. We have stopped arguing for now. I did not drink alcohol, though I came pretty close.

I’d jogged at the Point and felt pretty good about it. Came back (still in silence and compulsive email checking in order to meet with a landlord, who ended up ghosting me). Looking for an apartment. Again. To move out of my own home. Obviously and thankfully as well, it was not meant to be. Annoyed, confused, upset, spiraling, reaching. Same as 2 weeks ago on Saturday at the Beach Park, and this whole week. No relief at all. Darkness descending and I’m panicking.

I’d drank off and on since April – because of these overwhelming feelings. In fact, these overwhelming feelings were always “why” I’d drank. No more though. So upset, getting tighter and tighter inside my head. Being rude and hostile. Paranoia. Stuck as f#$k, so tight it’s amazing I didn’t pass out. Like a mental corset or being drawn and quartered emotionally. Awful. Spent an hour just sobbing in my room, unable to cope, hopeless, stuck, caged, helpless, confused, desperate, lonely. Eventually after hissing anger, I went down filled with resignation, crying, asking my husband to go to the store for me. I was intending to get those putrid (but gluten free!) canned seltzer drinks (gag) and a bottle of white wine. Pause. I was humiliated in the asking him this.

I’d just taken a Xanax as a last resort – because I could not stop sobbing and spiraling. He asked what I needed at the store, with a pissy look on his face. I said “some things…and some alcohol”. He said “no – you should not drink” and he wouldn’t look at me. He looked and sounded perhaps a little embarrassed, maybe for me or maybe I embarrass him because of just existing as myself. I’m sure he wishes I was like 95% a different person. People always do – they always actually want a “different person”. I said “I don’t care. You cannot expect me to just sit here in silence day in day out with nothing to do or be or want or need or anything – just sit in a corner and cook and be silent because I am NOT that person and I will NOT DO IT.” I wonder now how I was talking to anyways, since HE doesn’t DO this to me. I was so upset, so diminished, there seemed no way out at all. He said again how I should not drink, that it wasn’t a good idea, he didn’t think it was right, that I’d asked him to remind me of that fact and he was doing so – that I would feel like shit the next day etc.

I started anxiously getting ready to go myself then. Furious + dejected + lost + empty + nothing but spewing emotions and fatigue, resignation. The addict voice + feelings were all barking in a cacophony. He said over and over “don’t do it. But if I can’t stop you, at least don’t get the heavy strong stuff. Don’t.” He trailed off.

I left, upset and crying and paranoid. Went to the preserve off Rear Road, finally no one around or near me. I sat there looking around mechanically, then just staring and thinking through the streaming tears and then just went blank.

A thought came through the fog in my mind and I said it quietly but firmly out loud to the air “I don’t want to drink. I’m not going to. It’s not the thing to do anymore”. I repeated that and then went silent. The inner noise had stopped.

I drove off after a while of just sitting there staring ahead, very slowly through the wooded roads, went to the grocery store in silence. As soon as I had said the words out loud, the idea of chips came to mind, yeah…snacks, how about snacks, that sounds..NICE. It actually sounds nice. I quietly acknowledged. And NICE sounds really NICE right now. Like a blanket fort on a cold day with soup on the stove. I kept the idea, the journey of getting chips like a glowing trail marker in my mind. That was my purpose at that moment and nothing else.

I looked around the store, blank and empty and absent. Looked around and got macadamias and cheese and chips and they all sounded so much better than alcohol did. The idea of alcohol felt like a punishment, a whip and chain, shackles. Because it is.

I also got gluten free cookies, two new herbal teas. Yes. That’s more like it. Kombucha – peach mint – now that sounds delicious and special. I avoided the alcohol aisle just out of habit, but also it did not call to me whatsoever. I checked in a little bit on that as I passed by with my cart and no – nothing at all. Left the store when I was done in a silent daze. Had spoke to no one, gone to self check. Thank goodness for self check.

Slowly, hunched over the wheel, I drove back home. Husband must be upstairs, awaiting my return, wondering what that would be. I got inside with a soft blip of anticipation coming through the blankness and I was a little bit shakily proud of myself. Knowing that I would have felt ashamed and wasted, if I’d brought home alcohol, before I even drank it. I went in and opened some bags and ate some handfuls staring at the wall and opened a kombucha can, crack – knowing that it must sound like a can of alcohol.

Upstairs I went with the can of kombucha, the peach and mint painting my taste buds in a surprising way. So that is what something NICE tastes like. Grateful I was. So tired, spinning down slower, coming to a halt. My husband laying on his bed dejectedly, not looking at me, his head turned away. I went in and sat down and quietly said “I didn’t get any alcohol”. He turned his head slowly my way and seemed to exhale and said he was very glad and that he’d hoped I’d not.

Later at dinner I tiredly said how I was really struggling with the fact that other people get to have any effing thing they felt like and it was just me who didn’t and why was that. Why does everyone else get to act like nothing they do is a problem at all but that I should not drink, that it’s not fair and I resent it a lot. My voice coming out strained and hoarse, but true, so true. Just like the true it had been when I’d just an hour earlier said “I don’t want to drink. I’m not going to. It’s not the thing to do anymore”. The knowledge of the truth – solid and sound. He said that I was some kind of allergic to alcohol, that’s why and it just doesn’t work for me at all and at least I have the decency to stop – other people don’t – they just keep doing it. And who cared what other people did. You are doing the best thing for you and that’s all that matters.

It was a very decent and a very generous answer. More than I deserved.

He made carbonara and it was delicious. We watched one of my favorite movies The Longest Week. I went to bed by 8pm, sank into darkness.

I know I had made the right decision as I drove away from the preserve that evening – to not drink. The day will pass either way. It can either go the hard way or the easier way. Either way, it’s going to pass. The end of the night will come and I would be sitting there, one way or another. So why bother making it SUCK WORSE.

And the next day I wrote again and was myself some more.

You are already there

We try to control “the thing” and we try to “moderate it” (ugg, hate that word). And why do we do that? Because we are desperate to have one foot in and one foot out – of the thing. We want to keep our options open – essentially, our options of self-harm open, or at the least, our options of detachment open. Detaching from our crummy lives or our happy lives, our good days, bad days, doesn’t matter. Loneliness, boredom, confusion, laziness, joy, work, play, whatever it may be. How a singular substance is attributed to going so well with any feeling/day/event/person – I will never know. But we think it does.

The control attempts and moderation and declarations during a hangover or sweaty attempts to fit into last summer’s jeans, dismissed thoughts, yells from the Soul, all occurring to “keep on keepin on’ of this thing (the food, the alcohol, the pills, the what-you-got) are sometimes met with the words: “Oh it’s not that bad”. Or even worse: “I’ll stop if it gets too bad”.  Sometimes our inner shame bully who loves these kinds of events because s/he can really get her or his pudgy little finger out and point it into your face and say: “I knew you wouldn’t keep the weight off” or “I knew you’d FAIL” or whatever helpful spittle-filled glob of embarrassment that he or she typically says. (That just being all in your mind btw, unless you have someone following you around like that? In which case you should see a magistrate right away). Anyways, so what’s the problem with all of that exactly?

Because aren’t you already there actually? For example, isn’t the simple fact that you starting drinking again actually out of control to begin with? Regardless of any of this particular time’s attributes. Whether or not you’ve taken down your drawers at the neighbors daytime BBQ and shown them just how wild this hefty middle aged lass really was back in her day? Or vented vile words for hours in the darkness at your husband in his bedroom, sounding much like you’d taken a holiday to earth from the bowels of Hell? Or listened to the same goth song over and over and over again for hours while bawling into your nail bitten hands about something you cannot recall now? All too aware of your squandered talents. And this is making it sound almost funny but it sure wasn’t so at the time? Nor is it now, either.

The hallucinations, paranoias, the near-betrayals, the deep aching loneliness, the “almosts”; words and actions you shudder to remember, pushing them off into the dusty gray spiderweb filled corners of your mind. Until the next time you think of them.

You say you won’t on Fridays. Then you do on Fridays. You think ok, well I will keep it to 2, definitely only 2. And you drink 3 and have to grit your teeth against 4. Though you don’t want any of them really, you just want to release because being you is stressful being alive is grinding and you cannot fix it. Then you find yourself drinking the vanilla extract, again. I mean really…seriously? You can go to the store and get a proper beverage, but you are hiding, hiding, so drink vanilla extract in secret sips. Like a mental case. Guess you are a mental case. But you still are trying to ride this train and hope upon hope that you can keep it in check and that it won’t get worse.

I have found, after much personal study, that which maybe other people have known throughout history, but I’d never seen written out anyplace: You cannot try to control it to the point of no longer being able to control it. Somethings we try to focus on SO HARD, to control SO much that we end up actually losing control and losing focus and it just becomes a blur. The only way to actually control the thing is to let it go completely. Relationships, emotions, cats, housework…I can see it’s application in so many areas, including life itself I guess.

I think this is the impetus for “drop the rock” in AA or “holding a balloon underwater” in therapy and so forth. But never have I seen it so clearly than as in the last 5 years of my own life. That I must just drop it – the “surrender” of AA has it again, but it’s a little different than that still, as someone who tries to “keep the thing” in her life, way past its usefulness, if it ever even had one. Drop it, let it go, it means NOTHING actually.

And it’s bad enough already. And was bad enough. And will always be.

You are already there at the place you were running from, running fast, through reaching bare branches, right into those howling winter woods, the moon silent, washed cold from winds. You were running pretty fast, to stay in that same place. Weren’t you.

a feathered thing

My sobriety is a treasured thing to me, but one I have let go of, over and over again.

It is a feathered thing, one I wish to hold gently in my hands, peer down onto and smile, whisper to and allow to breathe, fly, not be suffocated or squeezed, like my chest this morning, awake again since midnight. Tossing turning, frustrated, heavy. Knowing it’s not just the alcohol now and again, when I can no longer “stand it anymore and need something”, because I am miserable sour, literally pursing my lips all day long and clenching my jaw. Resentment and disappointment in myself, dread and worry, just from being alive, as myself.  Feeling as though everyone else is living their best life, fulfilling their dreams, except me. I’m just a piece of shit, ineffectual in my own life. No matter where I go or what I do, I’m still the same overweight, failed, pathetic, depressed, piece of shit.

I will go months without any alcohol and then feel my inner wires getting tighter and tighter and tighter. Last week I was treading water in rough waves on a sunny beach afternoon. A few moments to myself from myself. Other people laughing and sunning and vacationing.

And all I could think of was “Would I drink? No. I shouldn’t. But why not? I know why not. Then why am I thinking about this? Still. Again. Why can’t I just stop this constant thinking.. why..”

And days go by…living what feels like a loveless meaningless life, one lived by a monk, a monk who doesn’t want to be a monk and resents it. Stares off into distant horizons while everyone else in the monastery is at vespers (do monks do vespers? I don’t know). Snaps and snarls at the townspeople and tries to hide his head in his robes, without drawing attention to himself. Not allowed to punch the monastery walls or even speak his upset, he goes off now and again and tries to get lost in the snow, but cowardice keeps him returning to the monastery gates, though he hates himself for it. Hates the beans at dinnertime. Hates the repetition that does not feel soothing so much as a cage of time to exist in. Sun up to sun down.

And it’s not just the alcohol, of course not. And time is running out.

I see my sobriety as a feathered thing. A good thing. My sobriety has flown away again, since I am not a proper steward of it. I try. So hard. And I add and subtract ways, routines, diets oh excuse me LIFESTYLES, activity, words, books, tools for my toolbox (seriously, if I hear that term one. more. time.). But always end up just hearing its little tweeting song, far off, far away from me. Going to the people I see all the time online (not at all in real life, not EVER), who are happy, living their best lives, SOLID in their sobriety, time stacked up and banded and cataloged. Living the dream “it’s hard guys but I’m still doing it and still #grateful” (inner screaming) Filed into year 1, year 2, year 3 etc. I am glad for them of course but always reflect, that I could have had over 4 years by now, if I’d held my bird since I started this blog.

But I haven’t and I don’t have that time to reflect positively onto. All I have is the knowledge that I could have done so much better, but for some reason, that “doing better” keeps being done by other people. All the others. Not me.