Wow! Hi Blogger world - It's been a Loooooong time since I have put my thoughts down. Documented. Journaled. Years in fact. What have I been doing?
Well, I am not sure yet, with this post, if I will fill in all the blanks of the last 3 years, but possibly some here and there. Mostly, i just thought it time to clear my thoughts out of my head. Put them down in writing to make sense of them. No, not make sense. To document. Blogging has always been more of a documentation for me of events and thoughts to keep things straight. The inside view of what is happening. The other side of the story to what shows on the outside for the actions that are. There are always 2 sides to every story right? 2 sides to our own stories even. How we show people on the outside and then the thoughts that propel us to do, or say what we say. So does that mean there are actually 4 sides to every story?
Today, the purpose of this post is to say I have made it to 18 days sober.
18 days. This is a big deal!
When I started blogging, years ago. What, maybe 15+ years ago. I was a sober, sober girl. Didn't have a drop for 5 years. Not even so much as a liquor chocolate. Then, late summer of 2005, Mr. Big and I split for the last time for good. I had left a job that I LOVED, early that summer, because my boss wouldn't pay me 10bux and hour. Fuck, 10bux and hour - not too much to ask. Hard to imagine settling for that now. For Frig's sake! that's less that minimum wage in 2017!!!! I Got in to a sales job, selling cell phones, that I was totally not equipped for at all .......... 2005-2006 ........ i think i had my first drink at Christmas time 2005 ...... hmmmm ...... after writing down that time line I can see why I picked up the glass of wine. Actually, it was Southern Comfort. After 5+ years, months shy of the 6 year mark sober, I poured Southern Comfort in to one of my fancy liquor glass ..... Really only a couple of catalyst things to push me over the edge 2005 -
and for all of 2006 - i fell. I fell, I crashed, I exploded. At that mess trickled in to 2007 and a little bit in to 2008.....
If 2005 could have seen in to the future ........ Maybe my 2006 breakdown wouldn't have happened? ...... who am I kidding. That still would have happened. 7 years of doing it on my own. Raising a daughter alone. Keeping a roof over our heads. Doing it all - by myself - over worked for minimum wage - the world on my shoulders - all the while feeling so, so lonely ....... that path of bad choices to the ultimate 2006 breakdown was written in the stars. There was no way I could have ever avoided that cocktail of drama and then the chaotic choices that followed in 2007 ........
Fast forward to now. April 30, 2017. Sober for 18 days.
Here is a piece of honesty that I am going to share. It's a tough on to admit out loud, let alone to read on the screen. Let's see if I can do it .....
The longest I have been sober, in the last 11 years is 5 weeks - give or take a day. 5 weeks.
That's in a row days of Not having a beverage.
Beverage. This is what I refer to as drinking things with alcohol in them. Somehow it helps in my head. It helps me justify the wine glass in my hand. I hate the phrase, 'are you drinking?' Or 'you are drinking tonight?' Or 'Stop Drinking!!!!' when it is yelled to you, in your face, by the reason you stopped so many years ago. The phrase, the word, holds shame for me - that phrase can give me power as quickly as it can take it away - that word makes me hold myself accountable and until recently - that phrase would cause me to justify holding that glass tighter.
So yes. Beverage Free for 18 days. I Tonic. I tonic in a wine glass with a slice of lemon or lime or fuck it, just put the whole damn thing in the glass!
When was this 5 weeks. This last time? 2015. February 2015. We had been in The Manor since Canada day of 2014. I felt the door on beveraging close and I went with it. I stopped at the end of January. Started project after project. My non-beveraging came right in line with a cancer promotion for a beverage free February to raise money. I followed thru. I raised money. I also started to lose my mind. The house was chaos. We were still moving in - still adjusting to this house we had bought. Still carrying the mortgage and bills from the mobile. As I did my best to make this house a home I was juggling a new job, a tiny kitchen, a house without closets ........ i was doing my best to organize and find some order. I was fighting an uphill battle with a teenage daughter that was learning a new school, trying to make new friends, getting her first boyfriend. A husband that was definitely not on the same page as I was trying to live in this space. Right after we moved in - his sister and brother in law from England, came to visit with us and stay for a week. September 2014. It was only a week, but it seemed to last forever. We were still moving in. We were still moving things from the old house ....... and I had to be a hostess ...... I did what any hostess would do - I threw a party! We had family and friends over nearly every day that week. Not only to visit with the English, but to show off our new home. The yard was a mess - we were still in boxes - and we were beyond broke. But, I justified the party's and paying for the party's and entertaining, going further and further in to debt to show everyone - the world - how happy we were, I was, to be in a new home. To have moved forward .............
Christmas passed. 2015 came and I hid in project after project ....... got sober .... at least I tried.
It became clear that my life and the life I had created since getting married, was out of my control. My daughter was doing normal teenage daughter stuff. Going thru everything she was supposed to. My husband was doing the complete opposite of what I was doing. I felt like he was fighting me at every turn. I just wanted to get the house to a place of organize. Being sober reminded me that I am actually very OCD - he is not. I couldn't wait for February to be over. Till the fund raising for not drinking was done - March 1st - I stayed drunk, numb for days. Who needs to do all these projects anyways ....
