The other side...

Since my last post there has been a Cubs win for the ages and a electoral loss that has thrown the country into the 5th circle of Hell.  I fear we are headed for the 7th.  And so for the last week I have warred within myself, feelings of hope vs. feelings of rage and despair.  

I am so very angry with half of my countrymen, so desperate for change that they willfully ignored monstrous, hateful, bigoted, painfully small minded rhetoric.  How....HOW does that petulant, poorly spoken fool make sense to anyone?  How does his puritanical running mate bring a sense of country and correctness to half of my fellow citizens?  I am stunned by the scope of the hate in my beloved America, I knew it was there, I had no idea of the scope and the strength of it.

I have read the posts begging me to reach out to those who oppose my views in order to find common ground.  I have also read the posts of those who are having none of that and are ready to tear the other side down.  I do not know where I fit, I cannot fathom the mind of the Trump voter and right this moment I do not want to.  But I refuse to rage wildly either as it is now, more than ever, very important to be clear and be steady.

I will find my way, I am just not there yet.  I truly hate that man all the way through.  He is the antithesis of all that I am and of all that I thought my country was made of.  It actually hurts, this actually hurts.  So I will grieve a bit longer, but not much longer - because I sense that there is no time to waste...

Peanut butter

So I realized today that if I decide to have peanut butter on a spoon right out of the jar that I cannot stop with just one spoonful.  Even if I close the jar back up, I open it and have more every time.  It is the same with chips and salsa, whatever is put out, I am pretty much guaranteed to finish it.  But then I can go days and days without thinking of peanut butter at all.

And now that I am thinking about it, I have been that way in relationships.  If I hone in on somebody, if I decide that I want to be on their radar, then I go too hard.  I give up too much to 'make them want/like me'.  I want them to need me, and then if they openly tell me that they do need me, I feel put out.  Overwhelmed and irritated by the 'need'.

OR, I twist and bend myself into a pretzel to be the person I think they want me to be.  Then after a time I despise them for not seeing the real me.  Whoever that is...

Thoughts to ponder, eh?

How do people stay sober in an election year?

That's it, that is all I have to ponder today.  It would seem that to have a fighting chance for sobriety I need to tune out of of this year's election and it's endless parade of horrors.  What a clusterfuck that is, eh?

Just.  Fuck.

I was going to shut this down...

I fell apart two days ago on Day 19.  Yep.  Just a few days ago I wrote about how I was rolling right along, feeling like I got this shit handled, and two days later there was a nice bender.  Really nice.  So good that I am still feeling a bit hungover today....48 hours later.  So here I sit with my shame, wondering how stupid I looked and acted at the party I went to on Saturday night.  Wondering how poisoned I was to still feel so shitty today.  All sorts of regret, because I was so close to 20 days!

Lets think back to yesterday morning.  Day 1 (for probably the 50th time).  Woke up at 4 AM, still drunk and feeling horrendous.  Crawled out to the couch to watch TV, had some water, fought the urge to vomit (repeat for the next 3 hours).  Realized I needed some aspirin and that in order to keep it down I needed to eat something.  Had the aspirin with a small glass of kefir and spent the next two hours fighting the urge to vomit and was still afflicted with a nasty headache.  Add in the wretched, sour rummy taste in my mouth and the wretched sour mess I made in the bathroom and I looked and felt about as pretty as 5 day old roadkill in July.  Need I mention the depression, and the achy body and the lost time as I whiled away 15 hours of a beautiful Sunday laying on the couch and watching Golden Girls reruns?

Don't get me wrong, I love the Golden Girls - but laying on the couch in misery due to self inflicted rum flu for an entire gorgeous sunny day on earth is fucked up.  It just is.

I am beginning to get very, very scared because it seems that every time I get some momentum going, and then succomb to the booze again the bender is a little worse.  And I don't want to die some sort of John Bonham, Janis Joplin type of death.  I am genuinely scared of myself.  The drunk is reckless and greedy and she does not give a shit about sober me at all.

Oh yeah, and what set me off on Saturday?  What was the last straw on my sober camel's back?  Fleas.  The dog groomer called to let me know that my beloved dog had fleas and I lost it.   Spiraled out like the Tazmanian Devil.  Yesterday, as I wallowed in self-loathing I decided I was going to shut this blog down,  I kept thinking, "How humiliating to have to write about yet another Day 2, it would be too much!!"  But I have to start really looking at myself, I have to see what I really am.  And deleting the past is impossible anyway - I can shut down the blog but the events remain fact.   Maybe that can be a new tool, I will look at this whole thing every couple of days to remember what I don't want to write about any more.

So Day 2.  AGAIN.  Fucking hate this....

I hope this isn't the 'real' me yet.

So here I am at Day 16.  A full fortnight of sobriety under my belt and here is what I know so far:

1)  I feel like I totally got this schizle handled....right up until I don't.  Seriously, I am fine so long as there are no bumps in the road, and I am still no expert in preventive bump identification.  But so far, when I DO hit them I have been able to stop myself long enough to listen to a podcast. or read a sober blog, or to administer a piece of chocolate or an olive or a shot of chocolate milk, etc.  So far.
2)  I am having to say no to a LOT of things.  No more Facebook, CNN or New Yorker (esp. with this m-f'ing election in full swing).  No going to certain restaurants where I always had a mai-tai, or vodka cranberry or Captain n'diet.  Never Captain n'diet.  Never.  Just NO.  No concerts, no parties, no brunch anywhere I have ever had brunch before (because of the shady little mimosas- sneaky little bastards).  In addition there are a couple of friends I will be avoiding for at least another month.
3)  Boyfriend drinks a lot more than I realized.  This is readily apparent over the last week and it is extremely troubling.
4)  When I subtract my drinking friends from my friend total, I have very few friends.  Oddly, I am ok with this, I truly am.  Why is that?  Well, I think it is because it is going to take a while for the 'real' me to show up.  I am very excited to find out who she is, but I also know that this process is going to take a while.  I left 'real' me behind waaaaay back in high school, when I decided to become some twisted version of a chameleon.  A girl who would go to any lengths, bottle up any unwelcome emotion/reaction/opinion, twist herself up into any shape necessary to stay invisible and avoid conflict.  A girl who would happily trade self for affection.
5)  All TV shows from this decade have their characters walking through life with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer in their hand.  WTF?  How did I never notice this?
6)  It is too early to look back at all of the many, many, many mistakes and what-ifs of my life with alcohol.  Looking back at past behavior, incidents, disasters is akin to looking directly into the sun.  It burns and I know that if I contemplate all of that now, I will get a wicked case of the fuck-its.  The only way to look right now is forward, what's next, what can I contribute now?  And most importantly:  how long until I can go to bed and get to Day 17?

This is hard, but I want it more than anything.  So fuck how hard it is and do it anyway.

Two weeks down and I feel like a raw nerve.

So here I am on Day 14.  I made it through the weekend, I even got a lot done.  (I followed some sober advice from Belle and cleaned out 2 closets and went through some giant rubbermaids full of crap and donated a bunch of said crap to Savers.)  While I was doing all of that I was ok, and while I was working out I was ok.  All of the rest of the time I continued to be the Raging Bitch of the Morning from Friday whom I shall now re-name the Raging Bitch of Early Sobriety.  This morning I was in a fantastically horrid mood and took it out on my boyfriend, my dogs (who thankfully do not speak english) and anyone who had the audacity to be on the roads between 7:15AM and 8:00 AM.

To be brief, I hate this.  I hate this and I want it to stop.  I am not sure what 'this' is, and I am not really looking to drink, at least not this very second, so I have no idea what to do.  I am just so very uncomfortable.  I had a lunch date with a couple of friends yesterday.  They are running friends, so they don't drink much and they have never seen me in my fully f'ed up glory.  My running friends and my drinking friends are separate you see...   Anyhoo, the restaurant they chose does not serve alcohol.  So this should have been a fun, low stress adventure.  But I spent most of the morning being angry that I HAD to go to this lunch, I mean I was straight up put out!  How dare these women impose such restrictions on my time? Right?

See!  Raging Bitch of Early Sobriety (see also:  Ungrateful Barely Sober Bitch).

There has to be something that is scaring me, because that is where most emotional discomfort comes from, right?  So what am I so afraid of?  Or is this really just Me without alcohol?    YIKES.

Ok, well.  There are about 3-1/2 hours to go before I can go to bed (even then there will be comments from boyfriend).  I can do this.  I have to do this, and maybe Day 15 is the Day of Feeling Better.....?

Greetings from Day 11...

So far today is irritating.  I was irritated that my alarm went off, irritated that my boyfriend took forever to get out the door and we did not get to the gym before 6 AM (why get up at 4:50 if we are not going to leave the house until 5:50??), irritated that the guy in the Cadillac tailgated me for 2 miles because he felt I pulled out in front of him, irritated that all of the TV's at the gym had the Tangerine Menace front and center, irritated with Jimmy Fallon for rubbing the Tangerine Menace's hair and then acting like the douchebag was some sort of good sport for allowing it.....

You get the idea - today I was back to the Raging Bitch of the Mornin' I mentioned a couple of days ago.

But then I remembered that I had a podcast from Belle about 'irritation' to listen to, and so I did.  Now I am still all crunchy, but with the knowledge that my current status is normal for someone who has given up her bestest and favorite-est coping mechanism for 100 days, and who still has 88 days to go.   Thank you as ever Belle for being out there, you have helped more than I can express.

So yeah, 7 hours left of work, followed by a game of cards with boyfriend's family.  Not sure about that last part, I may have to bow out because cards = drinking.  There will be special get-together cocktails, there always are, and I don't think I can be there tonight.  I will decide later this afternoon because right now I am just irritated.

Did I mention my high level of irritation?     GAH!