12:09 pm
No Motivation, The Right to Refuse to Say I’m Sorry, Turning It Off–these are titles of posts I never sent (posted) this weekend. GAH. Obvs, I haven’t been feeling that well.
But you know what? I don’t have to feel great, or feel “more like myself,” (because I feel less like myself than ever before), or be bouncing off the walls. All I have to be is sober! I can spend entire days drinking Coke Zero and weeping and holding on to my sobriety with a death grip–it all means something, and it’s all teaching me something about myself. Which is, drinking most likely simply exacerbated existing mental and emotional (are they different?) problems, not caused them. I hold a lot of rigid ideas about what I “should” and “shouldn’t” be doing, which exacerbates my stuck-ness. The best I’ve ever felt is when I said, Fuck it, and went and volunteered for a few months doing manual labor in a foreign country. All these things relate to work, which for me, relates strongly to both self-validation and creativity, which ultimately relates to mortality. Maybe I think too much and do too little?
On Saturday night, I felt the same way–out of control and volatile, emotionally–sober as I have often felt drunk. The EXACT SAME WAY. And, it scared me. It was eye-opening, too, in that, like I said, I thought that booze caused this in me; I never could have imagined let alone believed that it already existed, in a certain form. Obviously, it wasn’t as severe, but the feelings, the go-to reactions were of someone deeply not at peace. Thankfully, it’s over, and I feel better today. (I even had to “save to draft” a few emails and such because they were SO out-of-control angry.)
I tried to write (fail), I tried to read (fail), I watched “Sex and the City” the movie and “Devil Wears Prada.” I tried to go running and realized that due to PMS, my sciatica flaring was making that impossible. I cried over the fact that I am no longer…of the era, as it were; that I may have expired. My time in cold East Coast city–my ERA there–is over. “Kids” in their late 20s and early 30s now rule the roost. This is a hard fact (misinformed opinion?) to acknowledge. I downloaded some sample books to my Kindle, which made me feel a bit better, put the Coke Zero away, and somewhat successfully pressed some of those written words through the meat processor that was my brain. And then, the curtain came down, and I simply quit and went to bed.
“Quitting and going to bed” is not my style, but maybe, just maybe, it HAS to be from now on. Just like opening myself up to new career paths. A few years ago, the counselor I was seeing told me that I didn’t have to continue the pattern of workaholism in my family, which my dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather passed down to me and my brothers (I see it in all three of us now). That I could change the course of my “destiny.” She saw the pattern, of my drinking being one tool I use to protect myself from the fact that I was simply repeating what my dad had done his whole life: working himself to the bone as a way to scratch an itch, sure, but also and mostly, as a way to please and/or impress his father, and grandfather. Now, I have a choice whether to live out that same sort of life/lifestyle. I have a choice, which I can make. Do I feel ambivalent, and guilty, and afraid? Sure as fuck I do! Can I also choose to feel all these things, not drink, not work (sometimes), and go to bed anyway? Sure as fuck I can!
On that note, I am going to sign off. I’ll get to all those posts soon, although sometimes in this forum I start to feel like the wet blanket. Sobriety isn’t easy, though, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I hope everyone is having a great day and believe me, if you want to drink, like really really really want to? Don’t. Don’t give in! You can do this, just like little old hurting me. (If *I* can do this, anyone can!)
Drunky Drunk Girl 
No, it’s not always easy. It is worth it though, isn’t it? I’ve yet to experience a pink cloud but I’ve decided that diving into bed and under the covers is my version of one, especially when I’m having one of those days or a string of them. You’re sounding better DDG!
Of course, it’s worth it. At this point, drinking is what it is: a quick fix to a deeper problem, that of life! LOL I sometimes think we take drinking/not drinking WAY too seriously; yes, it’s going to hurt us if we drink like we used to/again, but no, it’s not going to kill *most* of us. It just isn’t. We might slip, but we’ll come back, most of us, knowing that drinking solves nothing and just makes us feel sick!
What will kill us, though, is NOT confronting the bad downs, because they are most instructive. Listening to ourselves, our needs, and being open and honest to receiving our own true wisdom. As a journalist, I’ve done my fair share of listening to other people and their stories, advice, and often, partial take on the world. I am LOVING, at last, looking within. No, it’s not easy, but yes, it is worth it.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you are staying strong, too. HUGS.
Listen. I did it and I did it because others had done it and you’ll do it too.
It’s not easy, lady. It’s hard.
Know what I told myself, over and over, when I had those tough days?? I actually quoted something from ‘A League of Their Own’ (yes, really!) over and over. And over.
Here it is:
“The hard is what makes it great.”