5:46 pm
Yup, 30 days as of today. And no intention of going back to drinkin’ or letting up my vigilance.
I am, however, getting REAL tired of being tired. WTF? I think I’m ill, but I’m not sure if it’s general fatigue (am I officially getting “old?”), a flu, or long-range detox. I just want to feel better, and not have to crash out for several hours after a 90-minute yoga class or a 60-minute jog in the park. Jesus. Good thing I’m not working; in fact, I can’t imagine having the energy to work at the moment. Durr.
Speaking of which, I’ve worked my ass off for almost the past 25 years of my life, 15+ of which were, like, grueling. I helped start one, two, three, four companies; I worked in Silicon Valley for a total of, let’s see, six or something years, making anywhere from a 75-minute to three-fucking-hour commute ONE WAY every day by car or train; I went back to grad school at Columbia for journalism. Shit, no wonder I’m tired, no wonder I don’t want to work, and you know what, fuck that, I HAVE DONE SOME SHIT in my life so why am I beating myself up? Why am I making it seem, in my head and on my blog, that I haven’t?
I realized, for the umpteenth time today during my bikram yoga class, that I am WAY too hard on myself. I judge myself to a ridiculous degree, getting down on this and that, comparing myself to others all too often. We all do, but instead of droplets of comparing-self-judgment-type-thoughts, or a stream, mine can basically be represented by an ocean: my brain is literally submerged in a bath of self-criticism. For instance, I have slightly hunched shoulders. I have had this ever since I was in high school due to, what the fuck else, hunching over all the time studying! I’m not joking. My mother would watch me, day in and day out, study from about 9 at night after I got home from school (yes, I was THAT student who also had to be in the band, the play, all the sports, etc. etc. etc.) until 2 in the morning; often, she’d come over and peel my shoulders and chest back, up off my books and papers, straightening them out with effort as if they had been compressed by one of those machines that flatten junkyard cars. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but later on, I saw the effects: permanently hunched shoulders that have taken years to start to correct (one of the reasons I do things like bikram yoga and other spine-strengthening activities). Still, they’re not like most people’s, so when I look around the room at others doing this one particular asana where we have to reach our arms up and clasp hands, pointing them toward the ceiling as we hold our hands in prayer, I am constantly demoralized. Why? Because it feels and looks so much harder for me. Yet, must I beat myself up? No. But I do.
We all do this, but I realize that part of my “issue” with drinking is that I am very hard on myself when it comes to anything and everything involving goals — quitting drinking ABSOLUTELY has not been easy to accept, as I know myself and how I react to goals. BUT, at the same time, I don’t see any other way to get sober at the moment, and that is the overriding goal. So, today, on my 30th day of sobriety, I am content. Not happy, since HELLS YES, I’d love to be drinking to my sobriety with a chilled glass of red instead of ruminating on all this shit; but, CONTENT. And that feels better than the up (and eventual down) of “happy.” Cheers (I’m lifting my seltzer with a twist of lime) to me!
Drunky Drunk Girl 