12:54 pm
Every day’s a good day when you’re not hung over.
This morning, I was up at 8. I went for a run, walked the dogs, made a pot of coffee, and then, video-chatted with an apartment in the big city–where I’ll be headed for a month to enjoy, earn, and hopefully, plan for a future with *more* enjoyment and *more* earnings than I have now.
NONE of this would be happening if I was still drinking.
I look at drinking as a bad habit now. I don’t have time for it, literally. I would like to have a glass of wine, but…I’m not even sure I won’t be hung over after ONE glass. So, I choose to not go there. That’s where it’s at for me. I don’t yearn for the days when doing everything I did this morning was NOT EVEN ON MY RADAR. I don’t long for feeling like shit, being treated even worse, and wallowing in anxiety and depression caused by alcohol, imbalance, and lack of perspective and priorities. I don’t. At all. I saw a trashed Heineken bottle in the grass as I passed with the dogs and was like, Oh. I have come to see drinking as something that I could do, but don’t. I don’t. I choose not to.
It’s great to be in this place, where it definitely feels as simple as a choice to NOT be drunk, to NOT waste the night, to NOT feel utterly ill the next day, to NOT be enslaved to this idea that altering my mind is going to make me feel better, calmer, happier, or zoned out. Yes, I want to feel calmer, and happier, and sometimes I want to zone and forget about the unresolved issues (my brother is still in that category, and it grates); but, I know that there are solutions to these problems that are not booze, and that actually work to solve them.
It’s clear now: drinking is not a solution. Drinking is the problem. For many more of us, drinking is a manifestation of deeper, unmet needs–problems, or just issues that need to be resolved.
This is why I keep staying sober. I would not be here–and would not be able to plan ahead and make long-term goals happen–if I was still using up the majority of my free head space thinking about drinking.
More later, friends. Just checking in. I’m off to a pool party; I made a lemon meringue pie, but I dropped the store-bought crust so had to improvise with a quickie made from scratch. We’ll see… 🙂
Drunky Drunk Girl 