3:37 pm
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but with draft posts titled “Feeling like crap,” “Pangs heard around the world,” and “Where am I?,” I figured I would let whatever this is pass, continue to solider on, and spare you my annoying diatribe(s).
I’m still sober, going on a day after 18 weeks today. But, the other day when I looked at the calendar and it read February 12th, I thought, Wait, I’m ONLY at 4 months? So, how can I also be at 18 weeks, which would be 4 months…PLUS 2 weeks. Um, hello? That PLUS 2 weeks is kind of huge. Le sigh.
I’ve really wanted to drink the past several weeks, but I haven’t. I feel quite practiced at saying no through most of my pangs, cravings, and “thought ditches”…until PMS rears its ugly head. The past week has been bad–sometimes I wonder if it isn’t something in my new environment that is messing up my hormones. I literally felt hung over the other morning, as if I was coming down WAY TOO FAST off a “good” drug–crashing. However, it wasn’t a drug, it was my own internal chemical fluctuations which were off schedule and which, instead of letting me down easy, came to a screeching halt a week early. Hmm. I know it sounds a bit melodramatic, but when I was drinking, I really hit the wine hard when I was PMSing; and, I know it’s difficult to believe, more often than not I never connected the two until after the fact. Duh. Every month it became, Oh, shit, no WONDER I felt so horrible, drank so much, and could SO not even deal with the booze (I always blacked out hard when I was PMSing). Now, I’m hyper-aware of the fluctuations because I can feel every single one of them.
It’s not that life has been bad, at all; I’m grateful that work and dinners and walks, days and nights and everything, well, has been passing smoothly. Sure, there are moments (nightly, lately) when I find myself saying to myself, Do I really need to stay sober, like Sober Sober, anymore? Aren’t I healed? Hasn’t this 24-7 sobriety shit gone on long enough?! I need a BREAK! Just one glass…
I had major pangs last night, which sort of took me off guard. I felt a little bit like crying inside when I looked at the menu and realized that once again–even at a nice restaurant on a nice Valentine’s Day date with my nice manz–I can’t have wine. Not even one glass. And to make it worse? I end up ordering yet another Diet Coke, which I have to say, did not go so well with the pasta. The good news is that I did muster the sense to realize that I wouldn’t really enjoy the wine because I’d be thinking of the next glass, and the next, and the next. It’d be more of an annoyance than…whatever I’m imagining it’s going to be.
What’s the point? The point is, I’ve learned that even IF I want to drink, NO GOOD CAN COME if I do it when I really want to. Because, when I really want to is always when I’m feeling really bad. My strategy is to wait: until tomorrow, until the next project, until the race, until this or that or the other. And, if I wait–even a night–most likely I’m going to feel both happier and less desperate the next day, at which point, even if I drank it’d much likely be a better outcome than if I drank when I was in that desperate state of mind.
Anyway, it’s Friday! And I haven’t even started my work. Wah wah. Catch y’all later!
Drunky Drunk Girl 