New world

• Remembering to wash my face and brush my teeth before going to bed.
• Not waking up at two or three AM with a racing heart, a throbbing head wondering if I had been an absolute bitch to my husband the previous night.
• Waking up at three in the morning only because I have to pee (feeling just fine, thankyouverymuch!) and then being able to get right back to sleep once I get back in bed.
• Going to bed early to read and play on my phone, sipping tea and relaxing.
• Eating dinner at a decent hour with my husband while laughing at an episode of Bob’s Burgers and remembering every detail.
• The fact that my husband seems so pleased and happy right now even though he has always sworn that my drinking didn’t “really” bother him.
• The fact that I’ve lost five pounds in as many days.
• Knowing that I’m not going to dread social events (an evening movie date with my husband mid week for example) because they are cutting into my very valuable drinking time.
• Feeling rested, actually rested when I get up in the morning.
• Knowing that there will be more to my evenings eventually (now that my trial run is coming to it’s completion) than drinking, watching youtube videos and playing facebook video games.
• The knowledge that if a friend called and said they needed me, I could jump in my car and go see them no matter what the hour.
• Having my husband let me help him film his hobby (it’s over tough terrain and he normally wouldn’t “trust” me – for good reason) for the first time.

And quite possibly the most important:

• Feeling so much less anxiety and general sense of fear about everything.

These are just a few things off the top of my head that I have truly enjoyed feeling and knowing since Monday when I stopped drinking vodka.

It’s so bizarre to me that it’s really only been five days.

Last night I got out of work super early, around one in the afternoon.  On a Friday that is normally a reason to start right in on the drinks, especially since my hubs was already home as he worked from home yesterday.

I got home and decided to lay in bed for a bit and think.  I wasn’t really stressed, but my mind was saying “GO DRINK!!!” while my body was saying “Nah bro, we got this.”  To make more sense of this, I wanted to drink because it is what I have always done for the last 20 years.  My mind was just tuned into it.  “It’s what we do!!!  Especially since it’s Friday!”  However, my body was kind of put off at the thought of drinking vodka like normal.

I mean, I had actively kind of given myself permission to do it if I really felt the need but I didn’t.  In fact, when I thought about drinking vodka, my body kind of gave a disturbed shudder.

This is kind of how I’ve felt about my normal drinking for the last couple of weeks, but I kept going anyway.

I know.  It’s so stupid.  Why would I continue to drink when it isn’t even what my body wants??  A twenty plus year habit?  Like, it’s all I’ve known for the last two decades so I just go on auto pilot.  But I was sick of it.  Sick of the taste, sick of the way it made me feel, sick of being a fucking slave to it for so long, but I couldn’t let it go.

Fast forward to last weekend.  I was feeling that very feeling every single time I took a shot.  I knew that I had a trip coming up to get my mothers ashes and that would be stressful enough without the added hangxiety of my drinking.  To top it off, this month is the anniversary of her death last year and I have been crying at the drop of a hat.  For some reason, I had had enough.

I let the thoughts that usually swirl in my head and I bat away, come to fruition.  I don’t want to live this way any longer.  It hurts, in so many more ways that one.

That is what started prior to Monday…and I’m so glad it did.

I will make a part two to this because my husband is calling me to watch a movie and I am happy to do so…