Working In Hell

So after my last post, I learned that a long term employee called out with what we were told she thought was allergies, was laid off after she told the employer that she didn’t feel safe coming back to work after the skeleton crew and social distancing went to hell. 

Just to drive that point home; she was laid off after telling her employer that she didn’t feel safe coming back to work because they were not providing the essential worker guidelines that were required for our business to continue to function.

Tonight I found out that one of our employees that called out for a half a week with a cough, tried to call out one more day – stating she still had a cough and was told: “Well, we really need you, but I guess it’s okay if you don’t feel good enough to come in” full well knowing she can’t get tested for the virus around here and we HAD BEEN TOLD NOT TO COME IN IF WE FEEL SICK.

The last thing I learned was that someone (I wasn’t told who do to privacy and safety reasons) reported us as not complying with the 6 foot rules and such that an essential business is supposed to follow.
They were told by OSHA that they are far too overwhelmed to deal with something like that and unless someone is in critical danger, they can’t do anything.

I’m so fucking over this. NO ONE CARES if we live or die.

I’m so sad that I need a paycheck, or I would ghost these fuckers so fast they would…well, they wouldn’t even care…let’s be honest.

Update

Thanks to a comment from Dwight, I decided to update. I am so grateful for him checking in with me even if I don’t have good news to report…

Life is very scary right now. I’m not sober. I’m a hypochondriac working an “essential” job that has to go into work everyday. When it all first came down we were shut down for a whole day and then implemented a skeleton crew where our shifts worked every other day so we could maintain the six foot rule. That lasted exactly a week when they decided “Ef that, we don’t’ really care about our employees, we care about making money so let’s just scrap the whole thing and bring everyone in.” At least that is how I feel. If I survive this whole thing, I will be looking for another place of employment because after 14 years they showed me how truly little they care about our safety and well being.

We had an employee that I worked closely with recently, have to quarantine because her husband was told he worked with someone that tested positive. They cannot get tested because they don’t have high fevers, though they are showing all the other symptoms.

Everyone at my work is coughing and I know that it is allergy season but it is driving me out of my mind.

Because of so many people calling out (BECAUSE THEY FEEL SICK) I have been moved to the reception desk, as that is where I trained so many years ago and I am able to do the web work I do at that desk. Because it is reception, I have to have someone (one of the biggest coughers in our office) relieve me for breaks and lunches. I have learned to hold my pee like nobodies business! I refuse to take more breaks than I need to.

When I come back from my breaks I sanitize every surface including my mouse, mousepad and keyboard because she can’t help but touch all my stuff and pray for the best.

The problem is that we are going to be running out of sanitizing supplies soon at work. I don’t know what to do when that happens. Everyone is taking a very non-nonchalant attitude about everything and it is making me a lot crazy.

My husband has been lucky enough to work from home but I am so afraid of bringing this home to him as he has a heart condition and is one of the people they deem compromised.

Before you ask if I can confront anyone on this, please know that I have PTSD and I cannot confront anyone – especially my boss that reminds me of my abuser in so many ways it isn’t funny. I have been asked on so many levels why I can’t just tell them that I don’t feel comfortable – but they don’t understand the fear based environment that I have worked in for so many years. 

So yes, I’m still drinking. I feel like it is reaching a head soon. I don’t want to do it and my booze-brain keeps telling me that it is the only thing keeping me sane.

I know that I will feel much less stressed if I lay off, but I can’t comprehend that right now. There is just too much scary stuff going around in my brain.

Wow, that was a lot.

Still here...

 I bet that title gets written a lot on trying to get sober journals…or at least I hope it does.

I have been struggling every since that stupid trip to LA two weeks ago.

Non-valid excuse after non-valid excuse has been flooding my mind and I have just accepted it like a good alcoholic. 

Clearly, my vodka knows what is better for me than I do.

I’ve not gotten completely snockered every night but I am definitely suffering from the “3 AM pounding heart, regret city, I wish I didn’t do that” party. It’s a stupid party in the harsh light of day and I don’t know why it seems so exclusive and inviting after work…

I have put an end date to it, however ( I hope). 

I have a plan of action in the works to not drink for an indefinite number of days starting Sunday.
I will post more this weekend in anticipation (don’t we always) of my quitting date.

But for now…I am trying to be gentle with myself. I know what I want and I know it wants me back. I will get there.

My Traveling Demon

 

So I guess if there is anything good about “slips” in the journey to get sober is that it teaches me a lot of things about myself if I let it.

So far what I have learned is that I tell myself I want to make sure I am sober the week before any sort of traveling event that will raise my anxiety. The other thing I have learned is that because of that elevating anxiety level before the trip it is super hard to stay sober the last couple of days before the trip.

I did this with Vegas in December and I did this just this week with our theme park trip.
I mean, I blamed it on other factors that really had no merit. For example, on Wednesday my husband said that was our big day to pack because he had to go see his dad the next night and wouldn’t be able to get as much done. 

I reasoned with myself that packing is a BIG THING and I haven’t done it sober in a very long time. It will make it very difficult for me to get to sleep because I will be so ampd up (currently I need to be in bed by like seven on sober nights to make sure I get the proper amount reading and relaxing that I require to drift of to sleep, also this is totally an excuse and I’m sure I could get to sleep just fine after nine but these are the reasons my brain makes so I can have a drink). 

So I drank.

We didn’t pack much on Wednesday so Thursday became my deal to make sure the most of the packing got done because the Hubs was still going to his dad’s that night. I reverted to the excuse from the previous night and drank.

Now, I didn’t get shitfaced both nights and I made sure to kind of keep hydrated and watch my intake so I wasn’t hungover the next day (because also huge stressful days at work Thursday and Friday that helped fuel my drink demon the nights before).

Friday after work we headed off to our hotel.

Hubs always drives because my anxiety doesn’t do well even as a passenger on more than a one lane road. This drive involved a four lane road one way for about an hour before we got to our hotel…this freeway is very twisty and turny and goes about 70 to 80 miles an hour. Knowing this in advance was the reason for my anxiety leading up to this trip. It was every bit as much of a nightmare as I thought it would be so despite my vow not to drink at the hotel that night because we didn’t get there and settle in until nine at night, I drank anyway. My drink demon told me that I was far too freaked out from the drive to fall asleep in any kind of timely fashion and of course I listened.

Again, I didn’t get crazy, but drank for about an hour and made myself go to bed.

Saturday after the 1st theme park all bets were off because I had told myself weeks ago that would be my reward for all the stress of the trip.

So what I have learned is that I will use any excuse when it comes to my anxiety about a traveling event and drinking. I tend to do really well on the couple of weeks leading up to the event but the week of, makes me go into that squirrelly part of my brain that can’t function without a drink to get past the freak out factor. I don’t realize that is the reason at the time…I give myself every excuse in the book to get myself to the bottle but that is the ultimate “excuse” in my brain.

Overall, I felt very disappointed in myself this weekend but I am not trying to beat myself up. The fear on the freeway is REAL for me and there was one moment where I legit felt like I was going to pass out. I know that I probably could have been okay on Friday night with just doing some deep breathing and reading my book but my bottle brain told me I deserved a few drinks for what I had been through.
The good news is that we don’t have another traveling adventure until May at this point and I am going to try and get way more sober days in before that so I can WIN THIS BATTLE!

If I can just keep the sober days going, I will be in a much better place before we have to fly in May and I am hoping it will just all come naturally at that point.

Wow, this is all so rambley, I’m sorry.

Plugging along

 

So I haven’t written in a little bit. And if I’m honest I had a slip on Friday night that led me to not caring on Saturday…but I reigned it back in on Sunday, so there is that.

Friday I was angry most of the afternoon…at stupid stuff. It started with me being angry that my boss was letting everyone go early but me so I walked out a half an hour early anyway.

Then I was pissed off because my husband was having to stay late at work for something that isn’t even part of his job, but he feels obligated to do every single time.

He is in purchasing and shipping and for some weird reason, even though the company has an entire warehouse full of employees for loading and unloading shipments, my husband feels responsible for the trucks because he either ordered them or signed off on them.

This was kind and endearing 13 years ago but now the warehouse totally takes advantage of this and on that Friday night, because the truck was late, they all just LEFT and now my husband had to stay four hours later than normal to load this truck that he isn’t even really supposed to be doing!

I was then pissed off at him for even falling into that trap.

At any rate, an excuse is an excuse and I used that as an excuse to drink.

Saturday, well I fell into the age old reasoning that I had already messed up so I might as well…

Sunday, I listened to the voice of reason and gave it a rest.

I’m not beating myself up about this. I’m still doing way better than I have in so very long.

It’s also a learning process for me now that I have so many sober nights under my belt. Waking up from a blackout used to be the norm for me for like 20 years. Saturday and Sunday morning were no fun. I wasn’t horribly hungover for some reason, but I regretted not having the decompression time I now give myself at night. My time before I go to sleep where I lay in my bed and drink my tea and read my book. That is so soothing to me now as is the slow awakening in the morning, feeling human. Not abruptly waking with a pounding heart and the disoriented feeling of not knowing quite what is going on because I don’t remember going to bed the night before.

I’m still very much a work in progress, but progress is the key word isn’t it?

My husband is trying to do his best by me for the most part. 

Last week my Tuesday and Wednesday were hard for some reason. I found myself crying and angry at the fact that I couldn’t drink. And it wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to drink, it was that I couldn’t if I wanted to … which I didn’t. It was weird.

My husband didn’t understand, but he tried to help in anyway he could. It’s gotta be a really odd experience for him.

At any rate, I am excited to announce that I cooked last night! Like, not just nuked some prepackaged, already cooked meat and some frozen veggies. 

I full on cooked a casserole, making the sauce from scratch. I’m talking stirring up butter, flour and milk to make a roux and everything!

I’ve mentioned before that the kitchen has been one of my nemesis’s in this journey to get sober. It’s where I did most of my drinking and cooking sober has felt like such a trigger to me the last three weeks that I have avoided it as much as I could. If I had to cook it was something easy like the above mentioned precooked meat and veggies or a salad thrown together in a hurry.

So last night, cooking an entire casserole from scratch was a pretty big deal to me and I am quite proud of myself. In fact, I didn’t even think much about it at the time. Hubs was out doing yard work right after we got home and I thought: “Well, if he’s doing that, I should at least get some dinner started.” and looked through the fridge and pantry. 

I just started pulling things out and whipping things into shape and before I knew it, I was cooking! And it wasn’t scary or triggering. I had some sparkling water in my fancy glass like I have been having for awhile now and I just did it. Like a normal person!

This was not something that my husband would have been able to understand, so I kept it to myself. But do me this is a huge accomplishment and yes, I am patting myself on the back. :D 

So that’s my update. I stumbled, but I did not fall too hard. I will probably stumble again, I’m human. But I’m improving and that is what matters to me right now.

Storm clouds ahead…

 

Riding the strugglebus tonight. 

Work is getting hectic and I’m feeling the pressure. It’s just going to get worse as we have to redo almost all of our literature in the near future. And by we I mean pretty much me. Not sure how I secured this graphics/editor position with the paycheck of a call center employee, but lucky me.

I also feel like I’m getting sick. It’s gone all through my office and I’ve been taking all the vitamins and trying my best to avoid it but I’m feeling pretty run down tonight with a scratchy throat. 

Not sure the last time I was sick and I didn’t drink through it to “burn it out” of my system.

Came home and did the treadmill and now I’m really wanting to drink. Blah!

Feeling the grief and loss tonight of not having that outlet.

I’ve given myself another “No drinks til Friday” rule to get me through the week and I intend to stick to it, but tonight is the first night where it’s been really difficult this time around.

I guess I had to know eventually it would catch up to me. I definitely had my head in the pink clouds last week and now here come the storm clouds.

Meh. I might write later, but right now I’m going to go drink some sparkling water and stuff my face.

Ug.

Cheers to not having to hide things.

 

I live in a very small town. 

There is one smallish grocery store seven miles away and a much bigger one about fifteen miles away.

I typically do my shopping at the closer one as they mostly carry everything I need, including my booze. I would usually buy two large bottles of vodka, sometimes three depending on how much I currently had at home.

Being a small store, I knew that all the cashiers pretty much had to know either myself or someone in my household must have a drinking problem but even though I saw them every week, I didn’t KNOW them so I didn’t much care.

However, being a small town there were several times where I would run into neighbors or even friends or friends of friends while I was doing my shopping. I would try to shop at the same day and time every week to avoid anyone because well, it had been working. I think mostly people try to do their shopping on a fairly regular schedule so it mostly worked. I also try and cover the booze once it is in my cart with my reusable shopping bags arranged to look perfectly messy over the bottles laying on their sides.

I know that there is one particular person that lives in my town that shops on Sunday afternoons as I’ve run into him multiple times around the same time when I can’t face the grocery store on Saturdays due to a massive hangover. 

He is not what I would call a friend, but I wouldn’t call him not one either. We have run in the same circles and he has been very good friends with the fiance of one of my very good friends. They all have been in the recovery community together for many years. He has danced in and out of recovery and I don’t know what his current status is and it’s really none of my business…but let’s just say, he has to know all the signs of an alcoholic very well. And well, three bottles of vodka in my cart is not exactly a subtle hint that I might have a problem…

Anyhoo, I ran into him at the grocery store this afternoon as I was mostly done my shopping. I was checking my phone to see if Hubs had texted anything else to pick up and I heard a voice say hi.

I looked up and there he was in front of me. I said hi back and inquired how he was doing as I was quickly looking down at my cart to make sure the booze was hidden and I realized…I wasn’t buying any. There wasn’t any in my cart to give away my secret. Instead of being paranoid that he would find me out, I was able to have a pleasant exchange without having to try and escape at the earliest break in the conversation and then shop even longer though I was done so that he wouldn’t see unload the bottles onto the conveyor belt at the check out (oh yes, I have done this dance before).

It felt SO GOOD! I didn’t have to hide anything because there was nothing to hide!!

I loved it!!

It’s all the little things like this, the weight loss, getting amazing sleep and no hangovers that add up to GIANT things.