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.

Wow!

 

I got on the scale this morning to find that I have lost six pounds since Monday.

SIX POUNDS!

Now granted I am a big girl to begin with but I have been easily been eating way more than I ever did when I was drinking. AND I am about to start my period so I am actually retaining water right now!

THAT is how many calories I was consuming from booze.

DUDE!

I realize it is bloat and it won’t last, but holy freaking cow, talk about a motivator!!!

So last night was my “time up” as in the time that I gave myself to stay sober until. When I started this last week, I told myself that I just needed to stay sober until Friday and see how it went from there.

I was pretty much mostly planning to drink last night. Hubs was talking about picking up some take out on the way home and it was shaping up to be a perfect Friday evening to imbibe.

Then he got a text from his dad asking if we wanted to go out to dinner.

Now if you will remember, my FIL just lost his dog the night before due to a hit and run outside of his house. It wasn’t like I was going to be like “Nah, sorry dude, but I got these drinking plans sooo….”

Of COURSE we were going to do whatever it was he wanted if he was reaching out…mostly because he doesn’t usually reach out.

So we tooled on over to his house after work and took him out to a local restaurant that we’ve gone to with them sometimes. A nice family place with a lot of selection. 

We all split nachos and FIL got a salad as well.

I was still on the fence about drinking when I got home. I was trying not to eat too much but the nachos were pretty awesome. 

FIL seemed to be in an okay mood and he told me that he liked to think of his dog passing as his wife calling the dog home to her. That surprised me because they are not a religious family but also warmed my heart and gave me a little peace.

This was the first time we had all gone out to eat without my MIL and I noticed as we were pulling into their house after and seeing all of her things that I had really missed her during that meal. I don’t think I particularly noticed it at the time because I was trying to keep FIL in good spirits but yeah. I started to tear up a bit in the driveway and had to bite it back.

We got home and I noticed I was still a bit full but not enough that I couldn’t “drink through it” as I had done countless times before.

I fed the dogs and got in my jammies, still not having made a decision.

I played around on my computer and hemmed and hawed and decided I just really didn’t want to. I blamed it on still being a bit full from dinner but I think I just really didn’t want to wake up feeling like poo in the morning.

It’s been so freaking nice to wake up and not have that pounding racing heart and throbbing head every morning this week. I mean, it’s amazing how you just get used to it when you do it every day. I have felt like crap for soooooo long that it just became the status quo. I accepted that it was just the way that I was going to feel. Every. Single. Day.

And to not…well that was nothing short of fantastic.

So I jumped in to bed and finished a fluff book that I had been reading off and on and went to sleep.
These are baby steps and I’m still not saying forever. My brain will not allow it, but for now, just for today I am pretty proud of not drinking last night.

More Sad News

Last night Hubs was over at his Dad’s house visiting. It’s something he has done every Thursday and Sunday since his mom passed last month. Just to sort of keep him company and check on him and all that. I usually join him on the Sunday visits.

I came home and didn’t do a whole lot. Hubs was bringing dinner home with him (he makes dinners for his dad on these nights and makes extra for us to eat when he gets home) so I didn’t have to worry about cooking.

I was initially a bit worried about being home alone and not drinking…not terribly worried because it’s not that big of a deal, but I do tend to let myself think about being naughty because I’m unsupervised sometimes. 

Anyway, I was laying on the bed around 6:30 playing Homescapes on my phone when it showed that hubs was calling. This is unusual because we normally text anything we need to each other.

I answered and he said: “I’m so sorry, but I’m about to ruin the rest of your night.”

“What’s going on?” I asked with a bit of apprehension.

“I’m so sorry, Xay. I hate to do this to you.” 

At this point, I’m getting very nervous but still in the back of my mind I’m thinking it’s just something like a flat tire or something that I need to come get him for.

And then he told me that one of my Father in laws dogs had gotten out of her pen that night and ran into traffic. She was struck and killed.

They only found out when someone (not the person that hit the dog) recognized the dog on the side of the road (they are a fairly well known family and the only house on this stretch of road) and stopped to come knock on the door and let them know.

They had to go gather her off the roadside and put her in the back of my FIL’s pick up truck. There was no place open at that point and she had already passed so FIL said he would keep her in there until the morning then he would drive her to their vet and have her cremated. 

I didn’t know all of the details on that at the time of course, just that Hubs told me that she had been hit and had passed. He didn’t want to wait to tell me when he got home because in his mind he felt like he would have been deliberately keeping something from me (that is the way the logic in his brain works) so he was sorry to have to tell me over the phone.

I cried. I wasn’t especially close to the dog. His dogs are very barky and don’t really let us near them, but I am a HUGE animal lover and the idea of an animal death makes me crazy. I once accidentally hit a squirrel that ran out in front of my car and I cried for two days. But even more than that, I was so so so sad for my father in law. The man just lost his wife of fifty some odd years a month ago and now his dog??? WTF Universe????

I hung up the phone and immediately looked at the clock. I did some math in my head and the truth is, I could have had some drinks and still gotten to bed at a reasonable hour if I had really wanted to.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to feel the way I was feeling, but I didn’t want to drink either.
I took some of my herbal calmative (that sounds like weed, but I promise it’s not) and then went out into the living room and loved on my own dogs.

Hubs got home about 45 minutes later and I could tell he was very out of sorts. This had hit him pretty hard. 

We hugged it out and I let him go decompress, letting him know I was there if he wanted to talk.

We went to bed shortly after that and I had a bit of a hard time getting to sleep, but that is understandable.

Tonight we are taking my father in law out to dinner right after work and see how he is doing.

I’m just kind of angry right now that this good person (father in law) is getting dealt such a shitty hand right now.