Silence

160 no alcohol, 16 no smokes. Everyone still in one piece. My mind is too busy and life a bit hectic. I find cranky is the new normal, which I hate. So I generally don’t have much to say lately. Or can’t find the words. Silence and absence of deep thought are dear to me right now, which translates into mindless TV and couch surfing. It seems easy to miss being numb when I feel like I am waiting for this great new life to magically appear all because I quit drinking. I know it is a huge lie, numb is not better. Ignorance may be bliss, but then you are ignorant too! *rambling?*

Brain Drain 2

So this will sound nuts. I had a dead car battery this morning, a flat tire thisafternoon, and the garage door went nuts… but I had an exceptionally great day, laughing at the sheer maddness of it all, and its ability to clear my mind. And it didn’t make me want to drink which felt great!!

~Rae

Brain Drain

Holy hell! This sober mind is an interesting place. I’m actually a bit sick of how busy it is getting up in here! It seems as if I am CONSTANTLY obsessing about sobriety. The way I used to about alcohol. I am less an less thinking of WANTING to drink, but constantly aware that I don’t drink. I am not sad or angry (I was) about having to be sober. I am at peace with that decision, (today) but this constant awareness of it, is pissing me off! When will this not be my focus? I love blogging, and reading blogs and boozy memoirs, but in the last two days, I read a 460 page teen book, just to escape it all! Good read actually… Whaler. Anyway…. I have no idea if this makes any sense at all, but when you stop bending your brain, then what suggestions do you have for shutting it off? At what point does (and please say it does) your life not revolve around sobriety?

~Rae

Unwanted resentment

I am tired. Id like to go to sleep, but I am in such an irritated mood! I don’t even try to sleep when I am grumpy. Because I will inevitanbly lay there and get more irritated. Back when I would simply pass out from wine I never had that problem. But screw that fix! And if I were drinking, I wouldn’t be irritated tonight. But screw that too! I won’t be drinking, just venting on here. And thank you for that! So tonight what set me off is quite simple really. But my raw, sober and wide open new self just doesn’t know how to process all these feelings! So the President came to town. *I had no feelings about that* but my husband, is responsible for radio communicarions for this big event. Yes, big kudos to him. He is awesome. But this meant he worked all weekend and on a holiday and very late, because of course the pres is a last minute visitor! Anyway… the pres came in and went out and everything went brilliantly and my husband is awesome, and then he came home with cat litter and cat food and the tea I asked for….. and beer. And watching him email excitement and share photos and drink his beer one after the other… pissed me off. And my resentment pisses me off. My sobriety is a choice for me. It is for me, and I don’t need or want to force anyone onto my journey. Keep in mind, my husband is a “normie” and he had every reason to celebrate. If I could put any legit feeling to it, I guess it would be, I felt left out. I don’t celebrate with alcohol anymore. So now I just wish to cut him some slack, get over it and move along… but he is snoring! *end rant* thanks for listening.

Choices

Seems that daily we are reading blogs about the struggles of sobriety. How hard it can be. The effort it can take to stay the course. I am surely guilty of having the occasional pity party in my head. Oh woe is me!! Blah Blah Blah!! Today I was a bit smacked upside the head with some perspective.
My daughter is on her high school's competition cheer leading squad. This girl puts eleven months of the year of actual blood sweat and tears into this. She somehow still loves it. Her efforts to succeed at this sport are amazing.  Now here comes the zinger... those little fuckers keep dropping her!!! She is a flier. So they throw my baby in the air and I hope, looking through my fingers, that they catch her. Sometimes they don't.  So because of that, she has hit her head one too many times. Today we were told by a specialist, that she is DONE. Her little noggin can't take anymore. *sad mom face* She may not be done forever, but at least for this season. So all the effort, all the practice, and all the pushing through. The goal, taken away. I know my daughter is heartbroken.
So you ask, what is my point?
Sobriety is hard! It takes effort. But at the end of every day, it is up to us!! Nobody can take it away, nothing can happen to us and never is it beyond our control.  We choose to be sober. We choose this for many different reason. But today, I affirm my choice to honor my daughter. First, because she deserves a sober mom!! But really, because I have a choice in the matter. My effort needs to count. Nothing can stop me and I need to remember that. My fate, unlike my daughters, isn't in the hands of someone else. And I thank God for that!!

                                                       Love you Miss!!     
                                                                            Love Mom

Squirrel!!

Well son of a gun! I think I know at least one reason that I drank. Seems this mind of mine is a very busy place. I think my three year old has the right words for it..."pew pew pew!" (insert fake gun) It is a bit like the fourth of July up in my head. Here comes a beautiful thought, boom, pow, where did it go? Squirrel!
One of the mantras that has become a favorite of mine on this journey, is "what is the point?" Meant to refer to drinking. As in, after that first lovely glass of wine, when you move on to many more, and never even get a buzz, when you only seem to be getting fat and miserable, what is the point? That question seemed quite easy for me to answer, and that saying has gotten me through some tough spots. If I take that saying even further, it gets me to my thinking. What is the point? A sober mind is full of them! Holy hell it is a virtual factory of ideas! A busy nonstop place. But very unfocused! What to do with it? Today I plugged in the headphones, streamed some Pandora and reorganised the kitchen. All the while trying to focus even one complete thought. My station of choice? Love songs. hmmm....what is up with that I wonder... I think, it is me trying to love me, me trying to get over loving wine, (they play breakup songs too) and me trying to love my life and all those in it. Well that thought just came from nowhere, but that is the point for me, of this whole blog. A place to focus. A place with less squirrels! My friend told me that a dark room, lotus position and a candle would have me seeing squirrels. Said it scared the hell out of her! Well although that sounds incredibly exciting *wink* I don't think I need to conjure more squirrels. Fuckers are everywhere already. But I suppose without all of my random thoughts, I wouldn't catch the gems. So today, I am focused on my mind. I am trying to get in there and take an inventory. The one clear thought that I have from this effort today is this....get ready for random..... My head is completely full of experiences. It is completely full of DRUNK experiences. Drinking memories. Wine memories.  Of course not all have alcohol in them, but in the experiences category, the vast majority do. So... the big thought for the day is this, I need a new reference library up in my head. The old one is out dated. Of course, you can't build a library of SOBER experiences over night. But it is a new goal. Something that I actually look forward to. Replacing the wine soaked books in my head with new ones. Filling the spaces with memories of the sober me.

                                                   ~Rae

P.S. The first song that popped on after I wrote this blog? Without You. HAHAHAHA!
And I think the wine rack would make a lovely towel holder! Squirrel!! xoxo

Identity Crisis?

Not too long after I started my new sober journey, I ran a little caption contest on my business Facebook page. It was a photo of a deep in thought me. I simply asked, "What am I thinking?" The responses caught me a little off guard. I heard many that included some sort of alcohol, and me wishing I had it in my hand. These comments all came from people who didn't yet know that I had quit drinking. That was the day I let Facebook know, that this wino had given it up! So then what? It seemed very clear to me, that who I was, at least to a lot of people, even if meant complimentary, was an EXTREME lover of wine, and Fireball.  Maybe it was a phenomena I would only encounter on Facebook? Maybe the posts on my wall, the cartoons, the photos...

                              Maybe they gave the wrong impression? I really doubt it!!! So now what?  I don't feel like I can even begin yet to explain who I am without alcohol. It was definitely a big part of me, and obviously associated with almost everything I did.
I get a lot of statements like, " So how long are you not going to drink?" and a whole lot of "Why?" There seems to be a general disbelief and shock when I tell people I have quit drinking. A look on their faces that says, "Who are you?"  Really the only stock answer that I have is, "I am still fun!" I have yet to have anyone tell me that yes, I am still fun, but DAMN IT I AM!! Ha! (OK, my husband may disagree when I bitch about beer breath.)
What I do know, is I am liking the new me. Even if I don't completely know me yet. I think it is an improvement. Hell, I know it is!

                                                                   ~Rae

Welcome to my sober life.

I was inspired to write this blog because of a book I am reading. I have read many books, and I will surely reference them. But the latest, Mrs. D is Going Without by Lotta Dann is by far the best so far. Why? Because she has told the back story for me. Well, at least the guilt ridden screaming voice in your head telling you that you suck part.  But unlike Mrs. D, I didn't wait until five o'clock.  If you want to know more and really get some awesome advice, head on over to www.livingwithoutalcohol.blogspot.com. Mrs. D is the shit!

I'm 41. Married and have a fifteen and a three year old! That alone should explain why I drank. *wink*.  Up to my mid thirties, I was an occasional social drinker. I was often amazed that in a family of hard hitters, I had somehow dodged the alcoholic bullet. Or so I thought. So what the fuck happened?!! This is my story.
I am on day 119 of my new life. Never in my entire life did I EVER want to be alcohol free. No frickin way! I managed the social fun and looked forward to drinks when the times called for it. Then I met wine. Oh glorious lovely Cabernet! I am going to streamline this here. Maybe in flashbacks later I will have stories to tell, and I definitely do, but it looked something like this...
 Open a bottle, drink it.  Repeat daily. One bottle not enough? Start buying the box, so that the guilt monster doesn't step in. But the good box for Christ sake! A box has four bottles. That was good for two days. Now go to lunch. Of course I will have wine with lunch! Before I head home from work, I will stop for happy hour and have a lovely Martini. Not wine, I have that at home. (I hope) Weekday? Weekend? Didn't matter. The only difference was the guilt level. Less guilt on the weekend. What is in the cup? Most likely alcohol. What kind? Depended. About the only thing I never did was drink a red wine in the morning. But white, absolutely. Best breakfast ever.  I always had a drinking buddy too! Man were we bad for each other! A retired lady and a self employed make my own schedule lush. Look out back patio! We spent hours, days even, sitting on the patio drinking wine, smoking cigarettes and bitching about the world. Good times. Do that enough, and you will either see the problem, or die too soon. I had tried to quit drinking last spring, lasted a month, then I was in it harder than ever. I had tried because for the first time in my life, my Doctor called me an alcoholic. Well of course the blood work showed stress! There was an entire bottle of wine in my blood!! *snicker*  I do think to this day that the results were a bit askew, because two weeks later they were all normal. Didn't matter. The fact that the Dr. pissed me off is beside the point. Or maybe a good point. So I have made it through tailgate season, Thanksgiving, Christmas and a New Years party at my house.  I have easy days, and days that I want to smack the shit out of anyone I can.  Being around alcohol is easy. Being around the effect of alcohol is not as easy. Quite irritating actually. I am still in the phase of figuring out why I can't moderate alcohol. But honestly I don't think I need to understand why I can't. I need to accept that I can't. When I run through what having a glass of wine tonight would look like, I still can not imagine having one glass of wine.  I can imagine and feel every emotion that follows one glass. I'd want more. Much much more. I'd wake up the next day wanting an alcohol breakfast and lunch. And so it would be. So no. No wine for me. I can't be trusted. Knowing that, is a good and empowering thing. So here I am, planning to write it all down. Mostly for myself, so I have a record of success and a reminder of struggle. A map of my journey.

                                    ~Rae