Boarding a train bound for somewhere…

I made it through the trifecta of Thanksgiving, Christmas and even New Year’s! Wahoo! That was a real push. I have knocked out Valentine’s Day and only have St. Patty’s Day, Easter, my birthday, the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL and the 4th of July to do before I have hit my one year mark. I know…still seven months off. But, I love holidays and will forever think of the year as series of holidays. So, I am doing good and I am somewhat surprised.

You see-I am a planner big time. But, I have been thinking about it lately and of the three children I gave birth to- the easiest pregnancy by far was the one that started in total shock that I was pregnant. Complete, “Why does my coffee taste so bad and why does smoking make me want to gag?” surprised and you mentally panic about the all the drinking you have done in the last few weeks. I was fresh out of college and had just taken a road trip, hanging out in hostels and meeting lots of new friends. Needless to say, there was a lot of drinking,

But, there was a quick mental adjustment and within 24 hours, I was ready to be a mom. Seven months later-I cradled the best surprise of my life in my arms.

unexpected-love-quotes-3 It has been that way quitting drinking. I had long “planned” to quit. I would set a date and get all ready. I was sure to really binge it up the last few days-my last sips of “freedom” (WTH was I thinking? Freedom? So deluded.). The day would come and I would rock it for a solid two weeks and the the thought, “I am doing so great-see, I didn’t have a problem” would sneak in and within a day I would be back on the wild, trackless train bound for nowhere.

But this time, I just quit. I had broke my own heart and hated that I had done it to myself. I left myself twisting in the wind and I could not take it. I needed action. I had planned to quit after New Year’s, but I just could not sit with myself knowing that I was falling apart any more.

I never would have “planned” to quit the day I quit-the trifecta was looming ahead. The timing was ALL wrong. I wasn’t ready. I had no “plan” in place at all. I just jumped and hoped I would grow wings on the way down.

And DAMN-I sure am glad I did! Five months later and still sober.

Sometimes the best things in life are not planned at all.

If Only Emotions Had Brains

HELP! I am held hostage by my emotions! Seriously! They just come slamming in my perfectly calm, cool and collected mind and take me over on a whim. “I own now!” they yell at the top of their emotilungs! And I am done for. Off in a whirl of pissed off.

nature summer yellow animal — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

That is-if I don’t recognize them for who they are-irritation, fear, anger and just plan too much sugar (I think that is an emotion-and it ain’t so sweet.)

When I recognize them, I distract myself with something else. I wonder what would happen if I just let them in, let them have their way in my head until they ran out of steam and then just showed them to door? I might have to try that.

I am feeling lots more lately. It turns out the numbing was for all my emotions. So, now I have felt all huggy too lately. That part is nice. It is letting me back into my world and I forgot how much I missed it there.

Okay. Done with this post. All emotioned out. Whew. Rode that wave.

Letting go and embracing

I have struggled with sleep-or NOT sleep for a long time now. Years. Over a decade really. Part of my journey that seems to have endless paths, entrances and exits, is to address this sleep thing. This. Sleep. Thing. Not MY sleep thing I do not want this to be a part of my life any longer. It is not MY sleep thing, MY alcohol thing, MY anxiety thing. It is just a thing. A thing I am going to be turning a focus on with daring truth.

girl sleeping on bed — Photo by Sam K on Pexels.com

When I was pregnant with my son, I went through the WORST insomnia. I ended up half crazed and pouring my heart and mind out to a priest who had also been the doctor who delivered my first child. We drove over 100 miles to see him. I sat across from him twisting a Kleenex, bloodshot eyes that were darting about like a wild animal by that point in the insomnia I am sure.

He said to me two things. 1) Take the Ambien you new doctor prescribed. 2) Just say thank you for what is in your life. Simply thank you.

I was so confused! Thank you for what? For modern medicine? I most certainly was and am! Thank you for the child who has grown into an incredible young man? That is an easy one! I did not get it. I pushed him for more.

Be thankful for even the hard part…the insomnia, the unknown, the scariness of it all and the love of people all around you. In my mad state of mind, I got it. I was in it. I was grateful. Maybe it was because those were words breathed from a holy man’s lips, but they felt solid and real when my world was melting around me. I had a moment where I felt grateful for the vulnerable exposure my sleepless nights had led me to. I could finally let lose my grip on perfection and just slip into release.

Beloved wrapped his coat around me, drove me to a pharmacy, fill my script and took me home. I laid in his arms as I finally fell into a deep, drugged sleep.

That was over a decade ago. Now, I do catch glimpses of being grateful for even those experiences that hurt or require me to expose my trembling self. Perhaps alcohol, insomnia and anxiety are all lesson it themselves. Perhaps they are MY lessons. Perhaps these really are MY things. And for them, I am grateful.

I did not know…

That I could dance sober and still kill it! Who knew? I was totally NOT interested in going out and listening to this great band because I would have to be doing it without social lubricant. Nada. Nothing. Okay-fries and a Coke. I told Beloved on the way there that I was NOT going to dance. Period. End of story. I can only handle so much. The cravings were going to be beast enough to keep in check.

woman in white sleeveless shirt gold brown leaf in front of her face — Photo by Mariana on Pexels.com

I sat like a flower at our table for the first 30 minutes feeling the flush in my cheeks of everyone staring at me as they had a good time. How that is possible, I am not sure-but in the newly sober mind, it is reality. I was just watching and absorbing what it is like to have 100 people on a tiny dance floor all at various stages of inebriation. Giggling 21s with a beer in hand boogeying like they own the place to the guy with bloodshot eyes and a tipped hat nodding along at the edge of the linoleum, barely keeping beat but at least on the dance floor. Unlike me. But watching him gaze into nothing when such a swirl of life was about him cured my cravings.

Then a slow song came on. Beloved looked at me with puppy dog eyes..he is one of those rare breeds that loves to dance. I couldn’t say no. Off we went, swaying like a couple of sweaty palmed 8th graders in a gym decorated with construction paper and helium balloons. There was a tiny moment of bliss.

Next song was a fast one-a new classic. Uptown Funk You Up! Damn-and it did! My groove thing came back and I blossomed from wall flower to owning my own little spot on the dance floor. I am thinking all my drunken nights of gyrating on dance floors in college bars, honkey tonks and legit dance clubs has created muscle memory! I just let myself go and danced. Let me be me! We danced the band to closing!

Cold fries and a warm Coke never tasted better.

Why Lie?

Sitting on a school bus today with my students, I am sweating and feeling like general crap. Perfect-trapped with a bunch of middle school students on a bus twisting through country roads to the “city” and career day. So many twisting roads. I want to puke I wonder if this is part of getting all the toxins out of my system. It has been SIX days. Toxins? I wasn’t really drinking that much right? I wasn’t that bad…

I hear the lies start to creep in. They are good. Super good. “You were just stuck in a rut. You are out now-don’t worry.” “It wasn’t so bad-that thing on Beloveds birthday was a fluke.” “You are fine. All teachers drink A LOT because teaching is freaking stressful as hell.” But, I am sweaty. I have promised myself to be truthful. My students are settling in. I open my phone and look at my notes to self. I sneak quick peeks between trying to manage the chaos of preteens high on the possibility of the day and my internal feelings of shakiness.

The words are stark, raw and real. I wrote them SIX days ago. They are the truth.

“List of Why I Need to Quit”

Hiding vodka is a bad sign-I have bottles still hidden. Drank empty, but still hidden. Lots.

Drinking alone feels really good.

Planning drinking times is starting to take over my day. My internal “calendar” of when it is okay and not is just getting out of control. Friday and Saturdays are givens. Sunday just slids in there because I am on a roll. Monday off because there is just too many place to run my kids, but Tuesday and Wednesday are fair game if i can get home from the runarounds early enough. Thursday is off because by then I am tired and guilty, but also know full well that Friday is one day away.

Drinking and slipping into bed before Beloved comes to bed in hopes he doesn’t not know is just getting old and every night I end my day lying to the one person I know who loves me beyond measure. Lying next to a lie. That is what I am making him do. I hate it.

Finding reasons to drink is getting ridiculous. The dog’s birthday should not be a reason to get hammered!

Drinking and then having “family” time-that’s a laugh…but, and this part is making me tear up…it is the only way I can feel relaxed around THREE and since she is always around, it is the only way I can feel relaxed around my other children.

I am beginning to not be able to get past a day without a drink. What if it soon becomes a half day?

I fucked up. I fucked up a business email that actually was really important to me because the person I was writing is really important to me and my success. I wasn’t rude, did not misspell anything, but what I wrote was cringe worthy the next day in retrospect. I wish I had not sent it. Honestly-this may have been the biggest tipping point of them all for me. How fucked up is that?

There are lots more reasons. I had only written a few down. I wish I had written more to keep me going. I will have to think about my reasons before they fade.

For now, dinner is ready.

True Colors

When I was a kid, I rarely cried. Crying got me nothing but the comment, “Ya want me to give you something to really cry about?” This was followed quickly by the slithering sound of my dad’s belt racing out of its loops. No crying for me. It wasn’t worth the release.

I do remember crying once just for the sheer emotion of it all. I had come home from a church retreat where things had just felt magical-all love all peace-filled and strangely enough-not a lot of God-talk. I wept. Hard. I had been moved to a place I did not know existed. “Why couldn’t the “real” world feel this way?” Of course my mother told me I was being overly dramatic. Hell, I probably was-I was thirteen and sang the song “True Colors” by Cyndi Lauper for the rest of that summer in memory of that retreat and the sweet release it had given me.

A desire for my true colors to be seen AND loved has laid quietly in my soul since that summer long ago. Sometimes, my Beloved can tease them out. Sometimes he has to boldly remind me they even exist. Most of the time we are far to busy in life to see anything but a blur. My blur slowly has greyed.

Night four of sobriety, we snuggled with our wees and watched “Trolls” when my song came on. I stopped and really listened. I thought of the look in my Beloved’s eyes when I told him I have been drinking way too much (God! Half a fifth a night-what does my liver even look like right now?) for over a year. I needed help. I needed love.

I told him I was killing (drowning) every emotion I could surrounding my irritation and sheer annoyance with Three (one of our adopted daughters). I am an am amazing mom to my other four. What is it about Three I cannot quite get synced with?

I shook in that hot snot running way in his arms as I confessed the darkest most intense of feelings that I am horrified by, exhausted by and utterly confused by surrounding the utter nails-on-chalkboard visceral reaction I have toward Three. “What the FUCK is wrong with me?!?!” I screamed it. I snotted it, I sobbed it, I let it all out. It was gross. I felt gross. When it as all done, I felt cleaner. Grey, but cleaner.

He took it all in, pulled back and just looked at me…like he saw my true colors. I am not grey in my Beloved’s eyes.

The only thing at this moment I know is that I am determined to soberly unpacking all that is me surrounding the emotions I have about Three and why it is that since she has become part of the Crew, I have been drinking in ways that remind me of my own father.