Dirt Bags on Ten Fingers

“I am LIVID!” I slammed myself onto my mother’s couch. “Those dirt bag asshole neighbors have screwed us again!”

They have been dirt bag asshole neighbors for ten years. That is not new. Some people just are.

What is new is the fact I could label my feeling (LIVID! FREAKING TWISTING IN THE WIND ANGRY!) instead of just being pissed and getting drink.

Wow. An emotion. A “big one” as I say to my kids. I rode it out. And then I realized that if I had to count how many dirt bags I have known in my life that have had any real impact on my life, I could do it in fewer than ten fingers. That…that felt really awesome and turned my anger inside out.

Dirt bags attract dirt bags. So glad I know so few.

Pink?

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GAH!!!! I am not sure what I feel. I kinda feel like I always wished I could feel-happy like I as two drinks into a good evening with friends-but without the drinks. Things feel more 3-D. More alive. More real. I feel REALLY good and in the last few days some REALLY good things have opened up in my life.

Is this what they mean by pink cloud? Can’t I just feel good? It is NOT like I am feeling like drinking again (well-feeling it for sure-doing it? NOPE!) I just want to feel happy. I am just going to feel happy.

Okay-that is it. Feeling good and NOT going to feel guilty about feeling good.

I am scared.

Nine Hidden One Found

vodka Wow. Cleaning out my closet today (in more ways than one) because apparently that is what I do when I do not feel like crap on a Saturday morning.

NINE! Nine hidden bottles in my closet. NINE!!!!

One bottle was still full. Beloved gone for the day. He has the kids up in the woods cutting wood for the winter. It is such a gorgeous fall day. A day it would be nice to just be blurry on. A perfect day for fall.

Itch starts. “No one has to know.” “He won’t be home for hours. You could drink it and he would never know.” “One last time? Just take one last drink in a gorgeous spill of sunshine so that you can remember your last one. I mean, you don’t even really remember your last one. Don’t you think you should be able to remember if it is going to be that important to be The Last One ” SHUT UP ITCH!

I quickly unscrewed the cap and tried to ignore my mouth watering (whoa-that is real) as I poured it down the drain. The smell lingers in mouth and in my nose. I pour bleach down it next.

Nine bottles hidden. One me found.

Sober Sex?

It is a thing.

I woke up today, not hungover and not having to have guilty sex. I sipped my coffee and wrote this blog instead.

When you have five kids, sex gets curtailed-there is nothing you can do about it. I know what you are thinking-that’s how you got five in the first place! Well, no. Emergency adoption of two of my great nieces changed our family a lot…. Every aspect really. Including my sex life.

Sex for the last many years has been drunken and quick on a Friday night or this really weird sex in the early hours when I am feeling all guilty and unlovable and feel like I am offering my body as in penance for the drinks I had the night before. “If he wants to have sex with me, it must mean he loves me. He must have found my puking in the toilet at 5:00 am endearing.” (Damn you leftover boxed wine!)

Um, that is some pretty messed up thinking in hindsight. Beloved is a modern guy with modern thinking, but I am pretty sure he would have sex with me even if he thought I had a raging drinking problem and even if I spent my wee hours praying to the porcelain god. He just really likes sex. He is a pretty simple guy. It is me that adds all the backstory.

But last night? Sober FRIDAY NIGHT sex? What? I was nervous and then I reminded myself I was done lying. Sex was going to be honest and real. I just let myself be and feel. I was going to stay out of my head and get into my body. I began to panic. “I don’t want to do this!”

I got out of my brain. Got into my body. What does my bed feel like, what does Beloved’s jeans feel like against my leg? What do the candles smell like?

And then it happened. My vision shifted. My panic relaxed. All the head stuff stopped. I was in the moment….

OMG! It was the sex from years ago when we first met-huge, hot sex that ignored our bumpily futon in an apartment that was almost to small to hold our first twig of a Christmas tree in a coffee can.

I cried.

I told on myself…

Bestie has been in my life since we were twelve. Summers in our teen years found us drunk with boys in sweaty tents under blurry stars. Good times-not going to lie. So many stars-swirling overhead and bouncing with our laughter. But, looking back, I may have been the one doing the hardest laughing and the most swirling…

We parted ways in college-she straightened her boat, I left my adrift, tossed by life’s whims as I navigated by my own blurry stars. Twenty-five years later and I can’t control my drinking and she can’t control her love life. We are an amazing pair.

I just had to tell her I had quit. Verbatim (vertextum?):

So…I have quit drinking. Don’t know if it is forever or for a year or two or three…or forever. But at least a year. There was not one BIG thing that made me say it was time to sit out the dance for a while…just a series of self-irritation and anxiety at 3:00 am. Surprising, since I am all Aries and usually just burn shit down to the ground. Not this time, just walking away all adult-like with my life intact. Now-I miss my bestie and need some good, CLEAN, WILD fun with you!!!!!

I can still be wild-right? I’m cool? Right?

WTF? What is wrong with me? I am a forty-six year old mother of five who teaches middle school. Why would I even begin to think I could be cool? Any ONE of those things pretty much boots me out of the”cool” crowd-and if it doesn’t, I have bigger issues than just alcohol. Seriously? Today I was excited to find out today color-safe bleach is a real thing and could cure some of my laundry issues. I am so beyond being able to be cool. Cool is over. Doubly proven by the breath I was holding waiting for her response. It was immediate.

Her response?

Wow! That’s awesome! I look forward to hearing more about the process you went through. I agree. We are WAY overdue.

No drama. No “I knew it-you lush. You suck. I have been waiting for you to get yourself straight. You have been sucking at life for a while now. Get over yourself drama queen.”

Nope-just a simple Wow! and Awesome!

Itch started up… “See, Bestie didn’t even bat a lash. You are not that bad. Give it a month. We got this. You will be good to go. You don’t REALLY need to quit at all.”

Shut up Itch.

Embarrassed…

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Here is what I do not get (well, one of many, many, many things) Years ago I was a smoker. I LOVED smoking (actually-I hated it, but was really good at believing I loved it.) I tried quitting MANY times and failed miserably. I talked to everyone I could about wanting to quit. I just couldn’t do it. Finally, I asked my Beloved what one thing was I could do that would be the most amazing gift ever He simply said, “Give me the gift of more time with you in my life. Quit smoking.” I did. It was easy. Really oddly easy. Who knew you really can quit smoking (at least) for someone else?

Quitting Ambien after a long stint of use was harder, but I talked to everyone I knew about it and had no embarrassment. I even chatted up my mom about it. I finally got all the info I needed and slowly tapered and quit. Well-for a long time (years). I am taking it again-but that is honestly not the point…

My point is-WHY DO I FEEL SO FREAKING EMBARRASSED TALKING TO MY BELOVED ABOUT ABUSING ALCOHOL? Last night he took me in his arms outside our barn during feeding time and said he wanted to know how I was doing. I panicked inside. I am doing “okay” but talking about it really, really, REALLY is hard. I bawled in total embarrassment. It is hard for these words to come out of my mouth.

“I cannot control my drinking. Do you have any idea how much I had been drinking?”

“I need your help.”

Horribly, horribly embarrassing.

Why is this so different from breaking other addictions?

Alcohol is just another addiction…right? Ugh-I am beginning to think it is not.

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.

Untangling Life

“But the beginning of things…is necessarily vague, tangled and chaotic…”

-Kate Chopin (1850-1904)

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I have no idea where to begin undoing the knot that is my life and am even sure how it even came to be. I pull one part, and other parts of the knot tighten…breathing becomes shallow and my palms sweat. I start awakening at in the middle of the night with the dreaded 3:00 am thoughts. Obvious that whatever I pulled was the wrong thread to tug on…

I try to shove my knot aside. Pretend all those mangled, wildly colored threads all screwed up together are really a perfectly ordered life- a gorgeous knitted, oatmeal cream sweater bought in a raining little village in Ireland. Look at me, I have it TOGETHER! (or rather PLEASE DON’T!) My life in the moment is not the truth. I know it is not. I know it is knot.

Four days ago was Beloved’s birthday. Gorgeous friends, gorgeous meal, gorgeous children beaming at their dad, gorgeous moment. Oatmeal sweater from Ireland gorgeous. Except, it wasn’t. I stole the whiskey I gave him as a gift. Stole it right from the cheery, glaring “It’s Your Day!” birthday bag and sucked it down in the pantry. I only stole the whiskey because I had already drank all my vodka while furiously cleaning the house, barking at my children and slamming together a “neverfail” meal that always seems so much more than it is.

Whiskey down the throat. Hiding in the pantry. A wife, a mother, a woman with a secret inhiding. I. Have. So. Many. Secrets. Secrets and truths and stories that run through my head, my life. What a tangled web I weave…

But no more. Daring Truth. I am daring myself to tell myself my truth. I am done pulling the little threads of my knot. It is time to get the scissors out, the pliers out (hell-the chainsaw and blowtorch out!) and really get to detangling these truths, half truths and no-where-near the truths that have all been woven together into this thing I am not even sure is my life.