Let Me Introduce Myself

First off let me say I came this close (fingers spread about a micron apart) to drinking last night. I was just being a bitch all day and I didn't like myself. The poor cap'n couldn't say or do one thing right the whole day and I almost had a drink just so I'd be nicer to him. I'm not sure what held me back but I think it was a combination of things. First I have this ridiculous belief that God and I have some weird barter system set up that if I continue to be "good" he will reward me. I know that this is not how it works and God loves me no matter if I have a drink or not but I like to hedge my bets. You see, along with being an alcoholic I am a recovering Catholic and still suffer the lingering effects of a parochial childhood. Because of this I am also "cursed" with unwavering honesty (boy, has that got me in trouble a time or two). So I made a vow on this blog to be honest and I really wanted to have that drink or two last night and then not tell about it but what would be the point? I'd still know I had that drink and this blog would become some fairytale and there are enough of those out there. The final thing that kept me from having that drink last night was that I partnered up with a fellow 30 day abstainer on the moderation board and I didn't want to let him down, plus….I still want to see what happens…After all tonight is the lottery and if I continue to be good….who knows.

So a very short synopsis of me. I started drinking when I was 14 to fit in like everyone else. I became the party girl of our little town in the Midwest but that was short lived because I also became pregnant. Knocked-up and married at 18 but still managed to go to college and become an LPN by the age of 20. Drinking only on the weekends during this period but man, did I look forward to the weekends. An unhappy marriage, and a traumatic initiation into the concept that really bad things can happen to good people didn't help. By the age of 27 I had three sons. One is a nephew who we adopted after his mother, two siblings, and grandmother (my sister-in-law, niece and nephew, and mother-in-law) were killed in a fire. And, no, that was not my traumatic initiation, it was worse. At 30 I began an affair with a man that I had been in love with for 10 years (I'm not sure where I stowed my honesty at that time), resulting in a very ugly divorce and more scars than the battlefield of Antietam amongst the participants and our innocent victims. More guilt, more drinking. One happy note, my cohort in the affair and I married and are still married and very much in love 18 years later. The blended family adolescent years followed and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, more drinking. Then the cap'n and I bought a sailboat and sailed off to paradise, except there wasn't much to do in paradise. You can get pretty tired of snorkeling after 12 years so I drank. I grew to hate the boat, the lifestyle, and me. We went for a visit to Mexico for a change of scenery, fell in love with a casa on the beach in an pitifully poor, pitifully ugly little fishing village, put the boat up for sale, bought the house and swore that this would be the beginning of a new life for us. A life in which alcohol is not the main component. And now I split my time between my little A-frame in Colorado and Mexico. When we bought the house in Mexico I made a vow that the first thing that people in Mexico thought of when they thought of me would not be "drunk" or "party girl". My drinking would no longer be my defining trait. I'm working really hard on that. As always I'm doing the best I can.