Summer Child

My mom always called me her little hoyden.  I was never a tomboy, I was much too uncoordinated for that, but I was a little kid that bounced out of bed on summer mornings and was out the door in my mismatched plaid shorts and daisy print shirt before mom could holler, "Would you please brush that rat's nest out of your hair?"

A child of the sun. Skinny brown legs pumping, handlebar tassels flying, off in search of new skinned knees and bug bites and whatever adventure those summer days held for me. Cannonballs into flimsy backyard swimming pools, Miss America with a sprinkler ring perched on my head as my crown, slip-n-sliding on smooth wet sidewalks (ouch), kool-aid stands...What more could life have to offer?  Falling in bed at night, feet black from my staunch refusal to wear shoes, skin itchy from sunburn and tumbles in freshly mown grass, my mind racing with the promises of tomorrow.

I looked in the mirror yesterday, my cheeks slightly sunburnt, my legs brown and freckled, my hair a wild, brittle tangle from too much chlorine and sun, a rat's nest, as my mom would say, my tummy protruding over my bathing suit bottom. "Kary May, if you're going to wear shortie tops at least suck your belly in," my ever mortified older sister, Kathy frequently admonished my ten year old self.  I didn't care back then, why should I now?

I looked into cloudless green eyes and saw that summer girl again.  The girl I fought so hard for.

Hi, there. I remember you.

It's Contagious: Let's Blame Sherry

 (Are those lemmings?)




Confession time, I already wrote this inspired blog once this morning as a comment to SoberMomRocks Blog but then decided to use it as my own blog.  I know, I know, a lot of you are saying to yourself, "I wish she'd do that more often instead of writing blog length comments on my blog."

  I was sitting out on my beach steps this morning thinking, "It's Thursday, I should be thinking about writing a blog." And I started looking around for inspiration. Sandpipers skittering back and forth-already made a bad analogy out of that. Waves crashing to shore and then out again-done that, too. Man walking on beach-ho-hum.

And now I'm sitting here thinking how pretentious that all sounds.

Screw it. Let's just not drink today and call it good. Sometimes that's all we need to do.

See Sherry, you never fail to inspire me.

PS. I want to thank all of you again for your prayers concerning my daughter-in-law, we got the results back from her lymph node biopsies and they were all clear so now she will precede with chemo treatments, starting this Monday and, hopefully, when they are finished, we can kick this bastard to the curb.

Lightbulb Moment

Hey Gang,
I've been getting a lot of pleas lately, I know you've gotten them too, I remember when I made the same desperate plea. That plea for a magic bullet, a turn of phrase, a cataclysmic event, an awakening.  What was it that made me finally, for the umpteenth time, for the last time, decide to quit drinking.

So I went back through my blogs and found the date, July 6, 2011.  If you look at the top of the blog I wrote that day, you'll see "Day 11."  I had already gone 11 days without drinking, but when I started those 11 days it wasn't with the intention of giving up drinking for good, it was with the intention of completing a 30 day abs in my pursuit of moderation.  I'd made about twelve attempts at a 30 day abs in my year of trying to moderate and never completed one.

July 6, 2011, is not my sobriety date though, I had one relapse since then.  A stupid relapse, one with the stupid intention of trying to change someone else's actions.  It didn't work, but at no time during that relapse did I fool myself into believing that I could live my life in anything but a totally sober state.

Here is my blog from that day:

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Another Life Choice

Day11
This is going to be a quickie.  We all have things we'd rather be doing on a Sunday than read my blog.  Sunday is for new beginnings and it is a new beginning for me.  I have made the decision that the only route left for me to take is total and permanent abstinence from alcohol.  I joined a new message board this last week, Women for Sobriety but I'll admit I still wasn't convinced.  Then someone responded to my introductory post that she got exhausted thinking about all of my Day 1's, Day 10,s Day 19's.... so I went back and read back over my blog this last year. Come on, who was I fooling? Only myself.  Was one more stab at moderation going to be the ticket?  I don't know, I never will.  I just don't want to waste any more of my life on any more "one more times".  As Andy Dufrain said in the movie Shawshank Redemption, "It's time to get busy living or get busy dying."  I know which one I'm choosing.  I may stumble a long the way but I won't be attempting moderation again, it's a done deal.

I have heard from several people that they are starting their individual journeys today.  Whether that be moderation or permanent abstinence, you have my best wishes.  Just remember, if you fall get, back up, if you stray down a wrong path, turn around, if there's a boulder blocking your way, go around it, climb over it or tunnel under it, and listen to your internal GPS, it knows where you need to go.
Safe Travels, my friends.
So today I'm out there doing my best to travel light and leave the burden of alcohol by the wayside. 

Someone's comment that she was exhausted just thinking about all my stops and starts (Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, whoever you are) was my magic bullet, my wake-up call, the knock upside my head.  No cataclysmic event, no lightning bolt, just a calm, almost analytical, acceptance of the facts.   I cannot moderate.  I am an alcoholic.  I cannot drink.

How about the rest of my fellow bloggers?  What was the "thing" that turned your tide, set your world right side up?  Care to share?  It could be the silver bullet someone is looking for.
Put your "magic words" in my comment section or share them on your own blog, someone is looking for them.

Fucking Sober!

I just had to share this this morning.  The cap'n's oldest son and wife are here and we met with a bunch of friends down at our favorite little corner restaurante last night for salbutes.  This place is just a little outside stand with a few plastic tables and chairs, they don't sell beer but if you want one, someone will run over to the bar across the street and get you one, but we usually bring a little cooler full of beer for those that wish to imbibe.  Which I Don't!

We were dispersing for the evening and one of my friends made a comment bemoaning the fact either that he'd feel like shit in the morning or that hed suffer from some other malady visited upon him because of booze.

I made the chirpy comment, "Not me."  (God, I used to hate people like me).

To which he roared, "Yeah, cuz you're Fucking Sober."

To which I replied, "Yeah, and tomorrow morning everyone is going to wish they were me."

It sucks to be me. It really does.

Not.

P.S. My daughter-in-law made it through the surgery without any problems and we will know on Tuesday if any of the lymph nodes were involved.  Right now it is looking like they caught this very early, probably due to the fact that she just had a baby and was getting regular check-ups.  The only thing that has us really worried is the vicious aggressiveness of this type of cancer (small cell neuroendocrine cervical cancer).  Thank you for your prayers and thoughts.

No Matter What

“I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. I've learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life." I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ----Maya Angelou

I made the comment on the MM board the other day, that finally it comes down to making the vow, "no matter what" and sticking to it.  I said I knew how restrictive that sounded, but in fact it is so freeing.  "No matter what" I will never again have to worry about being stricken immobile from the remorse caused by drunken disregard, never again will I be too sick from a hangover or too inebriated to pay attention to those people or those things that need my utmost attention.  Never again will I be so shrouded and wrapped in my own despair over my drinking that I take no notice of others' pain.  I can finally reach out, I can finally throw something back into the game of life.

My daughter-in-law, the capn's youngest son's wife,  was diagnosed with a rare, very aggressive form of cervical cancer last week.  Cat scans and MRI show no spread, but she will have surgery tomorrow and we will see if it has spread to the lymph system.  Regardless, because of the aggressiveness of this form of cancer, she will have radiation and chemo.  The five year survival rate, from what I can glean from google searches, is around 30%.  She has two boys,five and ten months.

All I am able to do now is pray, and I can do that with all my being.  But should she call on me for anything else, I will be there, I told her I was "free" anytime she needed me.

If you are of the praying sort, please keep her and her young family in your prayers, if you don't pray, I firmly believe good thoughts and wishes have as much heft.

Thank you.

NA Beer article

 

A fellow member of mmabsers shared this article the other day and I loved it, but what I found even more interesting was to go to the original site and read the attacks on the attacks on the author.  There's still a lot of people swimming in that big ol' river of Denial.

Here's the link to the original article: http://www.vice.com/read/why-non-alcoholic-beer-is-the-best-kind?source=vice_iphone_app

 

Why Non-Alcoholic Beer Is the Best Kind

By Ben Johnson

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I haven’t had any alcohol for a year. I’m not sure I can recommend sobriety for everybody, but it did OK things for me. I don’t blame my problems on other people as much. I can finish a higher percentage of the things I start. If I don’t like something, I generally don’t do it. I go to bed early. I read books.
My life is less “fun.” That’s OK. Fun is people yelling boring stuff at each other more often than not. Fun is pretending there’s no such thing as death, or even human-scale consequences. Fun is a lie. Fun is overrated. Fun is a gaggle of 14 year olds on a 3 AM trip to Walmart daring each other to wear the Super Mario pajamas and the Barbie tiara to the checkout line and “acting casual” about it with their loudest most gratingly desperate uncasual voices while your credit card is declined and Ivan the checkout clerk with the lazy eye is sighing through his nose. Fun is waking up the next morning covered in clown makeup and wondering who you are and how bad it is.
Why did I quit drinking? I had my reasons. The reasons involved doing horrible things to nice people, and being on the receiving end of unfunny wisecracks in the back of a police car, and having concerned family members show up to kick my skull in. Not to be melodramatic or anything. My biggest reason for not drinking was to kill off the drunk version of myself. I built him up too big and let him start making decisions for me because I’m a chickenshit, and he repaid me with an appropriate degree of contempt for my personhood. OK, but I’m stubborn and contrarian enough to insist on the last word. So it’s the dry life for me, and that grinning whiskey-filled malicious bastard can hang.
I am learning things.
Like do you know what’s great? Non-alcoholic beer. It’s such a fantastic invention. You can drink it and drink it and drink it and you won’t feel a THING. It’s like drinking beer’s lawyer. Instead of getting all drunk you just need to pee a lot and then you start yawning and you realize that all alcohol usually does for you is allow you to sit in the same place jabbering about nothing for four hours with people you’re not even sure you like (one of them is you). As far as I’m concerned, it’s a recipe for a perfect night.
Imagine this scenario: you meet up with people, drink something that signifies “beer” just enough for you to relax and be social, converse for an hour or two without saying anything particularly mean or funny or interesting, and then once your ass gets sore and you realize you’ve had about enough of the human experience for one night, you leave and go home and read a book in bed until you fall asleep at 11 PM, one day closer to the sweet release of death, substituting for contentment with the momentary relief of not having fucked anything up too badly for anybody today. Repeat forever. It’s not bad, you guys. Not bad at all.
My current favorite beer is Clausthaler. It tastes like sand-flavored soda. I love it so much I could drink like four of them in a week. Any more than that and I get a headache. As sensory experiences go, there’s nothing better in the world than opening up an ice cold Clausthaler, taking that first big swig, realizing this is the price you’re paying for being an actual human being, and choking half to death on regret and loss.
I recommend it to somebody. I recommend it to myself. That’s enough. And I would probably also recommend it to anybody currently coming unglued without knowing it. You don’t want to know it, guys. It sucks to know it.