Audience of One

"There is no faster way to create enduring unhappiness than to act against your beliefs."

One phrase in the "Best Lent Ever" podcast really caught my attention today. "We should live our lives for an audience of one." I had just finished up posting a message to a long-time friend of mine on the MMListserv, a girl that I held virtual hands with as she weaned herself off alcohol. She and I have come a long way since then and she has become one of the most dynamic, self-assured women I know. Through her messages, I can see how much she values herself these days. She wrote this morning that an old friend is coming to visit her and she worried about he'll expect of her. It made me think of how much we worry about what our friends think when we first try to quit drinking or change our drinking in any way, it's as if they are an audience we have invited to watch our life and we are playing a role for them, even though we know, offstage, we are a totally different person. I don't know about you, but I'm kind of disappointed that Val Kilmer isn't Doc. Holliday in real life. We don't want people to be disappointed when they find out that the person they saw on that stage is not who we really are, so we stay up there on that f'ing stage for years-for me it was decades-and we use booze to keep us in our role. I lived a conflicted, divided life for way too long-that's why the voice in my head never shut up, it just kept saying, "Come on, you can do better than this. This isn't the role you were born for.."

I finally did come of that stage, more like tumbled off into the orchestra pit. It took a while to quit trying to play the role, though, I'd been playing it so long I'd forgotten who I really was. But I came back to myself when I no longer had booze leading me away. The Best Lent Ever refers to that "audience of one" as God, but I think it can also apply to ourselves. When you become brave enough to act as yourself, your authentic self, that audience of one in your head quits throwing tomatoes and sits back in awed silence to watch the rest of the show.

Trigger, and I'm not talking about a horse!

My post on the MM boards the other day:
Hi all,
I kind of fell of the internet recovery support planet for the month of February, sometimes I need a break from the focus on recovery and need time to go out and start my days acting like a "normal" person-it doesn't take long for me to remember I'm not a normal person and just like thoughts of drinking inundated my head for over 3 decades, thoughts of recovery and reminders that I am a person who still has to think about not drinking on a regular basis invade. No, I didn't drink. Instead, my break from recovery consisted of starting out my days taking my morning walk, messing around in the garden, and not getting on the computer until high noon. I needed that time away to re-infuse my enthusiasm.

So, I'm back. I was reading through the Fabuary thread over on the MM Forum and one post in particular caught my eye. The writer said they were bored because they avoided doing the enjoyable things they associated with drinking. I know that a lot of people do the same thing, but I didn't. One reason I didn't check-out AA when I decided to quit drinking is because I knew they were going to tell me to avoid bars and people who drank, for a year. I could not do that and did not even want to do that. My spouse still drank heavily, all my friends still drank heavily, and besides, some of my favorite places are bars, not the loud music blaring party bars or hip-chic wine bars, I love peeling paint, scarred up floors, torn leather booths, main street small town bars where the same old cronies show up every afternoon at the same time to take their seat at the bar. I grew up in those places, I sure didn't want to avoid them.

I guess, because I had that mindset, bars have never been a trigger for me, my heavy drinking friends have never been a trigger either. Some things that were once triggers, like beautiful sunsets and hot days no longer bother me, you can't really avoid those things. However, I do still have triggers, things that make me very melancholy for the old days, times that make me think, "These are the special times I should allow myself to have a drink." I can't really avoid these either, but I still don't drink, I just let myself feel sorry for myself for a bit. Here's a handful of them: country music, hotel rooms, airports, swimming pools, sidewalk cafes in beautiful cities.

Not that many anymore, thank God. Of course, there are emotional triggers too and they run the gamut from boredom to anxiety to sorrow, can't avoid those either but I have to say, rarely is my first thought, "I could sure use a drink" these days and never do I think, "I deserve a drink."

My point is, one month doesn't get you to the point that you are able to enjoy life without alcohol, especially if you are avoiding everything else you enjoyed. The triggers are going to be there, somewhere, no matter how hard you try to avoid them, so why not go out and face them so they lose their power because one thing I've seen over and over on here and I know firsthand is that boredom is the number one trigger that causes relapse. Life is blah for a while after you quit drinking, don't make it more blah by avoiding everything and everyone you love.

Just my two centavos.

How The Heck Are You? 6/6/2017: Trying is Success

To put it bluntly, I'm exhausted. The last five days have proven how out of shape I am, embarrassingly. Maybe I need to rent a 5 year old for the rest of the summer. One more imperfection. 

When do we finally accept that we're never going to be perfect? Is there a point where we finally relax and give ourselves a wink when we don't toe the line.  Am I ever going to not think that eating a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast sounds more inviting than a banana? Is procrastinating ever going to be a thing of the past? Not likely.

But then again, if we totally accept ourselves as we are, do we then quit trying, quit striving?  What does life become then? A chocolate chip breakfast wait until tomorrow existence? I don't want that either.

So I guess what I need to learn to accept is that I'm always going to be enticed by perfection, even though I probably won't strive hard enough to reach it. At least I'll strive. I can't let my acknowledgment of my imperfections keep me from trying.

So I guess I've effectively talked myself out of that chocolate chip cookie this morning. Maybe tomorrow.

"I try therefore I succeed."

How the Heck Are You?

Perverse Pleasure

If you asked me what I love about sobriety, I would say, the starkness and solitude of it. If I was going to paint a word picture of that starkness, it would be a shaft of winter sunlight piercing through a window with plain cotton curtains onto a weathered gray table with a centerpiece of fruit. Or, a still as a church, snow covered prairie with a lone tree stripped of its leaves and one lonely set of footprints.

For so long I feared that starkness, it is exactly what I didn't want. I wanted whirling lights and ringing laughter and the never ever alone-ness of drinking.

But then, the laughter became hollow and the lights dizzying and I found myself so many times alone in a crowd. At least I thought I was. Was I the only one that had begun to dread the life I thought I loved?  Was I the only one who kept drinking long after I wanted to stop?

Was I the only one scared to death to imagine a life stripped down and myself naked?

I received this comment the other day from a friend of mine who read my book:

"I didn't start reading your book because of my drinking, but you got me thinking

maybe I should be thinking about it. Your description of how you are
seeing the world sober, was an eye opening reminder for me. I have
never been one for New Years Eve partying because I take a perverse
pleasure in waking up with a clear head when the rest of the world has
a hangover."

I agree. There is a certain perverse pleasure in knowing I am one of a hardy but small population who is sober when the rest of the world seems to be gleefully drunk or not-so-gleefully hungover.

There is a special-ness. Even a superior-ness. As though I've been chosen. 

But I know that's not true, because I know everyone that suffers can make the choice. 

We are not chosen. 

We choose...

The perverse and seldom achieved pleasure.

We choose...

Serenity.

Trigger Mountain

Years ago I dragged my oldest brother to a huge party in our hometown, This party was a yearly event and half the town was invited and the other half spent the evening wondering what they'd done to piss the hosts off. My brother, Pat, had been sober well over 10 years at this point, he no longer lived in our hometown and both he and I thought it would be a great chance for him to see a bunch of old friends.

We'd been there about an hour when he sought me out.

"I need to go, " he said.

"Oohkay...just let me find so-and-so and say, 'Good-bye," I replied.

"No," Pat said, "I need to go. NOW!"

So, we left.

I remember wondering how the pull to drink could still be so strong in my brother who had never shown a moment of weakness in over 10 years.

I found out a few days ago.

The minute I got the word out that I'd published my book, I hitched up a rented airstream camper and headed into the depths of Yellowstone, far from internet and tv and all social media.

The Tetons and Yellowstone are slices of untouched paradise here on earth, mouth dropping beautiful,but when we were done with sightseeing every day and back at our campsite, with nothing but a roaring campfire and nature to distract me, I was at loose-ends with myself. I didn't have the book to work on, I didn't have my cycle of social media interaction to lasso me in, I didn't have the mindlessness of tv...

I was bored out of my gourd and that is dangerous ground. Because I knew the one thing that could end that boredom. I wouldn't have to do a thing but drink, and all of a sudden the enchantment would begin. The pull was strong. After five years.

This was my and the cap'n's first voyage into camping. I'd camped as a kid, but he never had, and two days in to the trip, I could tell he wasn't warming to my vision of our future spent in a vintage trailer on an endless ribbon of highway.

I knew if I'd still been drinking, it would have seemed so much more fun. We would have gotten  drunk around that campfire and sang and danced and we'd would have convinced ourselves that the camping life was the life for us.

That's how we ended up on a boat.

That's how we ended up in Mexico.

Continually drinking until a new life seemed to hold all the promise that our current life didn't.

Now I don't drink and this life I have is my life, the life I've worked to build for five years. There are times it is boring, there are times I wish it were enhanced and more enthralling than it is.

It would be so easy and quick to make it so.

And totally devoid of any effort or value.

I'm done escaping, I don't need to go find a better life.  I'm staying here where I belong.  Maybe I'll hang some new curtains.

Self-Preservation

So, I went to mass last Sunday (I bet you guys are "praying" for the day I return to MX and all my blogs start out, "When I was walking on the beach this morning...), I wasn't really in the mood, the cap'n and I had been fighting and I was on Day 6 of no carbs which means no ice cream and I was that kind of weepy where if anybody looked at me wrong or said something nice, I was going to burst into tears. I huddled over in the corner of the very back pew to avoid either circumstance and kind of wondered what the heck I was doing there.

My inner voice had bribed me by saying, "There might be something really valuable at mass today. Something that will make giving up drinking and ice cream and everything else that makes life worth living  worth it."

"Huh?" I said. But I went.

I was sitting there before mass started trying not to think about how sorry I felt for myself, when I got the idea to open up the missal to a random page and see if there was a message there for me.

Yep, there was.

Here it is:

"I will extol you, Oh Lord, for you drew me clear/and did not let my enemy rejoice over me. Oh Lord, you brought me up from the netherworld/you preserved me from among those going down into the pit. "

Yeah, I think that was meant for me.

Now, the task is to figure out why I was preserved.

I guess that's a question for all of us who have found a lasting sobriety, Why did we make it, when so many don't? I don't think it has anything to do with being chosen, or being stronger, or being smarter, or being anything more than the others.

I think it has only to do with choosing to save ourselves. It has to do with putting ourselves first.

No matter what.

To love ourselves.

No matter what.

To not drink.

No matter what.

Though the mountains may fall and the hills turn to dust.

Amen.

For those still struggling:

Quit pickling yourself, preserve yourself for something better.

Choose you!

Over and over again.

No matter what.

(Ha ha, disregard the whiny, self-pitying first few paragraphs of this post, that was a hormonal, carb-deficient, atypical day. I still wouldn't trade it for a hangover, though!)

I'm Listening

My old friend Hilda once described to me the day she relapsed after 6 years.

"It was just another day, I got off work and decided I wanted to drink, so I did," she said.

Followed by, "I've never been able to stay quit so long since then."

I couldn't understand how someone could give up 6 years of sobriety that easily, but then there was last week.

Just like Hilda's "just another day," last week was "just another week." Before I get you too worried, I did not drink. But I wanted to worse than I have since the early days of my sobriety. And there was no good reason, which makes me think, What if there had been a good reason?

Instead it was a week of the usual insecurities, those moments of feeling like an outsider, those moments of feeling I've not done as well as so-and-so or as much, those moments when my best will never be as good as someone else's and, really, why would I even try? Do I really want to set myself up for failure. For ridicule? What if I let everyone down?

I whined about it all week on the message boards and during chat, causing some alarm amongst those that see me as the Pollyanna of the non-drinking world, because that's usually my take on sobriety. I even whined to the cap'n.

"Sometimes I don't think you realize how hard it is. Sometimes, like right this very minute, I really, really miss drinking!"

He just told me that he "got it' which of course he doesn't since he still drinks. But he also told me how proud he is of me which helped a little.

Then Sunday morning rolled around. I've been making myself go to mass every Sunday lately, I'm not sure why, seems like I've done pretty well without it all these years. But just like when I started this blog, and just like when I decided to write the never-finished book, that inner voice-it's really not all that still, Eckhart, old buddy-has been urging me to go. Last Sunday was no different but I was steadfastly ignoring it and not feeling bad at all about it. Then, at the last minute, I decided to go.

See, I've learned that my inner voice usually knows something I don't.

The Gospel was a familiar one, the one where Jesus tells his apostles that they have to give up all their earthly goods to follow him.  The priest expounded on it by saying that it doesn't really mean that we have to drain our bank accounts and donate our houses to the homeless to do His will, it just means that we have to recognize what it is we're supposed to do and be willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary to do that one thing.

Because it is the right thing for us.

Lightbulb!

I knew the one thing I had to do and I knew that I had to give up all my earthly insecurities to do it. Because it is what I'm supposed to do.  The tides turned and all the missing of drinking and feeling sorry for myself disappeared. I've been riding a cloud of "rightness" every since.

It was the same when I finally quit drinking, when I finally listened to the "right" voice and did what I knew I was supposed to be doing all along. Once I accepted that, the urges and the doubts disappeared. Because it was the right thing for me.

In the last 24 hours, I have seen four people return to the sobersphere, to their blog or to their online support community, after being gone for a while. They may not know it, but they are following that inner voice, they are doing the right thing.  Whether we believe in a Higher Power or not, we recognize what is right for us, we just need to learn to embrace it.

Even more, to revel in it.

I Think I'll Start Drinking Again...When Wine Comes From Cows

The other night at abs chat we had a familiar conversation. One of our members who has recently decided to quit drinking forever isn't enjoying it too much. She's depressed, she says, when she thinks of never, ever drinking again.

Some of us old timers did a virtual nod in commiseration.

We all race to type in, "That's why we don't say the word forever. We just take it that proverbial one day at a time."

It got me to thinking about what kind of circumstances would lead me to drink again. Then I got a little too excited and happy thinking about funerals and terminal diagnosis's so I quit thinking in that direction. 

I finally decided I could try drinking again when it held as much allure for me as MILK.

I don't hate milk. I just haven't drank it for about forty years. No, not even when I was pregnant or breast feeding, I just doubled up on the calcium supplement which might explain why my oldest son is in the medical journals as the youngest person with kidney stones. ;0

See, I could imagine visiting Wisconsin and not drinking milk, even though it is known worldwide for its milk.

I would have no problem going to a milk tasting and spitting out my "taste" before I moved on to the next frothy bottle of milk.

And, I'd have no problem taking a sip of milk from a wedding toast and then dumping the rest of it in a potted plant.

When I get to that level of disinterest in booze, then I might try drinking again.

I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Bone Yard

Days of Sobriety = 361

I still have those nights of digging up the bones of my matrimony to booze, as evidenced in my blog of a week ago, Once In A Blue Moon , but I never wake up in the morning wishing I'd drank the night before.

Last night I had my first drinking dream in a long time, I was with the cap'n and my boys on some tropical vacation, at one point in the dream I was sitting alone in a bar/restaurant and when I got up I realized I could barely walk.  Then I belatedly realized, that I had just drank one drink and I marveled at how quick and hard it hit me, and immediately all those old compensation methods kicked in, how to try to walk and talk so nobody would know that I'd been drinking, and I was already planning about how I was going to lie to you all about it. 

Of course, I was blessedly relieved when I woke up to find it was all a dream and I remembered that in the dream my boys had been much younger than they are now.  They had been teens and tweens, the same age they were when my drinking was escalating, so maybe that dream was a necessary visit to the Bone Yard.  A gentle reminder?

I'm on call this weekend, so even though I'm not scheduled to work I set the alarm for 6:00 am so I could jump out of bed and put on my make-up and curl my hair just in case I get called out and have to go to work where I will don a surgical cap and mask and cover it all up anyway.  Go figure.

But then I crawled back into bed with my laptop and started strolling through the blogs, what a pleasure it is to be able to do so at my leisure this Saturday morning instead of in a pre-dawn rush before I go to work or in the evening when I am a barely functioning, brain dead zombie.

My friend and mentor, cp, posted a poem this week about how we find our way through recovery on the bones of others.  So it seems  this morning, I've been strolling through yet another Bone Yard. The poem is from the book,  The Zen of Recovery.

The Bones of Others

by 

Mel Ash

If you are here to read this,

think of those who aren't.

Pray for them:good thoughts for those

who lost their minds, love and years

to compulsion, addiction and fears.

Think of their great sacrifice.

We recover on the bones of others.

Wrap your loving thoughts around them:

alone no more.

If you are here and recovering

your original shining true self,

a moment of silence for those driven mad,

by the voices and screams of disease--

driven dreams. We walk from night to day

on a path made of the bones of others.

Hold them tightly in the warm arms of your spirit:

cold no more

If you are here and attaining freedom,

A thousand bows for those who didn't

reach this shore and drowned in a

sea of despair:suffering no more.

We walk in freedom past cages made

of the bones of others.

They hand us the keys of desperation.

Quench their burning thirst

with the tears of your soul.

Calm their cravings. Still their minds.

Grant them peace in the dark and

lonely places below and above the ground.

Fill the gaping holes left by their deaths

with the immensity of your love.

Remember them as you sleep;

remember them as you wake.

Only a thought is the difference

between you and the bones of others.

To all of those that have gone before me, all of those who walk along side of me, and all of those that will follow:  Thank You

P.S. Randy looks a lot finer here than he did in his recent mug shots.  Hey Randy, if you need a shoulder, give me a holler.

Once In A Blue Moon

At the end of the day faith is a funny thing. It turns up when you don't really expect it. It's like one day you realize that the fairy tale may be slightly different than you dreamed. The castle, well, it may not be a castle. And it's not so important happy ever after, just that its happy right now. See once in a while, once in a blue moon, people will surprise you , and once in a while people may even take your breath away.------Meredith Gray "Gray's Anatomy"

Day 353 of Sobriety

Warning!  If you are early in your sobriety, maybe you should not read this blog today.

I am sitting here on this Friday night waiting for the cap'n to get here.  We have been apart for almost three months, except for one conjugal weekend, and tomorrow we are headed home to Colorado for the Labor Day weekend.


I am sitting here having wistful thoughts.  I am thinking, if I were still drinking, I'd be soaking in a bubble bath with a cold glass of pinot grigio, or better yet, a strong Jack Daniels and diet Pepsi and I'd be bubbling over with anticipation at the thought of seeing the cap'n and the weekend in front of us.

If I were still drinking, I'd have fresh drinks in hand when the cap'n pulled up to the curb and we'd go sit out on the back step of this shitty little apartment and we'd watch the blue moon come up and we'd talk and talk and talk about our summer and our plans for Mexico.  We'd refill our glasses and we'd put on some music, probably some John Denver, and we'd dream and laugh and probably dance a little under that blue moon.

If I were still drinking, we'd get up in the morning, we'd most assuredly be hungover, but we'd have a bloody Mary or a glass of wine and we'd head to Colorado where we would spend the days drinking cold beer on the deck, or fixing hearty pots of chili or stew while sipping red wine,  and we'd build a big fire in the pit every night and sit out and watch  the stars come out.  And we'd drink, and sing, and laugh and dream some more.

Now this is the part where I'm supposed to tell you that I can still do all that without drinking and it will still be as much fun, but we all know that is so much bullshit.  The cold hard fact is that somethings are not as much fun without alcohol.  Whether it's "real" fun or whether it's as "meaningful" doesn't matter a tinker's dam, it's not the same.

 I miss that fun. 

Tonight all the sad truths I know about me and drinking are little comfort and all the blessings I've been granted in my sobriety seem a little pale in the light of that big blue moon, but they are enough.  And even though part of me wants to play Russian roulette with the bottle again, I won't. 

Because I know if I were still drinking, that sooner or later that bullet would click into the intended chamber and I would finally have to pay the penalty for playing.

And I still want to see what's waiting for me down this road I've chosen.

But once in a Blue Moon, I still miss it.

Saturdays With Friends

 Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: Their measurements are being taken and compared. ~Erica Jong

348 Days of Sober Sex (I'm just checking to see if anyone actually reads this or if they just skim over it.)

Late Saturday mornings, after she had stood eagle-eyed over her under-aged, under-paid, and under-motivated house slaves (my brothers and sister and I), making sure that we had dusted under Dad's bowling trophies and raked the avocado green shag carpet until it stood proudly upright from its usual downtrodden  clumps, my mother would grab up her bottle of Tab and pack of Winstons and head down the street to her best friend, Lucy's house.  Mom and Lucy would convene at Lucy's just polished lemony fresh modern American Colonial dining room set, ashtray between them and ice cold Tabs and cigarettes in hand, while Lucy's own, recently released from indenture, house monkey's (my best friend Lisa and her sisters) were sprawled out in front of the TV in the family room watching the hip kids on the east coast gyrate on American Band Stand.

I usually beat Mom out the door on her way to our best friends' house and would already be sprawled belly down alongside the Seigrist girls, with my chin in my hands and my calves in the air, feet jerking spasmodically to the tunes of the Stylistics or the Carpenters, my feet ain't got rhythm on land or air.  Once Dick Clark bid, "For now, Dick Clark...so long" we would wander into the kitchen and perch ourselves on the maple veneered captain's chairs and listen intently as our mothers gossiped about the other neighbors, or debated whether Dr. Lee Baldwin, a recovering alcoholic, would finally find love in the arms of Dr. Lesley, or would he remain faithful to his neurotic institutionalized wife, Meg.  The denizens of Port Charles, the home town of our mothers' favorite soap, General Hospital, were as well known to us as the Andersons and the Spencers who lived across the street.

Our mothers would shoo us away occasionally but we were always drawn back by their hushed voices and smothered laughter.

Yesterday morning, was a bright late summer Saturday morning here in the bread basket of the world and I was in the mood to spend it with a friend so I wondered over to SoberMomRocks blog, Oh for the love of...me to do some re-reads and make some comments.  Before long, she commented back to me through email and then I commented back to her and ....before long we had a conversation going.  We both thought, Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could get together with our other fellow bloggers and have coffee and just talk.  (Didn't we, Sherry? I've been known to drag people unwittingly into my wild-ass schemes before. ) But since we can't do that, wouldn't it be nice to be able to chat real time instead of having these kind of one-sided conversations we get to have with our blogs.  I know we kind of do that with our comments but sometimes we miss the replies or we don't pay as much attention to what the other commenters say.  Okay, maybe it's just me that does that.



So what'd ya'll think?  Wanna find an empty chatroom for just us gal bloggers (we might even let in a token guy or two, I'm pretty sure the gal in the gauchos above has hairy legs to go along with that mustache) and our followers somewhere or design our own to meet up and just talk sometimes? 

Just a thought and not that consequential, if we like things the way they are, we like things the way they are.

  BTW SoberMomRocks Sherry is not my friend Sherry of last week's blogs...or is she? Maybe my friend Sherry has an alter-ego, split personality, sober twin who disappeared years ago when her car broke down and a double-decker VW band full of Deadheads picked her up on their way to a concert and someone slipped her some bad mushrooms and she has suffered amnesia ever since... Sorry, must be the effects of being the child of a cigarette smoking, Tab drinking, soap opera watching mother of the 70's ( Sherry, I hope we don't find out that Elmo is really your brother from that brief period when your father turned to the arms of another woman when he thought your mother was lost at sea but then she was rescued from that deserted island in the South Pacific by the captain and crew of small tourist boat out for a three hour tour carrying a professor, a girl from Kansas, a millionare and his wife, and a movie star that had a daily fresh change of clothes, including evening wear, for three years.)

Thelma and Louise

Thelma: Hey Louise, better slow down, I'll just die if we get caught over a speeding ticket. Are you sure we should be driving like this, I mean in broad daylight and everything?
Louise Sawyer: No we shouldn't, but I want to put some distance between us and the SCENE OF OUR LAST GOD DAMNED CRIME!
[Thelma laughs and screams]
Thelma: Oh man! You wouldn'ta believed it, it was like I was doing it all my life, nobody woulda believed it.
Louise Sawyer: Think you found your calling?
Thelma: May-be... may-be.
[gets up in her seat]
Thelma: The call of the wild!

Days of Sobriety: 338

I have been trying to talk myself out of writing this blog all evening and now it's time to go to bed and I could be curled up reading Fifty Shades Of Gray (to my commenter, grateful:  Of course, I'm reading that book, and we'll compare book reports later), but this damn thing just won't be put to rest.  Mainly because I'm worried about my best friend, Sherry, who just got evicted from her apartment.

I was out for a walk this evening and I passed a neat little older home, two story with a wrap around porch and a stained glass transom light over the front door, and I thought to myself, "If I won the lottery, I would buy that house for Sherry."  And then, of course, I started making stipulations.  The list kept growing.  She couldn't move her dogs in, especially the one that poops on the floor every time it barks which is every 37 seconds.  She couldn't move her kids in, especially the one that steals her money so she has to put it in her robe pocket and sleep in her robe every night.  She couldn't resale the house for cash.  She couldn't drink.

Well, there goes that deal out the window, we all know that last one's a deal breaker.

I think I've told you about my best friend.  We're so alike in so many ways.  We were both born in this same little dusty cow town.  We grew up in middle class neighborhoods with parents that stayed married and older brothers and sisters.  In high school we both existed on the fringe of the popular crowd, we weren't friends then but we knew of each other.  Later on we both worked at the hospital but in different departments, then Sherry transferred to the OR and we found out we had one more thing in common, we both loved to drink, and our friendship was forged.

We lived in the same neighborhood, we both had three boys and unhappy marriages.  By day we were dedicated scrub nurses, by night we were two boozy bosom buddies trying to escape our humdrum lives.  Thick as thieves we were, lying and cheating and covering each others tracks no matter where they led.

But there were always differences.  I won't go into them but I think if Sherry and I were Thelma and Louise, I would be Louise and Sherry would be Thelma.  It was as if, like Thelma and Louise, we were both on the same road trip but there were different views out our windows.  My side had pastoral meadows, gently rolling hills, babbling brooks and all kinds of bucolic shit while hers was all craggy cliffs, sharp drop offs and beware of falling rocks signs.

I don't know about you, but when that movie ended, I always liked to imagine that Louise jumped out of that car before it went flying over that cliff.  At the last minute, she saw there was no way in hell they were going to make it, she looked over at Thelma and said, "Sorry babe, you're on your own.'' and then threw herself from the car, did a couple of somersaults and then stood up, dusted herself off and walked back to the Harvey Keitel character and rode off into the sunset in an RV.

As for Thelma, I always thought even if she jumped from the car and saved herself that time, she was going to end up back at the edge of that cliff over and over again, and someday she was going to wait too long to save herself.

And I know, that no matter how good the view was on my side of the road, that if I hadn't quit drinking 338 days ago someday I would have ended up at the bottom of that cliff with Thelma.

I'm glad I jumped out of that damn car.

As for my friend, Sherry?  I need your help.  I don't know how to keep her from plunging off that cliff.

50 Shades Of Gray

Days of Sobriety: 333 (that's gotta be a lucky number)

This is going on record as being the shortest blog in the history of this blog.  I think. I don't have enough time to go back and check because I'm scrambling about getting ready to take my grandson out of town to shop for school clothes and make on last big splash in a hotel swimming pool before school starts.

I did make time to go for a walk this morning, the weather has cooled off and it's lying to me and telling me that autumn is already here.  I walked past my old high school, it has been boarded up for years and is an eyesore that the town can't figure out what to do with, there is too much asbestos in it to tear it down.  Out front is a stump of an old tree and I remember being down on all fours retching under that tree.  It was after my first high school dance and I was 15.  In the midst of my bilious soliloquy, I noticed a pair of black shiny shoes planted in front of me, and my eyes traveled up a blue uniformed figure to squint into the disgusted eyes of our town's own version of Andy Griffith, his shiny black shoes now spattered with the cherry vodka streaked contents of my stomach.

Now flash forward 34 years and I am once again on all fours retching but this time the figure hovering over me is the cap'n and his eyes are worried and tired as he tries to hand me a cold washcloth.  Once again, there are cherry colored streaks in my heaved up stomach contents but this time they are probably the results of a Mallary-Weiss laceration (forgive me for playing nurse) from my violent persistent vomiting.  The vodka I drank this time wasn't cherry flavored and I only drank it because I had run out of bourbon and rum.

Really?  This acrid, damaging, masochistic relationship with alcohol is what I worked so hard at to maintain?  And it had such a fortuitous beginning, ha.  Talk about Fifty Shades of Gray

I have three words to the commenters over on "Crying Out Now" this morning who are so scared, as I was, to let this relationship go:

GET A LIFE!

Okay, four words:

NOW!

Someone To Watch Over Me

I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am constantly shocking. ~Jean Cocteau

Day 229 of Sobriety

Barbara saw her first and pointed her out to me, at first I didn't recognize her and then I noticed her halo and wings and knew that I knew her.

Barbara wanted her for her own but she wavered for just a minute too long and I stole her out from under her nose.  Don't you hate friends that do that?  Lo siento, Babs, but she belongs to me.

My poor Guardian Angel, I've certainly given her a run for her money.  She must be plumb tuckered out from swooping down to keep me from falling off leaky old boats or wobbly old docks, or from sitting on a bar stool cringing while I regaled the crowd with another dirty joke or from holding my hand during the long nights of withdrawal.

So now she hangs at the side of my bed looking down at me and looking....bored.  Too bad!

Hey! What does that say about my sex life? Ja Ja Ja!

Effervescence

effervesce

2.to issue forth in bubbles.

3.to show enthusiasm, excitement, liveliness, etc..

Day 222 of Sobriety (Hey, Room 222 was one of the Friday night line up of my favorite shows when I was about 7 years old.  The line-up was The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and then Love American Style.  God, I'm old!).

I almost groaned out loud when my brother-in-law asked if we wanted to go snorkeling in Akumal the next morning.  Didn't he know I had lived on a boat for twelve years?  Didn't he know I had seen my fill of fish and underwater things? Truth be told, I'd never really "got" the allure of snorkeling, it was just one more activity that took time away from the one activity I enjoyed the most. Drinking.

 I didn't groan. 

You see, I was on my best behavior after the last disastrous visit I had with my brothers-in-law a year ago at Carnaval in Merida.  During that visit I spent the better part of two days being moved around by my brothers-in-law and the cap'n in a catatonic drunken stupor amidst the revelers, the lesser part was spent passed out behind closed shutters in the hotel room as the cacophonous parade passed by down below.

 So now I just gritted my teeth and made myself smile and say, "I can't wait."

Simply put, it was glorious.  I floated languorously  above the rainbow fish cavorting below.  It was effortless and, for the first time, I experienced the peace that I had heard others expound on for years in regard to the underwater world.  For the first time, I wasn't weighted down by the edge of panic brought about by a hangover, or pulled by the thought of a cocktail waiting for me in the boat or at the bar.

My brothers-in-law laughed when I said, "I think that is the first time I've ever snorkeled without a hangover. I want to try it again.  I want to try everything over again."

I was effervescent.

Oh, the first definition of effervescent? It is: 1. To emit small bubbles of gas, as a carbonated or fermenting liquid.

"Perdon mi!"

Happy Sober Easter II: The Sequel

 Ninas first Easter egg hunt.

I lied on my Weight Watchers list. I put down that I had 3 eggs... but they were Cadbury chocolate eggs. ~Caroline Rhea

Day 218 of Sobriety

I looked back to see where I was on this journey last Easter, I was on Day 9 of one of my abs stints, so this is my second Easter in a row that I have been sober.  Hallelujah!  I am so thankful for that. I don't usually blog about my gratitude list but I do one daily, sometimes more than once a day, sometimes all day long.  Easter morning seems like an especially good time to be grateful.

Today I am grateful for:
God's love that didn't and won't forsake me and abides forevermore.
My love of self that perseveres through all the trials and tribulations.
The love of  others, here and in heaven, which sustains me.
My love for others which compels me.
Boundless love that renews and refills each day with hope, forgiveness, and joy.

I think I'll include chocolate covered almonds in pretty Easter pinks and yellows and blues for good measure.

Felices Pascuas, Mi Amigos!

Coming Clean: Part II...finally

It is the hour to rend thy chains,
The blossom time of souls. ~Katherine Lee Bates

Day 216 of Sobriety

So here is what happened.  The day before my birthday, the cap'n and I were sitting in a little courtyard restaurant in Merida for lunch.  Because I wanted to celebrate I ordered a daquiri limon sin alcohol con ron seperado. In other words in English, I ordered a daquiri without alcohol but asked the waiter to go ahead and serve the rum separate on the side.  I did this because they are going to charge me the same with or without rum and someone at the table will always drink that shot of rum. (Yes, it's usually the cap'n and yes, I know how to spell E-N-A-B-L-E-R).  Anyway, the drink came and I did what I usually do, I sniffed the drink. I've ordered a daquiri in this same manner before and the waiters or bartender, who just can't comprendo why someone would want a daquiri without alcohol, have still delivered to me a benign looking frosty drink loaded with enough rum to make my eyes water. In the past, I have always promptly returned these drinks back to the bartender and ordered a Coke-lite.  This time the sniff test had a negative result.

But when I tasted the drink, it tasted...uh, funny.  It didn't taste like rum but it didn't taste like a straight lemonade (which is what I should have ordered) either.  Was it possible, after all my safeguards, the bartender had still snuck in a little hooch? The feeling of elation that swept through me was intense, and I'm not exaggerating.  In a blink of an eye, I rationalized that I had done my part and, if this drink happened to have alcohol in it, I was absolved of any wrongdoing. And it was my birthday. And I was turning 50.  And that was special enough for a little transgression.  And no one would know.  And, after all, I had done my part.  And maybe I would just allow myself this one day to drink.

And instead of sending that drink back, I gulped it down and motioned for the waiter to bring me another.

Alas, the drinks had no alcohol in them and the only buzz I got was a sugar buzz and as we walked back to our hotel I had that sluggish, indolent feeling that too much food and sun gives you.  But those two bogus drinks had lit a fuse in my brain and I had all but made up my mind to give myself a  special 50th birthday gift.  I was going to let myself drink.  Just a glass of wine, okay maybe two.  Just for that one day.  

 I know. I know.  Cringe!

We got to our room at the hotel and I turned the key in the lock.

"Surprise!"

Our friends, Barbara and Jack, had driven up to share my birthday with me. 

Poof! There went the insidious birthday present I had planned for myself.  Because, while I knew the cap'n wouldn't support me in my plan to allow myself to drink, he wouldn't tell on me. He'd keep my secret.  But all my plans and schemes were now laid to ruin because my friends had showed up and I have too much pride to let them see me throw away everything I had worked for and they had supported me through. And they would tell everybody else.

Thank you, God!

That cliff is still right in front of me.  I'm not standing at the edge looking over anymore but I'm just a hop and a skip away.  I need to keep backing up. 

This week I am laboring to dig my well of compassion for others a little deeper, I still suffer the sin of condescension and I know when I get to thinking of myself being above others' transgressions my Co-worker is fixin' to give me a smack-down.  I need to remind myself that when I was considering that duplicitous birthday gift, I knew very well that booze isn't a gift that keeps on giving, instead it keeps on taking and taking and taking...and you never know what it's going to leave you with.

So today I'm just out there doing my best to keep on digging and backing up.

Coming Clean: Part I

 Men are not punished for their sins, but by them. ~Elbert Hubbard

Day 207 of Sobriety

I promised I would always be honest and I have a confession to make.  You might have noticed that lately instead of putting “Day # of Abs” up there on my day count I sneakily changed it to “Day # of Sobriety” and that is because I have drank in those 207 days.  Early in my sobriety, I think it was  in the first two or three months, I took four little sips of beer at four separate times.  Gasp!  It was early in my sobriety and I can remember that the days when I chose to imbibe in my four little sips were sunny and bright and warm, the kind of days for which cold bracing beer is just made and I just wanted that taste on my tongue for just an instant.  And that was it, that was enough.  I didn’t confess it to ya’ll at the time because I truly didn’t think it was significant, but then I read a post from a fellow traveler on this journey and he had taken a toast at a friend’s funeral and he was feeling very torn about whether to reset his sobriety date in AA and he was questioning the other members of the message board about what he should do.  From the responses he received, I realized that even though I might not attach much significance to those 4 little sips of beer, others do, and because I want others to recognize my sincerity and integrity and commitment in this vital venture of mine, I changed my Days to Sobriety Days instead of Abs Days and more importantly I quit taking sips of beer, or anything else.

So why did I not think those 4 little sips were significant?  Because at none of the times that I took those sips did I believe that I was jeopardizing my sobriety. I didn’t and still don’t, believe that any one of those 4 little sips would send me spiraling into a relapse.  And they didn’t. The Catholic religion believes that the difference between a venial and a mortal sin is that when you choose to commit a mortal sin you willingly and knowingly turn your back on God.  Those little sips were venial sins against my sobriety, I didn’t turn my back on sobriety.  I believe it’s the significance that we place on things that give them their power.  If I had believed those four little sips would trigger a relapse, they could have.  If I believed cooking with wine could steal my control and have me pouring a glass while I cook, it might.  If I believed that if I continue to go to bars and parties, I would eventually, inevitably drink, I probably would.  But those are the beliefs of others, they are not mine, and that is why I have not joined with some of the established establishments in this field, because if I started attaching the importance they feel I should on some things that I don’t think are all that important, I may start to believe, as they do, that I am destined to fail. And I will.

Where do I draw the line?  What is the difference between a sip and a glass or two of wine if I don’t attach any significance to them?  I don’t know, I just know for me there is a difference. Why, if they were not significant, did I wait so long to write abou tmy 4 little sips?  My surface response is that I always thought there were more important things to write about, but I’m sure down deep under the surface there is some avoidance of the issue involved.  I don’t want to spend a whole lot of effort justifying those 4 little sips because, then again, I’m attaching too much significance to them and giving them too much power.  

You might have noticed this blog is just Part 1.  There was an incidence during my birthday weekend that I feel jeopardized my sobriety more than those 4 little sips but in my commitment to be more concise, I’ll save that for my next blog. 

So today I’m just out there doing my best to avoid the near occasions of sin, no matter the significance or insignificance attached.

P.S. Sorry for the confusion to the early readers of this post, I forgot to put my title in the title slot. Lo siento.

P.P.S.  I just read through this post again and noticed all the errors that were there.  It's kind of a confusing post anyway and it was even more so before I corrected it.  My excuse is that we had to run into Merida early this morning and I wanted to post this before I left, knowing that by the time I got home I would have brain drain.  Instead, my brain hadn't had it's fill of caffeine or daylight yet and was still on snooze mode.  Readers of  the earlier non-improved post probably thought I'd started sipping again. Ja Ja Ja

Fixin' To

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."

Overcoming Addiction Quote by George Eliot (November 1819 - December 1880)

Day 201

Another long absence to explain/excuse away, it’s such a relief to be able to be honest and not have to cover up my drinking anymore.  Last night we were supposed to go to yet another fundraiser and I just didn’t feel like it and called my friend who was throwing it to tell her that I wasn’t going to make it, a year ago she would have assumed that I was too drunk or hungover.  Not anymore.

I’ve been busy. Busy meddling in other people’s business and busy offering unsolicited advice.  Oh, and I didn’t have any internet service for three days which nettled me to no end.  And the internet provider didn’t even call to ask for my advice, which frustrated me even further.

You see, I’m a fixer.  I love to be given a problem and asked for a solution.  Okay, maybe I’m not asked for solutions all that often but I’m always ready with one if you do ask, or even if you don’t.  Except when it comes to my own problems.  Ah-ha!  I can remember sitting on my sofa in the dark, unkempt and miserable in the midst of shaky withdrawals and telling the cap’n how much I hated “this,” how I couldn’t do it anymore, how much I hated me.  He would reply, “Fix it.”

Oh God!  How simple that solution seems now but how insurmountable it seemed then.  If you’re just starting this journey, you’re probably saying, “Tell me how, tell me how.”  If you’re where I am, you’re probably saying, “Why did it take me so long.”  And if you’ve been sober for a while, your nodding and saying, “I told you so.”

The solution is simply quit drinking.  So I quit drinking and everything is hunky-dory, right? Wrong.  Drinking is like a big road block sign warning you that there is danger ahead and that you’re better off taking the detour then hazarding the potholes and dangers that lie ahead.  For years,  I kept taking the detours and they kept taking me further and further from my destination, in the end I didn’t even remember where I wanted to go, much less how to get there.

So now I’ve climbed over the drinking road block and I’m hitting different road blocks and I have decisions to make.  I can take another detour, or change directions, or try to hitch a ride with someone and go wherever they’re going, or I can just sit there and be stuck.  OR I CAN CLIMB OVER THE DAMN THING AND START REPAIRING THE DAMN ROAD.

So last week I was sitting at one of these roadblocks, feeling trapped, and considering my options. Okay, enough already with the damn road construction, I’m going to speak plainly.  I was frustrated with a certain situation (How’s that for plain speaking?) and I was feeling trapped.  I was so sick and tired of someone else deciding what my options are.  So I decided I need to go back to work.  I mean really, here I am bellyaching and worrying about not being able to afford to live in CO and here but I won’t get off my lazy ass to support the cause?  But the problem is my ass ain’t just lazy, it’s scared.  Probably more scared than lazy.  But my ass is tired of being scared and lazy.

So I contacted some travel nursing agencies and I was actually getting past being scared to being excited while I was filling out the application packets.  One of the jobs I was really interested in was in a state that I don’t have a license in. “Just a tiny speed bump,” I thought. “All I have to do is apply for a license in that state.” WRONG!  Come to find out, in order to receive licensure in that particular state I have to prove that I have worked 520 hours in the past two years in the state I am licensed in.  I haven’t.  Major roadblock.  But not insurmountable, all I have to do is clock some hours in my home state.

I went to the website of the hospital in which I worked for 20 odd years and yes, there was an opening in the OR.  Great, right?  I wasn’t so sure.  The OR director is the same one who was my boss for a few years and we always had a good relationship….I think.  The last time I inquired about working there a few years ago, she told me that they didn’t need me, that their surgery schedule wasn’t busy enough.  That was true, but as an alcoholic, I always get to wonder if my drinking had anything to do with it.  Let me make it clear, I never went to work impaired, not unless you count hangovers, in that case I was impaired for 20 years, but I’m sure the apt description, “She’s a damn good nurse, but you know she’s a drinker” that I had heard applied to several of my esteemed colleagues was applied to me as well through the years.

I could have detoured around the discomfort of applying for a job back at this facility and applied at another facility in the state, but I really wanted to refresh my skills in a place that I was familiar with, plus, I needed a good reference from this supervisor to apply for other jobs.  So,…gulp…I emailed her about my situation and prepared to wait for the verdict.

I didn’t have to wait long. She emailed me the next morning, “I’ve been thinking about you,” she wrote, “I could really use you while some of the new staff is training”.

Alleluia! One more roadblock kicked to the ditch along with one more fear that my drinking had left more potholes to fill.

So I’m fixin’ to get my lazy, scared, old ass back to work.  There are a lot more roadblocks to get rid of before I can go back to work, and going back to work is just one more leg of the journey, but God it feels good to be back on the road. 

Damn good!  

So today I’m just out there doing by best to keep jumpin’ those roadblocks, fillin’ in the potholes and fixin’ the road that lies ahead.  I’m fixin’ to get to where I’m goin’.

P.S. In reference to the picture above, it doesn't seem to matter how far I go, I always end up back in KS.  Can someone tell me how to delete the "No Place Like Home" app in my ruby red slippers?