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.

How The Heck Are You 5/30/2017: Predictability is Under Appreciated

Just a gentle reminder

Good morning all! I seem to be in a serene period right now, God knows I needed it. Funny how that happens, how I can get pushed to my limit, to the point that I'm ready to give up, make a plan to give up, then everything smooths out and, once again, I feel like I can go on fighting.

Kind of like when I can't stand my hair any longer so I make a hair appointment and then the day of the appointment my hair looks better than it has in months. Kind of like when I was trying to figure out this drinking thing, I'd be ready to throw the towel  in (although I don't think you can ever do that once you start this fight), then I'd have one small victory, or more often, one more horrendous fallout from drinking and I'd decide I had more fight left in me. Those horrendous fallouts may have seemed like failures but usually they were the impetus I  needed to change...until I got enough sober rewards to stack up against them.

I think one reason things have seemed calmer in my world is that I'm back in a routine. This last winter in Mexico was somewhat chaotic, packing up and moving from place to place every few weeks. Now, I know I have months in front of me in which I don't plan on going anywhere. I can do my morning routine of saying my rosary and writing my morning pages, taking my bath, walking the dog... Routine grounds me and, for me, after years of the chaos of getting drunk every night and being hungover every morning, it is a privilege I never take for granted. Just last night I marveled, once again, at the fact that I actually have a bedtime routine.

Boy, I'm gabby this morning. Your turn, how the heck are you?

Funky

Skunk Ape:   a tall, hairy, upright-walking creature that smells like a black-striped funky-smelling creature and it appears to be coming out a little more often.  

I have been in a funk lately. There seem to be so many things I don't like about me and my life right now. Don't worry, I'm not going to list them.  Oh, how I miss the days when just waking up without a hangover seemed like a brand new resurrection every morning.

I think I need a day of indulgence. A day spent reading a book or binge watching Grey's Anatomy and eating potato chips and dip without guilt.  Anybody have any ideas on how to do that? I find myself telling myself all day long, "No, you can't do that, you need to do this." Being told "No" all the time is making me cranky and my inner six year old is throwing a tantrum and refusing to do what she's supposed to be doing anyway. So I'm stuck between not doing what I want and not doing what I need to do, which means I'm not doing anything.

This, too, shall pass.

I just need to move in one direction or another.

Wow! Such words of wisdom today. Hey, sobriety is not always profound. Sometimes it's funky.


I do have one ray of sunshine to pass on. A friend of mine over at Moderation Management has just started a blog, ModeratelySober.  If you're going for moderation instead of permanent abstinence from alcohol, check it out. The author has been successful moderating for a year now, so it can be done.

For some.

Not all.

How do you know if you're one of the Some?

I think the best way to tell is to try moderation under the guidelines and with the support of a group like MM.  This is not without risk. Just like those who choose permanent abstinence from alcohol, MM'ers are not immediately successful and tend to experience the same old waffling and shuffling and falling flat on their faces and rising up again that we all do in this sobriety game. That can be dangerous for those who are physically addicted to booze, like I was.

But, as stated above, the back and forth, and careening into trees happens when people head directly toward permanent abstinence without passing through Moderationville, too. I view my year attempting moderation as that same erratic time in early sobriety that is testified to by many bloggers who are pursuing abstinence.  A time of questioning of whether I really needed to stop.  I guess, for me, it seemed that if I had a guidebook in hand and a bunch of people telling me which way to go instead of just wondering around in the forest on my own, and I still couldn't find my way out of that f'ing forest, I needed to quit going in there before something large and hairy ate me.

The more insidious danger, of  attempting moderation for those that will not succeed, The Not All Gang, is getting trapped in that forest and thinking that because they've managed to survive and not get eaten by a big hairy sharp toothed creature, we should stay in the f'ing forest and keep trying.  Sometimes harm reduction keeps us from getting to the increase in good that is waiting for us outside of the forest in the sunlit meadow. We survive, but we don't thrive.

Oh yeah, the sunlit meadow. That's where I am.

Thank You, for reminding me.

P.S. Successful moderate drinkers can reach the sunlit meadow, too. The author of ModeratelySober is here.  But if you've been stuck in that f'ing forest so long that you're starting to grow moss in your fecund dewy parts, put down the drink and come enjoy the sun for awhile.

Four Years Of Breathtaking Normalcy

I am one of those dumbasses who waited until alcohol had painted such a bleak picture that normal life took on the shimmer and light of a Thomas Kinkade painting, so full of effusive light spilling out of windows and glistening every day life that it made my chest ache with longing.  I wanted that so bad but I thought it was a fairy tale.

And it was.

Real life doesn't glisten.  There aren't mittened skaters holding hands and doing loop-de-loops out on frozen ponds around every corner in the winter. Sometimes winter is just cold and bitter. Summer days can be endless and sweaty.  And those rose smothered thatch roofed cottages that Kinkade paints so well would have to have wasps' nests under the eaves. And I'm still lazier and rounder in the middle than I want to be.

Welcome to Sobriety, the Normal Life edition.

The other day I drove to Colorado Springs to look at a dog. (Yes, I'm getting the itch.)  I headed home dogless but on the way back I spotted a side road that lead along a stream.  It's fall here and the colors are starting to change and the light is so amazingly clear...so I took the road.  I drove for about twenty minutes along this sparkling stream and it hit me, I had become so accustomed to this, this freedom, that I've come to think of  it as normal.  Nothing special.  Run of the mill.

I had to remind myself that four years ago, the thought of driving into town for groceries almost sent me into a panic attack.  I would have probably had to have had a couple of glasses or more of wine before I had calmed or revived myself enough to go.

Talk about bleak..

Now, here I was driving along a back road without a speck of panic in my veins, without the constant weariness I had come to think of as normal, without the itch to get home or reach for the bottle under the seat. Instead the window was rolled down, the radio was blasting and I was at ease. I had all the time in the world.

It took my breath away.

Yesterday, the cap'n and I donned waders and got out in our stream above to toss around boulders to build the cascade you see upriver.  For a little while we forgot we were old and any slip on the slippery riverbed could result in fractures of very necessary bones and we splashed and stomped and whooped it up and grabbed onto each other to keep from falling.

Until we were breathless.

Then we sat back and admired our work and the music the water made as it tumbled over the rocks.

Last night we lit a fire in the fire pit and watched the flames dance and the sparks erupt while the stars peeked down from above.  There were no bleak thoughts or worries that the morning would demand payment, except for aching backs and shoulders from all that boulder tossing.

Kind of sounds like a fairy tale doesn't it?

But it isn't.

It's just normal life. The Sober Edition.

P.S. You know I actually started out writing this post with the intention of passing on the news that sober life isn't all glitter and gold, but that normal has it's own reward.  As is usual, my Co-Writer had other ideas and I guess he took this opportunity to remind me to take more notice.

Sobriety does glisten.

Hey you, up there, thanks for reminding me.

P.P.S. One of my friends on the MM forum reminded me that Thomas Kinkade died of acute alcohol and valium intoxication.  As I read more about his death at 54 I found out he had apparently had been arrested and served ten days in jail on a DUI charge eighteen months before his death. Two months before his death, he was found unconscious and spent days in a coma and was told if he didn't get help, he would die.
There but for the Grace of God...

Hey you, up there, thanks again.

A Survivor's Story

I remember my parents pulling up to the drive-through window of this state line bar, it was the last day of our vacation and we were on that endless drive home, forty miles left to go.  They bought a six pack and then sat in the parking lot drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while we whined in the backseat about the heat, the drive, the smoke, our siblings' encroachment on our space.  They drank two beers each and then they started the car and drove the remaining bone weary miles home.  It was the 70's and our parents remained doggedly uninterested about the effects of  drinking and driving and second-hand smoke. 

I always wondered about the why of those beers in that hot dusty parking lot. Why didn't they just keep driving and wait until they were in the swamp cooler comfort of our own home?  My best guess is that my parents were bidding a last sad farewell to the carefree, careless days of vacation, or maybe they were drowning their sorrows of leaving the cool, verdant mountains for the vast stretch of nothingness in which we lived.  They needed that one last taste of sky blue waters.

I rarely remember my parents going to a bar or beer joint in our hometown, there were the random and sparse evenings out with friends and maybe an occasional Friday night at the VFW, but, by no means, would Mom and Dad be considered regulars at any of the local watering holes.

But vacations were different.  Every day when the heat descended and the fish quit biting the Hickey clan loaded into "Old Blue", our station wagon, and headed to town where Mom and Dad would settle into a duct tape scarred vinyl booth at a local beer joint and us kids would hit the nearest general stores with our sweaty, stink bait scented dollar bills burning holes in our jean shorts.

Eventually, money spent, we slunk back into the beer joint and threw ourselves, one by one, into the booth and commenced pouting the appropriate amount of time required to drive our parents to the desperation of throwing coins at us for the pool table or pinball machine.  They gladly paid the ransom for just a few more minutes of dark, smoky respite from the endless tangle of kids and fishing lines that defined our family vacations.

Scarred floors.  Barmaids with terrifying hairdos and sassy mouths.  Sitting at the bar with my ice cold bottle of Dr. Pepper.  Spinning bar stools. A painted lady on the floor at Joe's Place in Cimmaron, New Mexico.  A creepy  two-headed calf with beady wall-eye stares in some nameless bar in Red River.

My parents kicked back in a booth, laughing over cold beers and a smoldering ashtray.  My mom with a bandanna in her hair and rolled up jeans.  So young.

I treasure those memories, they are as much a part of me as blonde hair, green eyes and my inbred, deservingly under appreciated, Hickey sardonic drollness.

I miss those places.  I can't but help miss them.

 But miss them is all I can do.

When I rolled by that bar on my own last stretch of vacation a few days ago, I felt a rueful melancholy smile lift the corner of my mouth.  I had a kid stretched out in my backseat asleep, my grandchild, and I would no more think of pulling into that parking lot and drinking beers than driving on home...not lately, any way.

I drove those remaining empty miles to my hometown to drop the grandkid off and to spend the night with my oldest son.  Later that afternoon I headed to Walmart to restock my supply of Diet Pepsi.  As I was pulling two liters off the shelf by the gross, an older woman turned her cart into the aisle.  We glanced at each other and then took longer looks.

"Mary Kay, isn't it?" she asked.

For my whole life I have been running into this woman and she always calls me by my "baby" name and she always says the same thing.

"I remember when we lived across the street from your parents.  Your mom and I were both pregnant with you girls.  Such good times."

I nodded.  I've heard it so many times before but I never tire of hearing it.  We exchanged the usual.
"Where is ?"
"How is ?"
"Can you believe how this town has changed? And not for the better."

Skirting, skirting, skirting.

Finally,

"We lost Jolene, you know?" she asks.

I nod.  I did know.

"She drank a lot."

I nod again.

"I did too.  For a long time," I say.  It is the only meager comfort I can offer, my clumsy attempt to tell her she wasn't the only mother who lost a daughter. It wasn't her fault.

She patted me on the shoulder.

"It happens."

Shit We Leave Behind

 When there is no wind, you have to row.

“Recovery feels like shit. It didn't feel like I was doing something good; it felt like I was giving up. It feels like having to learn how to walk all over again.”
― Portia de Rossi

“You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

 “You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.”
― Aberjhani, Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black

I keep looking behind me, checking for something I've forgotten, it's this niggling feeling that's supposed to be there, but it's gone.  Really.  I keep stopping myself, thinking, "What did I forget?  Something's missing."

I first noticed it when the phone would ring.  My mind kept looking for a reason not to answer it, there was none.   I kept waiting for a feeling of dread to creep over me.  There was none of that either.

I noticed it several times when I was getting ready for Santa to come to Chelem.  I kept checking my To Do lists, but I couldn't find anything else that I needed to get done.  I'd taken care of everything I needed to take care of.

I noticed it when I flew back here to the states.  I checked my bags over and over.

 Passport-check

Visa-check

Stanley's papers-check

Money-check

....

Everything I needed was there, and two weeks later, I still haven't found anything I forgot to bring.

I noticed it at Christmas at my son's house.  All the presents were wrapped, everyone was remembered, there was no last minute dash to the mall.  Ok, I'm lying about that, I did forget that I was supposed to pick-out the gift for my granddaughter from her Uncle.  God, it felt good to say, "Oh shit! I forgot." and know that was all that I needed to say. No cover-ups, no excuses, no racking my brain and then beating myself up that, once again, I'd been too drunk to remember.

That's when I was able to put my finger on what was missing. A heavy carry-on bag full of shit, and that's exactly what it is worthless, heavy, "hard to tote" shit.

Guilt.

Shame.

Panic.

Remorse.

Fear.

Worry.

And a whole shitload more of the heavy shit that drags you down.

I've done what I need to do, I've unloaded the guilt and made the apologies I need to make. I kept waiting for "the conversation" with my sons' at Christmas, you know, the one where they gang-up and ask why I kept drinking so long when I knew it was hurting them.  It never came.  I've had the conversation with each of them individually and I guess that's good enough for them. Check that one off my list.  There is nothing in my backpack that I need to hide or sneak through, including booze.  Again, been there, done that.

Sure, I still have things I want to do. But I'm no longer afraid that I'm unable to do them, or at least try my damnedest to get 'em done.  The biggest thing on my To-Do list this year is to bring my middle son back into the core of our family, he's drifting away and I've got to do this before he gets out of reach.  I know it's not all up to me, but I'm strong enough now to stand up for him, to him, and, hopefully, with him.

And I have the reassurance that I will.

It's an incredible lightness of being.  Indescribable.  Really.

P.S.  And now a few words about the not so incredible lightness of my physical being.  I've stuck pretty well to the Atkins diet and the sugar cravings have abated.  However...I am not following the no artificial sweeteners rule.  Gotta put that on the list for later on, after I conquer the caffeine withdrawals, which I'm doing pretty well with.  I'm down to about two caffeine drinks a day, I was drinking Diet Pepsi con caffeine from the time I got up in the morning until I went to bed at night.  Now I've switched to the decaf version until I feel that bitch of a headache coming on, then I'll let myself have some caffeine and it goes away.  BTW, if you're not avoiding artificial sweeteners, the Atkins have a whole line of new frozen meals and snack and breakfast bars that are really, really good.  Just don't eat too much of them because the sugar alcohols will give you the shits big time. (Anybody counting how many times I've used the word shit in this blog, I think I might get an award or something.) Also, Braums still has their wonderful Carb Smart Ice Cream. (I'm such a Cheatah!) which will also give you the shits.  But it's worth it. No scales here, but I do feel a whole shitload lighter.

And now a few words about getting physically stronger.  The hotel we're staying at has a workout room and I got on the elliptical machine the other evening.  OMG!  That thing is diabolical.  Don't laugh, but I was only able to do 2 minutes on it and I thought my heart was going to burst.  I think there's something wrong with their machine though,  I have it on the lowest setting and it creaks and groans the whole time.  Oh wait, that was me.  LOL

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.