Sharing

I have now shared about my slip-up at three meetings and at all three I got fantastic, supportive feedback. I'm really conscious of how it comes across when I speak about it, because I'm certainly not fishing for attention. My sharing is all about getting it into the open and taking the power out of it. And of course to help other alcoholics. I almost feel a little uncomfortable when people come up and say things that are meant to be comforting and soothing. I think it's my inner fraudster that is scared of being found out. I have no idea what there is to be found out. Maybe this is a common trait amongst alcoholics? It's similar to the feeling when somebody gives me a compliment about my looks or something. I just squirm and feel awkward. Ah, maybe I don't feel like I deserve it. That's it!

Anyhow, I'm getting picked up by my sponsor at 7.20am tomorrow to go swimming. After that I'm going to the doctor's to have a contraceptive implant fitted. This scares the hell out of me, but I know I'll be fine. After that I've got a whole day's work ahead of me, after which I'm hopefully going to a meeting. I'm grateful for yet another day sober, and I'm looking forward to many, many more. Good night!

Down here

I have almost stopped thinking about the future. I just never know what's going to happen tomorrow. Living in the now is, I suppose, a good attitude, but it's not good to become too comfortable. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It's just that lately, especially after last Friday, I'm not running around feeling really enthusiastic about everything, making plans or having expectations. I'm more grounded and I have certainly fallen off the pink fluffy cloud. Now the challenge is to find a happy middle ground. Not too "up there" or "down here"... Right now I'm just concentrating on getting enough sleep, lots of exercise, stopping smoking as of tomorrow with the help of patches and inhalators, revising for my upcoming exam in business studies, doing my job as well as I can, staying out of the way of my ex to avoid confusion or confrontation and just putting one foot in front of the other in general.

I'm grateful to be more grounded and calm even though it's not as much fun as bouncing around on a pink fluffy cloud.

Confession

This is not an easy thing to do. Confessing and sharing about slipping up on Friday night. I'd had a tremendously hard week with people, feelings and depression. My relationship crumbled the day after we decided to try again. I don't even know how many times we've tried and somewhere along the line I should have realised it's not worth the heartache or emotional turmoil to go through it again and again and again. Why I decided to get involved again while having a business to look after I'll never know. While these are not valid excuses, they are the reasons. And it's impossible to put into words what happened, but I know I have to try.

When I found something out, something that proved to be the last straw, I could feel myself leaving my physical body. When I was speaking, it was as if I was listening to myself from a distance. It was as if I was split in half. All reason went out the window and somehow I knew what was going to happen next. I walked into the cellar and got a bottle of what used to be my favourite wine, put it in the fridge. Went to check that all was OK in the bar. Went back to fridge, opened the bottle, got a glass out of the cupboard, poured the wine. Sat down and looked at the glass. A fleeting thought that I had not yet taken a sip and that it's not too late to change things passed in my mind, but it wasn't strong enough. I took a sip. Didn't enjoy it. Took another, didn't enjoy that either. Worked myself through two glasses, felt myself getting affected by the alcohol. Didn't like it one bit. Poured the last glass from the bottle. Took a sip. Looked at it, left it, and went to bed and promptly passed out. The next morning I poured it out in the sink.

Meanwhile the ex walked in to the room and the shock on his face when he asked me if that was a glass of wine I had there, and I said yes. The sad eyes, the crying, the begging that I had to stop, all the hard work I'd put into it. To be honest, I think that's what I wanted out of it. I didn't want to get drunk, I didn't enjoy the taste of it, I just wanted to make him suffer and see what he'd done to me, in a pathetic attempt at taking back my power from him.

While having to reset my sobriety clock is hugely annoying, I think I've learnt something important from this incident. Number one is that sobriety is an extremely fragile thing and it needs constant nurture and care to stay strong. Number two is that I get weak and sensitive when I don't go to meetings regularly, I definitely need the instant spiritual top-ups that the meetings provide on a regular basis. Further, I know now that my favourite drink has lost its allure. It does not taste nice, and that's good to know because that's one of the things that would spring to mind during difficult times... the thought of that lovely, cold, crisp Sauvignon Blanc. Not anymore and that's a huge relief. I didn't enjoy the feeling of getting drunk, didn't like the feeling of losing control of my senses and physical actions. I also realise that when I picked that drink up, I didn't have a desire to drink per se, I wanted to achieve something else. The drink was just the means to a different end.

As much as this evokes shame and guilt in me, I'm grateful it happened this early, only three and a bit months into sobriety. I'm grateful for what I've learnt from it, and endlessly grateful that I didn't get a taste for it. It was a huge gamble because it could have gone the other way and I wouldn't be sitting here sober now on day 2 again.

I'm humbled.

Revisiting Gratitude

This week is going to be all about remembering gratitude. Boy, is it difficult! I'm in a situation where I live with my ex who has been a pain the last couple of weeks. We have our good moments, but we argue constantly, too often for a "non-couple". We have tried to negotiate this shared space but it's proven to be harder than either of us thought. I've been a pain as well, of course, a fact that I blame on stress and not enough sleep. But if I worked my program and worked on remembering the Serenity Prayer and what it actually means, I wouldn't be so bad. I don't seem to be able to find any me-time, which is kind of expected since I'm running a pub and trying to stay sane. My thoughts are erratic and my actions too. I get very angry and have gravitated towards aggressive behaviour in the last few days. Right now I'm a pretty sick person. However...

I am eternally grateful for not having a desire to drink. Picking up a drink would have been my first "solution" 4 months ago. I'm still very grateful for every hang-over free morning, because no matter how tired or sleep-deprived I am, I can still get on with my day with some degree of clarity and comfort. I'm grateful to myself for having made an appointment with the stop-smoking clinic at my NHS surgery for next week. I figured that if I sought help for drinking and it worked to kick-start my sobriety, maybe talking to counsellors about stopping smoking will have a similar effect. One can only hope, pray and have faith.

Now I'm off to try and get some well-needed sleep. Good night!

Lack of meetings

I haven't been to a meeting since last Sunday. I've been too busy writing essays and now I'm looking after the business while the boss is away on holiday. As I haven't had those all-important reality checks of the Rooms, my confidence has slowly but surely withered and I can feel the stress heavy on my shoulders. I talked to my staff earlier and made sure I can go to a meeting tonight. Hopefully that will recharge my batteries for the rest of the week. While it's been stressful, however, I have been much more able to handle it. Much more so than when I was drinking. I was a nervous wreck and took everything personally. I was constantly in battle, with myself or others. The word serenity didn't even exist in my vocabulary.

I'm grateful that I can get up in the morning and get on with my to-do-list without first panicking, then trying to quench my thirst, then having that first cigarette that again made me anxious and without having to force myself to do things. I've actually enjoyed, in a weird kind of way, cleaning the pub in the morning, listening to Adele on full volume and sipping a cup of tea while planning the day ahead. So it's not that bad, really. I just needed to moan.

A glorious day

I love the mornings when I'm walking to the gym, listening to music, disappearing from the world. It takes about 30 minutes to get there and during that time I have the perfect opportunity to just zone out. There is nothing else I can do in that half an hour apart from putting one foot in front of the other to get me to where I'm going. It's a time for me to be alone with myself without going crazy. I recently acquired a bike which I can use to get to the gym, but I've found it much more relaxing to walk, so the bike just sits there waiting to be used. I'm sure I'll start using it soon though as the weather is probably going to get worse by the week now as autumn is in full swing.

Tomorrow night my boss is off to Turkey on holiday which leaves me to take care of the pub. Last time was a minor disaster as I was drunk most of the time and hungover the rest of the time. I was extremely sensitive and got easily agitated by both customers and members of staff. The relationship with my ex suffered immensely and I couldn't wait for my boss to come back to relieve me of the responsibility. I'm surprised the place was still standing at the end of those two weeks. This time it's going to be different and hopefully a lot easier. Sober and single, it can't go wrong, and if it does, I'm so much better equipped to deal with it. This time it's only for seven days as well so it will be a good practice run for future commitments.

As long as I don't pick up a drink, as long as I go to meetings whenever I can, as long as I phone my sponsor and as long as I stay true to myself, it will be alright.

Handing over

My Higher Power is putting a lot my way at the moment and to my surprise I seem to be handling things in a better way than I would normally do. A lot of it has to do with my handing over my will and my life to God. I haven't been doing this on a conscious level because each time I try to force something to happen, the opposite seems to occur. We talked about step 3 today at the meeting and that reminded me of recent developements that have certainly been out of my control. Me and my ex seem to have reached an agreement on how to live together without having a relationship which is such a relief. If it'll work or not remains to be seen. Again, that's out of my hands. We're just going to have to renegotiate when issues arise that bother one or both of us.

I had a strange drinking dream last night, the second one since I stopped drinking. Me and some friends were at a party and suddenly I had drunk a couple of beers and almost polished off a bottle of red wine. The taste in my mouth from that wine was so real, it tasted of blackcurrant sqash mixed with port. I had extremely strong feelings of remorse, guilt and regret and I spent the rest of the dream trying to get out of the party. I was panicking about what to tell my sponsor, debating if i should phone her or not, was it too late to phone? what am I going to say at the next meeting? etc. I was basically panicking when I could feel that I was getting drunk, walking around with the near empty bottle of wine, not knowing what to do with it. I was trying to get a lift home from a friend who paradoxically was both at the other end of the phoneline and at the party at the same time. Every time I tried to walk through the door to get out of the party I ended up walking in to yet another room in the house. I couldn't get out. I can't remember how the dream ended but I do know that all I felt on waking up was enormous relief. Relief that I don't have to go through that, ever, as long as I stick to the program and remember what it was like to be in that hell hole. God will never let me forget and for that I am grateful.

Stress

I'm under a lot of pressure at the moment. I'm living under the same roof as my ex-partner, have to finish an essay for uni by next Friday night, run the business for two weeks in the middle of September while revising for an exam in October. I trust my Higher Power will guide me through this mess somehow, but still, I'm not looking forward to the rest of this month.

God(dess), grant me the Serenity, to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Learning everyday

I learn something new in sobriety everyday. When I was drinking I kept making the same mistakes over and over again, never really moving forward in a constructive way. I was a big fan of constantly changing things because I thought it would help me feel good, but nothing ever changed for the better. I just substitued one dysfunctional situation for another, not seeing it for what it was. Although life is far from perfect I'm grateful that I can learn from past behaviour. In sobriety I can make changes when changes can be made. There is a time and a place for everything which is something I didn't understand before. Patience really is a virtue and lack of it is one of my big character defects, however, as I'm approaching 13 weeks sober I do have a lot more of it. It's like being a teenager again, slowly learning how to live life, how to relate to other people and how to take responsibility. I'm lucky to have wonderful friends, both old and new, and I'm grateful that I can take those relationships seriously while before they tended to be mere props for my life. Something that was there if I needed it, not much more. People are now precious to me in their own right and it's a wonderful feeling.

Peace

Whenever I write a post that contains something positive about my relationship, said relationship crumbles before my eyes just days after. Well, now the relationship has been put on hold. My mind is quiet and I can sleep at night. I'm convinced that being in a relationship destroys my peace and ability to see clearly. It's like a drug. I wish one could switch hormones on and off at will. At least I'm sober and not doing stupid things, and for that I'm grateful.

I said good-bye to a very dear friend today who had to go back to university, had lunch with another friend and her two lovely boys, ate a huge ice-cream, worked and went to a meeting that discussed tradition 9. I'm not a huge fan of talking about the traditions but it's amazing what people do come up with. Tomorrow I'll go swimming in the morning, work all day, then another meeting, then maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to squeeze in some study time, but I doubt it very much. Now I'm going to curl up in bed and read a book for about 10 minutes before I fall asleep. Night all!