Day 30 – and what a day it’s been!

Sarah - Sober Alcoholism, Recovery ,

Back to 30 days.

I want to celebrate but I don’t feel like I can – I’ve been here before and I know there’s a long-ass road ahead that’s badly paved and ready to trip me up. I feel like it’s a constant struggle to keep my eyes open to see the way.

I am trying though. I had my first therapy session yesterday with my new addiction counselor. And, no, I don’t think it’s normal that I spent much of the 50 minutes wondering what she thinks of me. Honestly, I sat there thinking “does she think I’m crazy?” and wondering if she understood my reasoning behind why I’m made certain decisions and why I’m following the plan and the program that I am. And actually feeling bad for her. My thought process went something like “I feel bloody awful that she has to listen to all my problems.” Seriously, I probably am mental – I’m paying her to listen to my problems, she chose her profession, none of that is on me. Rant on.

And so let’s see where I am today:

  • Totally overwhelmed by my life but fully sure that I’m in a better position to change the things I want to change.
  • Actually able to trust my thoughts. I mean, they’re sober thoughts – they might not be serving me well and I may need to change my thought patterns but at least I know now my thoughts are coming from a place of not being influenced by substances.
  • I can wear mascara now. That sounds really superficial, and is, but it feels great to know that my eyes weren’t overly sensitive to the general atmosphere, which is what I’d convinced myself of. My eyes watered because they were bloodshot and my body was in shit. I can wear mascara now and it actually stays on my eyelashes. Who knew.
  • Superficial as above, but either (a) my skin is significantly better now or (b) I can actually look myself in eye now and not avoid mirrors. Probably both. But I need less make up now. I need to remember not to be so enamoured with my newly exposed baby-soft skin though that I’m distractedly stroking my cheeks on the bus. Other people don’t get that.
  • I’m tired, I’m an emotional wreck, I have temper tantrums like a 3 year old and want to throw things and scream and cry but I’m getting steadier day by day.
  • I can’t read novels, no concentration at all at the moment, but I have remembered that Law and Order SVU is the greatest thing ever. Because other people’s problems are definitely, definitely worse than mine. Which shouldn’t feel reassuring, but does.
  • And speaking, of other people’s problems – I need to let other people take responsibility for them.

I had a strange work day. We had an external consultant in to to do an evaluation and in the course of that a lot of stuff came up for me that I though I’d long let go of. Work-related, but personal. It’s a lot to get into so I won’t. And by the time I arrived home this evening I was overwhelmed, feeling incompetent but also, strangely validated. I feel like I was actually listened to and agreed with and that’s shifted things for me.

I’ve hated my job for a long time, but maybe I don’t need to. Maybe me feeling I wasn’t good enough was because of other people making me feeling that way, and not because it’s actually true. And maybe I’m not as special and unique as I probably thought I was – and maybe that’s ok. And maybe, at 30 days sober, I don’t need to have the problems of the world (ie my world) figured out yet.

Maybe I just need to slow the fuck down sometimes.

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

Sarah - Sober Alcoholism, Personal growth, Recovery , , , ,

I’m trying to be kinder to myself. I’m trying to just relax into this sobriety thing and let go of the pressure and my own sense of expectations. The pressure and the expectations – they’re all in my own mind and, right, now I’m not sure it’s working at full capacity.
I tend to be impatient. Understatement. I want everything now.
I want to be recovered.
I want to have a healthy relationship.
I want to feel accomplished.
I want to feel better.
But, ya know, I’m not actually broken. Not fully at least. And certainly not irreparably.
And if I were speaking to anyone else in my situation this is what I’d be saying:

  • You have limitless potential:
    Truly – it’s expansive. By just trying, you’re doing better than a lot of people. You’re opening yourself up to change and that’s not an easy thing to do. And, yes, it’s scary and you don’t know quite what the next step is but starting out on the journey is an entire accomplishment, all on its own. Give yourself credit for that.
  • Give yourself time:
    All going well, you have a super duper long time to figure things out. It doesn’t have to all happen today. It can be next week, next month, next February – there’s no rush, there’s no finish line. None of this is a competition. The day you feel fully grown, fully fixed, that’s not a good day. Constant evolution is the plan. Constant – as in not instant.
  • ‘Should’ is a swear word:
    Don’t say it. Don’t think it. Do what you choose and what you need and not what you think you should.
    You ‘should’ do your laundry – choose to have clean sheets against your skin.
    You ‘should’ go for a walk – choose to do something healthy for yourself.
    You ‘should’ call your mom – choose connection.
    You ‘should’ have an early night – choose to stay up all night doing random internet research if that’s what you want to do.
    You should have a healthy snack before bed – but if you want a chocolate chip cookie that’s ok too.
    Be a participant in what happens to you – don’t let anyone, or your own misfired thoughts, dictate to you.
    Also, popcorn for dinner, painting your toenails 6 different colours in one afternoon, reading trashy magazines, having another bubble bath, singing along (badly) to music you love – all valid choices sometimes.
  • Don’t believe everything you read on the internet and let yourself think it’s true:
    Some of it is just plain bullshit and that’s what the close screen option is for. Just don’t bloody read it. And that also applies to what other people say about you and to you; and sometimes what you say to and about yourself as well.
  • Don’t bog yourself down in the past:
    Learn from it, yes. Grow from those lessons, yes. But don’t beat yourself up over things that are done. And don’t carry things that you have the option to just set down.
  • You’re bloody great:
    Know it. And also know that you’ll be even better. You will be a better person, you’ll be a better friend, and you’ll be a better wife. Awareness and effort are the key to change. You’re pretty much rocking both of those right now.

And if I can say all of that to somebody else I can surely say it to myself too right?

Fingers cross, there might just be hope for me yet!

Not A Victim

Sarah - Sober Alcoholism, Personal growth, Sober Living, Sober Women , , , , ,

“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.” Cheryl Strayed

This is pretty much how I’ve felt for the longest time – I’ve been an entitled spoiled brat. Poor pitiful me. Every wrong decision I’ve made, every time my life has veered off course and everytime I’ve gotten something, been someone, that wasn’t what I wanted – every one of those times has been someone or something elses fault. Never mine. Because, poor pitiful me, I’ve been a victim of my circumstances.
I’m going to try to redirect that blame now. Not in a negative kind of way, which is how it sounds, but in a taking charge of my own shit kind of way. ‘Bout time really.

I’ve always said that I’m not a victim. But, I’ve been wrong before so this is just another x on my slate.
Dictionary.com defines victim as:
“a person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency”
And I’ve allowed myself to be a victim or my own emotions and my own ignorance. Which is great to realise obviously.
I’ve had shit happen to me that was beyond my control – everybody has to some degree. And I’ve always said I’d never change anything because everything; all that I’ve done, all that’s been done to me, all of the past 29 years – all of that has made me who I am.

But I’m calling bullshit on myself now.
Because if who I am now is so wonderful, why did I throw away the last years of my life? Especially when I’ve seen other people do it so I can’t even claim the ignorance of what has happening – I fucking knew exactly what I was doing and I ignored it all.
And where it’s left me is here and I don’t think it’s a good place to be.

I’m seeing an addiction therapist next week and honestly I hate the weakness that I feel has lead to me to that point. But, ya know, I wouldn’t say that was weakness in anyone else. There’s different standards for me, in case you haven’t noticed.

I’ve had therapy before with a sexual abuse counsellor. And what I learned from that (before prematurely deciding I was fine, thank you very much) is that I have a serious fucking mothering complex – I want everyone everywhere to think that I’m fine, I don’t want people to worry about me or to think that I’m needy, that I might need help. I want to be the one to help everyone, I want to make everyone ok, I want other people to be happy, other people to be well but apparently I lost sight of looking after myself somewhere in there.
And now I’m a nearly 30-year old who, from the outside, people look at and say “she’s doing well, nice husband, good job, a smile on her face”. I so badly need other people to think that I’ve got my shit together that somewhere along the way I started to believe it was true myself.
And right now, today, if I could have someone else’s cards I’d grab them and run.
Because it sucks to realise that you hate your job, you haven’t had sex in 2 goddam years and you don’t know who the hell you are.
Those are the cards I’ve got though, and I can spend the rest of my life looking at them and saying over and over “they’re good, they’re fine” or I can try to trade them in for something that will actually be good, maybe better than fine.
And all that bullshit I’ve been saying for years about not changing a single thing and letting everything and everyone I’ve encountered make me a better person? Maybe I can figure out how to do that too.

Marijuana, Bible Studies, and Bridge Construction

Sarah - Sober Uncategorized

Matthew Fray's avatarMust Be This Tall To Ride

(Image courtesy of screen-wallpapers.com) (Image courtesy of screen-wallpapers.com)

“Shit! I have to go.”

Everything was hazy and surreal in the smoke-filled room. It’s because four of us just burned a massive blunt. I was pretty high. There was nothing particularly weird about that. In college, I was often pretty high.

“Where do you have to go?” my friends asked.

“Bible study,” I said. “I forgot all about it.”

“Bible study!? You can’t go to bible study!” my roommate said. He didn’t say it because he, or anyone else in the room, had a problem with faith or bible studies. He said it because I looked and smelled and was acting exactly like someone who had just smoked a lot of marijuana, and he figured—perhaps correctly—that it wasn’t an appropriate time to study Scripture.

“Gotta do it, man,” I said. And then I ran off on my 10-minute trek to meet a guy whose name…

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Accountable to me

Sarah - Sober Alcoholism, Personal growth, Sober Living, Sober Women , , , , , ,

Who am I?

See the tagline….I’m still working on it I guess. I hope I always will be working and growing and changing; honestly I don’t know if there’s much point to any of this otherwise.

For right now, I’m a 29 year old, female, Irish alcoholic. And, for anybody who isn’t a 29 year old female alcoholic in Ireland, that means I’m largely alone working through this recovery lark.

Obviously there are options…if I want to commit to several AA meetings a week for example I can attend an out-patient group program through the local hospital; which would be 3hour-long group therapy sessions twice weekly. And, for kicks, I can do that while trying to maintain a full-time job and dealing with the all-encompassing exhaustion that is early sobriety.

So….that’s not for me. AA, (great as it is and I know it really is for so many) – not for me either. I can’t hand responsibility for my life and my future over to a higher power that I don’t even know if I believe in at this point. Just one of the many things I have to figure out.

And where that leaves me is 3 weeks sober (yay for me by the way, I rock) without too much of a face to face support network.

Honestly, thank God for the internet. For the information and for the distant support that that can provide if you know to look in the right places.

Because nobody in “real life” really knows that I’m an alcoholic.

Well, probably they do, but it’s not really spoken about. It’s pretty easy to hide when, for years, you’ve continued to hold down a steady, somewhat decent job – nobody needs to know that you come home every evening and drink two bottles of wine on the couch in your pj’s watching The Celebrity Apprentice. The trick is to ignore the phone after 6pm; don’t make or take phone calls, don’t answer texts, DON’T FACEBOOK. Just ignore the world and your own brain for a few hours a day. Don’t be genuine with yourself or anybody around you.

The problem is that those wasted years catch up to you eventually and you end up exactly where I am – in a job that doesn’t challenge you and that you should have changed years ago, largely unsocialised as an adult, stuck in a rut in your relationship to the point where you don’t know if that’s another thing that’s beyond repair, and terrified of the changes that you think you might have to make – that is if you can think at all (and the last couple of weeks that’s been pretty fucking tricky to be blunt about it).

And all of that is if you’re lucky – let’s be totally honest about it and say that it could be worse, and is for many people.

So, I think maybe there is hope of redemption for me. I haven’t lost faith that there’s a better future waiting for me if I’m willing to do that work. And I am willing, because I bloody deserve it. I may be a mess right now but I have excellent organisational skills  – it’s just past time I focused those skills inwards.

I’m committing to this blog for a year, I’m setting that in stone for myself.Maybe it will help me figure out where I’m headed and whether I’m on the right path, maybe it will help someone else to do the same.Maybe the only person who will ever read this is me and maybe that’s ok too.

There’s some pretty shitty times ahead, I’m trying to prepare myself for that, but I think maybe there can be some good times too, some clarity, some growth, something.

For tonight, there’s going to be Ben & Jerry’s and Anne Lamott and I’m ok with that.