Life & Death, with Flowers in-Between

85 consecutive days and 153 since I made the decision to get better. And in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm 19 again, ahead of the decision to pick up a drink in earnest. I cry a lot, lately.  I feel deeply touched over things that I took for granted before, and sometimes the tears are tinged with sadness... but after I cry, I often feel healed .  When I cry over lost prospects, lost potential, lost years, I bleed some of the sadness off of those memories and can look at them clearly. I've had a lot of thoughts lately, that maybe I can be the kind of person who doesn't consider a bottle of special occasion wine to be the end of the world.  I recognize that this is dangerous thinking in early sobriety.   I can set that thought aside without acting on it, because I know I am an alcoholic and I cannot trust my mind quite yet, but the black-and-white thinking has eased off some, and I think that's some of my trouble with taking AA seriously. I'm even looking at my ...

I think at 55 days sober, it's alright to take a couple of days to reflect on who I truly am, alone and independent.  I feel  as though I should be doing more, making more progress, working on quitting smoking, eating better, losing weight more quickly, getting out more, making more meetings, but... I only feel anxious about my own progress when I start relating it to what others are doing with the same sober time, or more.  I'm always chasing ideals, daydreaming of a better future. Some days, it's enough to get dressed, take a shower, get some minor chores done, and feel comfortable with the presence of oneself.  Not dwelling on social media or taking in the testimonies of others, just separating from the world and reflecting on what makes my own personal ideal of success. Today, my personal level of success is feeling happy.  Gently touching base with a couple of close friends to remind them that 1) I am alive and 2) I am still devastatingly funny, even...

My alarm goes off at 7:00... on my day off.  I curl up into a tight ball, debating just going back to bed. My eyes are scratchy.  My head aches, and my neck has a crick on the right side, all too familiar.  My mouth is dry and there is an uncomfortable taste of... nothing.  Just sleep-stale saliva. Waking up without a hangover is still so novel . 119 days ago, I was a hollow cask, one partially filled with wine but leaking at the seams from age, use, and abuse.  If you've ever lived on the water, you may know a little bit about the dangers of dry-docking a wooden boat, and that was my fear: if I stopped pouring wine into that old cask, it would dry out and become useless, never able to hold sand... relationships, intimacy, social interactions, happiness, relaxation, peace... all of those things like fine sand, I covered in the wine to keep the cask at a higher level than it actually should have been.  Because the damn thing would never stop leaking . ...