101 Days Without Booze: A Message to the Newly Sober

Yesterday marked 101 days without alcohol for me.  I want to share what my life looks like now.  I know that when I was new to sobriety, I needed a lot of reassurance that things would get better.

I am very busy with my new job, visiting many day cares and sifting through the regulatory standards I enforce to try to keep children safe.  I love being a part of the community as one of the many forms of “oversight” that keep our world functioning safely.  I was a stay at home mom (searching for a job) towards the end of my drinking, and I will say that working fills up my time in a meaningful way, which is always useful, especially when trying to break an unhealthy pattern.  So I consider myself very blessed for having found a job within my first 3 weeks of sobriety.  I still think it may have been my higher power working it’s magic, but who knows?  Maybe I just rocked my interview!

My moments with my daughter have changed in a subtly dramatic way.  From the outside, one would probably not notice a huge difference.  I spend about the same amount of time playing with her, bathing her, feeding her, going on walks, and doing various mommy things.  The biggest change is inside of my head and heart.  I no longer resent the moments when I can’t drink as much as I really want to.  I no longer find myself exhaling the day’s pressure and stress as I lay her down at night and head downstairs to refill my wine glass for the 4th time.  I linger a little longer, cherishing the bedtime process as she sits on my lap while we read and sing lullabies.  I cuddle her and kiss her and tell her how much she means to me, and that is all she sees.  Inside I’m thanking her for helping me to realize my problem and begin healing.  I thank her for helping me become the strong woman I want to be for her.

I try not to share too much about my marriage on this blog, but I will say that sobriety has been the hardest on that part of my life.  Whenever one person changes in a marriage, it is hard.  You either adapt and roll with it, or not.  I’ve changed the rules.  I was the drinking, partying, carefree girl that he often chastised for her behavior.  Now I’m more responsible and clearheaded, which I view as a good thing.  What that means for him, however, is living with an entirely different person.  I’m quick to snap at him when he does something I find unacceptable, when before, I would have just tipped my glass and said “Oh well.”  Without going into detail, the things I won’t put up with anymore are things that one shouldn’t put up with.  Although it has made things very strained, we are finally facing some demons in our relationship that we should have faced long ago.  I’ve learned that when both partners are drinking heavily like we were, you really don’t get to know one another.  You are both hiding from yourselves, so how could you possibly be letting anyone else see the true you?

Losing my partner and friends was one of my greatest fears when I was still drinking.   In my darkest moments, I would wonder if I was an alcoholic and if I needed to give it up completely.  My mind would drift to how people in my life would accept me.  Just me.  Sober me.  The person I didn’t even know anymore because I hadn’t seen her in nearly 20 years.  I was terrified of her.  I was convinced she was a boring killjoy of a miserable person.  I was wrong by the way, but that is beside the point.  In the past, I always decided that it would be better to keep drinking and try to moderate and drink like a normal person, and we all know how that turns out!  This time around, I am willing to let the chips fall where they may.  I want to be my true self, and if people don’t like it, tough shit.  I actually like myself this way, which surprises me more than anyone!

Today, life is better for me sober.  Even when it sucks.

xo

Triggers in Your Home Environment

There is a bottle of rum in my laundry room.

I found it yesterday morning while I was putting in a load of towels.  I picked it up, read the label, turned the cool glass bottle around in my hands.  I watched and listened to the brown liquid swishing around and thought about how it would be so warm in my belly with a hot apple cider or some egg nog.

I really don’t want any…I swear…I think?  My husband is a self-proclaimed normie and really wants to continue to drink.  I’m trying to respect that, while respecting myself as well.  Clearly he has been working on this bottle lately, and although I’ve smelled the alcohol on his breath now and again, I didn’t really know until now what he was drinking.  I am glad it isn’t in totally in my face, but….it is still in my laundry room…which means it’s still in my head…24 hours later while I’m sitting at work blogging instead of working because that damned bottle won’t get out of my brain.  It will still be there when I get home, and I will pay attention to the level of liquid, whether I want to or not.

My darling husband has respected my boundaries in this new-found sobriety enough to not have my favorite beers in the fridge.  He only rarely has a bottle of red wine sitting on the counter or white chilling in the fridge.  Other times there is this bottle, hiding in either the garage, the back patio, or now, the laundry room.

In my last six months of drinking, I posted this meme on my Facebook page:

Somehow it isn’t as funny now.  How many people who posted this really are raging alcoholics?  I mean, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck, right?  I look at my recycling now, and it certainly doesn’t look like that anymore.  My husband being the only one drinking in the home, coupled with the level of restraint that he has been able to employ, has drastically reduced the sheer volume of alcohol related recycling we have.  When I am the one to take it, which I try to avoid honestly, I wistfully look over every bottle that held alcohol at one time.  I really don’t mean to, but I count them.  Six bottles of a local wheat beer, 12 cans of shitty beer from husband’s fishing trip, two bottle of Malbec, three bottles of white-two Sauvignon Blanc and a Pinot Grigio.  Ughhhh stop torturing me bottles!  Go the fuck away!!  Clink clink clink…gone.  Thank God!!  Like I said, I try to avoid this experience.

Every day I do my best to make my environment a safe place for my sober self to flourish, but clearly there are many things I can’t control.  Today I’m 92 days sober.  Really, I’m sober mainly because I could justify failing myself in life, but I couldn’t justify failing my daughter.  I can no longer stumble through motherhood drunk.  This is not a job that can be half-assed.  Deep down, I knew I was blowing it.  Deep down, I felt like someone could do it better than I was doing it.  Deep down, in a place I started to go more and more, I sometimes thought it wouldn’t be so bad if I died (by accident?) and someone replaced me.

I am grateful for my daughter being so hilarious this morning when she woke up.  Her sunny blonde curls were going every which way and she had the biggest, joy-radiating smile you could imagine.  She literally woke up and started jumping up and down with joy.  I took her in to see her daddy and she repeatedly kissed him and laid her head on his, cooing, “Daddy, daddy.”  I mentioned the warm oatmeal I had waiting for her downstairs and it was as if I had just told her there was a pony waiting for her downstairs.  She nodded yes and smiled exuberantly looking forward to that bowl of oatmeal.  How lucky am I to have this little ray of sunshine in my life?

I’m also grateful for the fellowship I’ve found in AA.  At lunch, I ran into a member who I haven’t spoken to much.  I stopped and introduced myself to him.  He ended up giving me the number of another mom in the program.  What a blessing.  Just what I’ve been looking for.  Is it a God thing?  Maybe.  I’m just grateful for it.

Wishing everyone a peaceful, sober Monday. xo

Still here and going strong!

My life has been very busy, not to mention steadily improving since I gave up alcohol.  I started a new job, I’m applying to graduate school, and I’ve made some (small but significant) progress in my personal relationships.  This weekend I will celebrate 90 days with a dear friend (who is also in recovery) and hundreds of new friends at an AA convention being held in Jackson, Wyoming.  I can’t wait!

If I can do this, anyone can.  It gets better every day.  Big hug to the sober world!

Day 25: And God Throws Me a Bone!

Can I seriously be getting close to an entire month without drinking??!!  This has NEVER happened.  Not in the nearly 20 years since I first drank.  This is completely inexplicable!  In my former life, I could barely white knuckle through 3 days, and then on the 4th I would more than make up for the break!

 

For some strange reason though, this is working.

 

It’s really not all that complicated.  I’m going to meetings.  I am doing whatever they (other sober alcoholics) tell me to do.  I am praying.  Ok, I’m reading my prayers on an app on my phone, but I mean what I say when I read it.  I am humble enough to admit that I really don’t know how to pray and what to say, so I even have to learn that.  I am relinquishing myself to this process, and it feels so good.

 

And guess what?  In response to me handing over the power to the universe, I think I’m starting to see some things happening.

 

Here are some examples, lest I forget:

 

The other day, maybe day 4 after my relapse, I was struggling so much on the inside, but somehow (by some magical power) holding it all together and taking care of my responsibilities and NOT DRINKING.  I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go to a meeting or have a good long chat with another sober person that day because I was busy tending children all day.  I was loading up the car to go somewhere, and all of a sudden I recognize a woman standing outside my neighbor’s house.  She had been in a meeting a couple of days before, and had a helpful share about arguing with her husband and staying sober through a period of living in another country.  Through “happenstance,” she was just in town for a couple of days and was standing in front of me.  We talked for a minute, I started to tear up, we exchanged numbers and played phone tag through the next week while I was working on my house.  When we finally spoke on my drive back home, she ended up telling me her story, which was remarkably similar to mine.  I think she was there to show me what “me” could look like in 10 years if I can just stay sober.  And I gotta tell ya, this woman was happy.  Just a peaceful, content, happy woman with a good job and a lasting successful marriage and a life full of adventure and travel.  And she used to be just like me; smothering her true self with wine and weed until she hit a breaking point and stopped through the support of AA.  Turns out, she likes her true self better!  Moral of the story: so. will. I.

 

This past weekend I was having a rare afternoon to myself whilst my husband took our baby for a daddy daughter fishing date.  Did I take a relaxing bubble bath and read and paint my toenails or go for a nice long hike?  Nope, instead I decided to clean out my garage.  In doing so, I “randomly” happened upon an old 24 hour chip.  I don’t even remember getting one before, but it is true that I have walked into AA rooms several times over the years.  I just thought I had run back out too fast to grab even so much as a desire chip.  I guess I must have, and it wormed its way out in front of my face to say, “Hey!  REMEMBER when you thought you were an alcoholic and went to AA in 2005?  And in 2011?  Well now it’s 2014.  Wake up sister!”  And you know what I’ve contemplated constantly lately?  The biggest question.  Question number 1.  Am I really an alcoholic?  Do I really need to quit drinking?  I don’t know how much clearer of an answer I could have gotten unless a bearded white guy from the sky came down and slapped me across the face and said, “What are you? Dense?  Of course you are an alcoholic!  You have been since day one!  Now go play with your baby and DON’T take that first drink today!”  Turns out my version of God is sassy, and violent when necessary.

 

Then I saw my neighbor at a meeting on Monday.  We don’t know each other at all, but our doors literally are ten steps away from one another.  We’ve only spoken once when I went over to her house to give her cookies when I first moved in.  In the small conversation we had that afternoon, I managed to tell her I love drinking and she responded with the mysterious “I don’t drink.”  A statement that only baffles people who probably have a problem with alcohol themselves.  She claimed a 30 day chip and said she really had 42 days.  That means she must have relapsed right at the same time when I started this journey.  So we have battled the same demon, and walked by each other silently every day.  Unfortunately I never got a chance to talk to her after the meeting and say, “Hey!  You too?!  Let’s be here for each other.  Us against alcohol!”  Ok maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.  I may have been annoyingly enthusiastic which could read as intrusive.  Besides I know the feeling of NOT wanting to know my neighbors very well because they are right there all the time, watching my comings and goings.  Usually that was because I didn’t want them to interrupt me while I was smoking pot or something, so I guess maybe now it’s ok to start to let people in.  Anyway, I digress.  I look forward to shaking my neighbor’s hand and telling her I am here if she needs me.  Another person placed right in my path to teach me something, even if I don’t yet know what that is.

 

Last thing is something I haven’t really written about because I was being so superstitious about it.  I didn’t want to jinx it.  I had a job interview last week for the first job in this town that I really, truly, from the bottom of my heart wanted.  I have had more negative employment experiences, rejections, and let-downs in this town than I had in my entire life prior to this move.  Now that I look back on it all, I think it was partly my bad attitude reflecting back on me.  BUT the past is gone, so whatever.  It gave me a great reason to drink my face off for a while!  Haha, great joke Tonya.  So, I was very careful in my prayers about this job interview.  I never once said, “Please God let me get this job.”  I made very sure that I only asked that the correct path be opened for me.   Whichever path would help me to stay sober so that I could be a better mom to my daughter and just a better contributing member of the planet.  I can honestly say that even though I really wanted the job, I was open to the possibility that maybe the job wasn’t the best path for me, and I needed to just let something bigger than me decide.  I told myself that if I didn’t get the job, maybe it was because there was a big drinking culture there that would be too much of an obstacle at this tender stage of sobriety.  Or that putting my baby in day care would be disastrous for her well-being in some way that only God knew.  Anyway, enough rambling, clearly I got the job.  Hallelujah!  There is a God and he wants me to go forth and help my community through an engaging, important social services job!  A HUGE missing chunk of my identity as I’ve come to know it has been restored, and I have to say it feels amazing.  There will be adjustments and it is not all peachy, but I know this is the right thing for my family.  I know this because it wouldn’t have happened otherwise.  I know it is trite, but I do believe, everything happens for a damned good reason.

 

So when I called my sponsor today to tell her about the job, I asked her eagerly, what is the next thing I should do?  She asked me how I was feeling about step 2 (Came to believe that a Power greater than our-selves could restore us to sanity).  I started telling her all the above stories, and she said I should probably write them down somewhere to refer back to in times of doubt.

 

So here I am.  For now, I have step one in my bag and I’m not letting it out.  I almost said “I’m done with step one” but that is a terrible way to put it.  I am in no way done with it; on the contrary I need to carry it with me always. I admit I’m an alcoholic.  I am powerless when it comes to alcohol (and marijuana).  And I think I’ve got step two as well and it sure as hell better not go anywhere either, or I will never make it.  I admit that some power greater than me–even if I still don’t know what it is–can restore me to sanity.  I don’t need to know what it is.  It could be a man in the sky or it could be a fish in the sea or it could be the collective strength of the people I’ve met in AA.  I don’t care what it is.  I know there is something, because I know I can’t do this alone, but somehow here I am.  Almost a month.

 

Last thing I want to share today are the prayers I’ve been reading in the morning and night.  They come from page 86 of the Big Book.  I seriously think they are helping.  I don’t think God even judges me for reading them in an app on my iPhone.  My God has a sense of humor and is also technologically progressive.  Who knew?

 

Morning prayer:

God, direct my thinking today so that it be divorced of self-pity, dishonesty, self-will, self-seeking and fear. God, inspire my thinking, decisions and intuitions. Help me to relax and take it easy. Free me from doubt and indecision. Guide me through this day and show me my next step. God, show me what I need to do to take care of any problems. I ask all these things that I may be of maximum service to you and my fellow man. AMEN

Night prayer:

God, forgive me where I have been resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid today. Help me to not keep anything to myself but to discuss it all openly with another person – show me where I owe an apology and help me make it. Help me to be kind and loving to all people. Use me in the mainstream of life, God. Free me of worry, remorse or morbid (sick) reflections that I may be of usefulness to others. AMEN