90 Days!

Day 89 (yesterday) was not fun. I spent most of the day extremely anxious, triggered and stuck in my head. I tried to post yesterday but couldn’t really even get all of my feelings out in words. It had been a rainy week, it’s cold, I felt out of touch, I felt like I hadn’t seen the sun in months. I felt isolated. I sent a text to a sober friend to ask her if she ever goes to meetings on Sundays (today). She responded back that she did and asked if I wanted to go. I thought about it for a few more hours. I don’t know if a meeting can fix what I’m feeling. Being in a room isn’t going to change how I feel on the inside. I doubt there will be anyone I can relate to at a Sunday morning meeting. Rationalizing, blah blah blah, etc. I sent her a text back that I would go. We talk about different meetings. We pick one at the place that I went for my first meeting (different time, different day). I agree to go. I will meet her at 9 for the meeting. We will get coffee after. I feel a little better but remain stuck in my head, unmotivated and exhausted from doing pretty much nothing all weekend. I fell asleep around midnight, after aimlessly spending my day trying to watch Hulu or Netflix and trolling the Subreddit for the Serial podcast.

This morning, I struggled to get up to get ready, but I did. I got coffee and drove to the meeting, still not sure if I wanted to be in the room, at the meeting, but going through the motions. In true form, I get my key “stuck” in my ignition while I’m parking. (By stuck I mean, I pulled the parking brake but never put my car in my park, and didn’t realize that was what was stopping me from taking my key out of the ignition. I know, I radiate common sense.) Maybe it was my subconscious procrastinating for just another minute, but it got me and my friend laughing. I felt better for the moment. We go into the meeting. If you have read my previous posts, I have mixed emotions about AA. I always feel better after I go, but I just don’t do the whole commitment or giving up my control thing so well. I don’t have a sponsor, I don’t work the steps, but I go to the meetings from time to time.

The meeting started with a daily reading, about ambition. I kind of zoned out half way through. Then, a woman began to speak. She was chairing the meeting. She had been sober for a little over a year. She was much older than I (maybe 30 years my senior) but still I related to her story. She talked a lot about pride and how we build ourselves up, rationalizing her drinking with her thinking brain, and how once we can see ourselves for who we really are, we can then begin to work on ourselves, and work on the things we need to work on, which aren’t always just not drinking. I listen to people share, thinking about the words they say. One man speaks about how he was so happy when he first stopped drinking, moving out of the way when others were tailgating him, living on cloud nine. He goes on to talk about how that faded, then he was wondering why the hell he was so angry all the time, he had stopped drinking so why wasn’t it all better? Another man talks about how he had heard an analogy about how all of our issues are like icebergs, and maybe the drinking is just the part we see of the iceberg, the 10% above the water, and the rest of what we need to work on, the big stuff, is all below the surface, masked or escaped by drinking. I wanted to share but I kept quiet, more and more people shared, time was running out. At the end-ish of the meeting, the head guy in charge (What do we call this person?) said it was a weird gray area, time for someone who didn’t have much to say to talk. I took a deep breath and introduced myself. I refrained from the “I’m an alcoholic part.” (It’s just so cliche). I tell them it was my first time sharing, and in a jumble of words just basically tell them thank you. Thank you for sharing stories I related to, for sharing that it gets better, that it doesn’t always feel good. Thanks. The end. It was not an epic share, I didn’t tell much about myself, it came and went in about 30 seconds, we ended the meeting. I was still shaking walking out of the building. My friend tells me how proud she is. I feel good. It was cathartic. This meeting was the first meeting that it really sat with me how much rationalizing I do, how much I have built myself up to be someone who can’t possibly have a weakness like this. I am too educated. I am too smart. I am too strong. I could not possibly have something in my life that I cannot control. Not me.

I used to use my education and “functionalism” as a crutch. I cannot possibly have a problem with alcohol because I graduate Magna Cum Laude from undergrad, and with a 4.2 on a 4.0 scale from graduate school. People with alcohol problems do not do this. They do not have jobs from 16 on in life. They do not pay all of their bills on time. They do not have $0.00 credit card debt. People with alcoholism are not me, because I am better than that, I am more than that, I am this, I am that, I am not a person with a problem with alcohol.

Let’s all take a moment to laugh at past me. Are you fucking kidding me?! I read this now, in shock and dismay, knowing that I have said all of these things OUT LOUD. I believed myself. I think other people believed me. What world was I living in? During my rationalizing times (that still occur every day), I never list the commonalities out loud, because then I would have to stop being so prideful and get real with myself. So let’s be real.

People with problems with alcohol don’t know when to stop drinking. People with problems with alcohol hurt themselves and the people they care about when they drink. People with problems with alcohol have to call out of work sometimes because of their alcohol use. People with problems with alcohol link up with other people with problems with alcohol. People with problems with alcohol use alcohol as an excuse, as an escape, as an exemption from reality. People with problems with alcohol feel worse after they drink, they have to spend weeks of their life making apologies for their behaviors, they wonder why they can’t just go out and drink and be normal. People with problems with alcohol are black, white, purple, male, female, straight, gay, educated, unemployed, old, young, etc.

I could have probably written a book or two in the time I spent focusing on why alcohol could not be my problem, that it was my friends, my family, my job, anything outside of myself. I remember having a conversation with more than one person about how I am not “an addict like my sister” because she can’t even hold down a job, she didn’t even graduate high school, she surrounds herself with negative choices, she and I have nothing in common. What?! Are you kidding me, self?

So anyways, here I am at 90 days without a drink, moving at my turtle pace that I move, and maybe finally realizing accepting that I have a problem with alcohol. I say accepting because my thinking brain has always known I drank too much when I drank. And I say maybe because deep down, I’m still hoping I can figure out my stuff and become someone who can just have a glass of wine or something from time to time and be okay, but I can’t focus on that now or I’ll go crazy, so let’s focus on now.

Right now, at 90 days, I have realized that I haven’t had to spend time in the last 3 months apologizing for saying or doing something that I wasn’t “in control” of doing. I haven’t blamed Fireball for being an asshole. When I’m an asshole, I know it’s me and myself making those choices, and I can take a step back, take some responsibility and move on. I’ve been making mistakes left and right over the past 90 days, but they are not the mistakes that weigh my soul down so heavily that I feel like the end of the world is coming. They are not mistakes that make me wish I could go back in time one whole day (or week) and make different choices. They are not mistakes that make me not want to look at my bank statements for days (well maybe the Under Armour clearance sale day, but hey, it’s Under Armour at half price!). They are not mistakes that have cost me my friendships, or mistakes I am afraid to tell the people I care about. I don’t feel great every day, yesterday was a sure sign of that. I don’t have a fucking clue what will happen tomorrow, and I stress about that all the time, striving for control, for balance, for whatever is going to make me feel better. I have a better sense of my real friends. I have a better sense of what I want, who I am. I say better sense because again, I still have no clue but I know I’m getting there. I also have a better understanding that I am just one stupid rationalization or craving or trigger or whatever away from drinking again, which brings me to this final realization, one about people with alcohol problems, and that is that maybe people with alcohol problems are me.
Also, the sun is finally shining. Today is a good day.