Out of body feeling

I'm in a different place, and I think I like it.

I never used to really moderate.  I always could if I went out, but when I started this blog it was because night after night I was drinking way too much at home, often resulting in a blackout. While I "functioned" I was really worried about what would happen if I went to sleep, basically passed out at that point, and we had some sort of emergency.

I started blogging to document my abstinence, not to document moderation.

Oh, I always got up in the morning, sometimes even exercised, made lunch for school, did the school drop off, worked, grocery shopped, made dinner, did the dishes, said goodnight to son, made love with husband and went to sleep.  It's the latter part of the evening, though, that even though I did it, I didn't always remember it.  I had too many evenings not remembering the next day that I did tuck my son in and too many mornings where I asked "Honey, did we....?"

I had a few incidents where my son knew I had been drinking and that really bummed me out.  I don't want him to see that.  But even in my full blown alcohol use, those still weren't very frequent.

My nights were full of mid night waking up, being up for hours, and feeling groggy in the morning.  I would get irritated easily at my husband over things I shouldn't because the bigger issues, that I had a right to stress about, weren't being dealt with by my mind as I numbed them out, pushed them away, every evening.

This past year I have come to peace with a lot of the stress in my life and I have observed myself on how I handle it.  Sometimes I work through it without alcohol, sometimes I don't.

It's as if I am standing outside my body, evaluating how I am doing as I am drinking.  I had a friend over Friday night, hubby was out of town, and she had a glass of red before dinner, I had a glass of white.  We had dinner with ice water and then we each had a glass of red after dinner.  We nursed those drinks for a few hours and she left close to 10pm.

Then, Saturday night we were dealing with a very stressful situation with my husband's daughter whom he was off visiting.  I was here, he was gone, but the issue was stressful to both of us.  Heartbreaking actually.  I rarely drink alone anymore and I downed a bottle of white that I didn't even know we had.  It was mixed in on the same shelf as my Pellegrino.  I do remember going to bed but felt like poop yesterday morning.

Last night he came home, exhausted so I had two glasses of red with him.  I really don't like red so clearly just drink it to numb.  I slept great and got up early today.

I guess I'm writing all this down because I feel like emotionally I am detaching from wine. I'm having more evenings where I'm having wine "just because" and less "I need to".  As long as I keep drinking, I see the risk for evenings like Saturday night where I say "fuck it".

I want to get to a place where I am dealing with stress without alcohol.  As opposed to saying "I quit for good" my next goal is to identify the next evening where I "need" wine and try to get through one evening of that without alcohol and see how it goes.  I'm sure anyone reading this is skeptical that I can do this and I am skeptical myself.

Again, I think alcohol is bad.  It's a crutch.  I don't see any good to it and am not one of these people that even thinks drinking "normally" is really okay.  I just have to wean myself away from it gradually and do it my way.

I've been doing well with exercise, not so great with diet, but trying, and working on alcohol consumption has just become a way of life for me now.  I like starting my day off by reading blog posts.  Even though I have stress in my life, it's all pretty artificial.  I'm in a good place, happy with my family relationships, happy with myself.  Sure I could be richer, have a better job, be Mother of the Year or Wife of the Year....but I'm okay with not being all that as well.  I'm good.  No more self loathing going on other than maybe with body image.  Trying to come to terms with the fact that I can feel so fat and hubby thinks I'm soo hot.  Bless him and his love of curves.

I find new blogs constantly and love following all the stories.  I love the optimism and hope but, above all, I love reading about the joy in the hearts of those who have given it up.  Someday for me I hope!

Here's to a great week for us all!

HD