tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81377666836027315132024-03-13T11:14:45.060-07:00Thirsty StillAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.comBlogger117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-75920810236795813462017-06-20T13:26:00.001-07:002017-06-20T13:26:25.546-07:00Round 3, Day 644: Still sober, still quiet, feeling full of life againLast time I wrote I mentioned going through a low spell, and I wasn't up to keeping up with comments or really even keeping in touch at that point. But I was (and am) really grateful to people who stopped by and said hello.<br />
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These days I'm doing much better. It's been almost 4 years since I started seriously considering stopping drinking, and during that time I've thought a lot about what we do when we drink and what it is to be sober. I still maintain that the two time periods during which I decided to return to drinking were useful to me, as they absolutely killed any remaining lure the drink might have had. These days I have no pull to drink. Booze smells like poison. Increasingly I can't even cook with it. Though I rarely do anymore, yesterday I tried to make a small white wine deglaze to go with dinner, and it smelled so much like poison I couldn't bear to eat it. My husband ate the sauce (he claimed it tasted good, not "poisonous") and I just squeezed a lemon over my fish and salad. Really, no wine for me, thanks!<br />
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The other day I was caught up in a 911 call to get some help for a guy who had fallen down drunk on the sidewalk in front of my building. The guy was a mess, and he was hostile to me (nothing personal, I'm sure, I'm any woman would get much the same misogynist words from him) so there was no cozy moment sitting with him to keep him company. And I don't want to describe the scene too fully as I hesitate to glamorize the ugliness of it all. But afterward, when my husband and I had continued on our walk to the local fish shop to pick up some food for dinner, I broke down in tears. I couldn't help thinking about how this guy's life has been wrecked by booze. I'm not claiming it's his only problem, but it's clearly a big one. He's a person, and once he was ten years old, and maybe he felt hopeful in that way you do when you're a kid, and he probably kicked a ball around with his friends and smiled and was loved by someone. And I thought about how many people I know who drink too much and live through so much more misery because of that, and how much I drank and the damage that did to me and to people around me. And also, yes, I thought about how lucky I am that I got hold of that problem and was able to resolve it. All this came crashing down on me as I walked down the road, and I was overwhelmed with the horror of the drink, how big a role it plays on our culture, and how much damage it does, and how happy I am to be free of it.<br />
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Well, I cried for a little bit, and my husband hugged me, and then I got over my weepy spell and, feeling a bit more exposed to the world than I'd been a little earlier, I picked up some fish and walked back home. By then the police were seeing to the guy, and he was sitting up, and my only further role in the event was a brief chat with one of the cops about whether the guy had actually had his pants off when I called 911, or whether his pants had just fallen a good ways down but were still somehow, technically, on. I had no solution for this quasi-legal conundrum. I just thanked them for coming, skirted the increased attentions of the (pants now definitely back on) guy, and came home with my husband to make some dinner.<br />
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Having been through another big depression (and I'm still shaky at times but I'll say I'm through it by now) I have such a huge appreciation for the ordinary things in life. It sounds cliche, but it's no cliche to live it. A short walk in the neighbourhood with my husband, a chat at the fish store. Some fresh salmon, panfried, served with a arugula, radishes and cucumbers from the farmers' market, some chewy sourdough from the bakery near my work, and a glass of fizzy water with a drop of cranberry and some sort of cordial that makes for a pretty pink drink. Then tea and strawberries with yoghurt and an early night. For me, that was a beautiful evening. I have many evenings like that, and I enjoy them.<br />
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I don't blog much these days, and I probably won't, as I don't have a lot to say about the drink thing anymore. I've been getting interested in doing some new things -- I took up sewing and have learned to make my own clothes! Life feels full. There are some things I find tricky, for sure, and I guess I am still on watch for the return of another low spell that could drag me down again. But life is good. So this is just a small hello from the other side of lots of things, in case anyone was wondering how I was doing, or in case anyone could use a flare sent from the far side of depression, from someone who lived through another low spell, sober, just to find out how it is. It's grand, I tell you, grand. Peace and joy to you. xoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-27832029010833267442017-02-22T15:49:00.000-08:002017-02-22T15:49:09.344-08:00Round 3, Day 526: Quiet over here. Still sober thoughI've gone quiet here on the blog, in part because I'm going through one of my depressions and this one is more sharp in the tooth than what I'm used to. I'm less sad and more angry than I've often been when I'm low, and that doesn't lend itself to social interaction much, even online interaction. Not that I'm angry all the time. It's more like 90% absolutely nothing, 10% rage. Neither is much fun. But I'm finding a way to do things that might be enjoyable and even enjoying some of them. I'll get through. These days I see how much I relied on drinking to get past the worst depression. Without that, I don't have the emotional release and the built-in checking out that booze brings. Now I'm fully in the world, for good and bad. Except when I'm reading fiction, and then I'm in that world. So I read a lot. I think it helps.<br />
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Still, I recognize that it's better not to be drinking, and I have no intention of going back to that. Every now and then I have a pang. I'm usually caught off guard when I'm reading something set in blustery weather and the character comes in from all that drear and has a wine or a scotch, and I wonder whether I could just step out of the grey and have a drink. But it doesn't take much thinking to see that it's never worked out for me before and there's no reason to expect that would change, and I see that tea or coffee or sparking water would do just fine, even for the imaginary me who has just stepped in from the imaginary nasty weather.<br />
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It's now the longest stretch I've ever been sober. Last time after around 15 months, I decided to drink again. I guess coming up to that time I was a bit worried that I might have to face rethinking all that again, but I didn't. For me, it's never been about a sudden urge to drink that I can't counter. Instead, I have in the past been sucked into thinking my way back to drinking, building a case for why I should try it again. People have laughed at that, but it does give me a strong foundation now. It would be a joke to think that drinking would make anything better these days. I suppose it's often a joke to think that. Not a very funny one either.<br />
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Hi to any blog friends who are still out here. This post is really meant as just a quick check in, in case anyone noticed I was quiet and thought I'd fallen back to the booze. I have not. I am here and sober and living. That's good enough for now. Peace to you all, and joy if you find it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-67518118010028385152016-12-19T14:30:00.003-08:002016-12-19T14:30:53.155-08:00Round 3, Day 461: Sober solsticeI haven't been paying much attention to the fact that it's almost Christmas and, to the extent that I do holiday stuff, I will once again be doing it sober. That's a huge change from a few years back! Christmas 2012 I was drinking and worrying about it. (I recall a tearful long distance conversation about our family and alcohol with my then-sober brother on Christmas day, and I was drinking wine all during the call). In the year leading up to Christmas 2013 I'd been sober a few months and then waffled between drinking and not drinking for a few, so by the actual holiday I was drinking joylessly and talking about quitting. One of those years I blacked out and forgot the details of the romantic gift exchange I'd done with my husband, and having to admit to that the next day was a new low for me. By now I have no more illusions about alcohol being synonymous with joy or celebration. For me, it often brought misery. I have now been sober for 35 of the past 41 months. Most recently I've been sober 15 months and a few days. And this will be my third Christmas in a row sober. I'm not always joyous over the holidays now, but when I am, it's for real.<br />
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All of those numbers matter to me. I like counting it all up, acknowledging how far I've come. But as I thought about writing today, and then thought about the fact that I am sober for another Christmas season, I realized it's kind of a non-issue these days. I've only been to one pre-Christmas party, where I showed up rushed and tired and without something special to drink, and I still managed to make do with some sparkling water I found there without too much fuss. My husband rarely drinks anymore either, so finding something non-alcoholic (and without scads of sugar) to drink is something we'll both do when we are out. We cheerfully turned down the shots of tequila that were going around without feeling we were giving up on the party joy! The first year I was sober, I planned out every event, and I was glad to do that, but I'm more resilient in being sober these days, and it's way less work than it was. This year we will go to my in-laws for Christmas, and I will stock up on some cordial and some good juices and sparkling water to make good drinks, and by now I know many of the people on hand will eschew the wine and beer to have what I'm having because it looks so good. I don't want to drink. No one else especially wants me to drink. I've started to say, "I don't drink anymore," so often, and it barely registers for me or for those who know me.<br />
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I have not been writing much about being sober these days. It's still important, but it doesn't need a lot of work right now. Most of my mental effort has been invested my recent dawning realization that I am on the autism spectrum. While I wrote about that in my last post, the ongoing details don't feel right to discuss here on my sober blog, so I'm writing quietly to myself instead most of the time. But being sober has been critical for me in realizing these deep truths about the way I am in the world, and in seeing the violence I have done to myself by all the drinking over all the years. Getting sober, and getting used to being sober, has been like a set of training wheels for me to learn to accept myself the way I am. I'm in the middle of a kind of rough patch, but I'm getting through it, and I'm getting through by facing things and figuring them out rather than by ignoring it all and hoping it goes away. Being sober is central to all this. It is the single best thing I've ever done to take care of myself. I heartily recommend it!<br />
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One cold, clear evening last week my husband and I walked down the street, all wrapped up in wool coats and scarves, and listened to the solstice concert that has become our favourite way to celebrate the season. The music was beautiful, and we both felt filled with the sadness and joy of this dark time of year. I always cry at the concert, and I'm always happy to be part of it all. Afterward we went for hot chocolate at a local dessert place. I take my celebrations this way these days -- they are small, but they mean a lot to me, and they contain absolutely no false cheer or obligatory happiness. This week we will drive to see his parents, where I expect we will enjoy some good eating, some walks in the woods, and plenty of hot tea and good conversation. I'm looking forward to the visit.<br />
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If you're still reading, thanks as always for walking along here with me and keeping me company on the sober path. Wishing you all peace and joy in the dark winter, and hope for the return of the light.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-12653787424784219052016-11-04T15:23:00.000-07:002016-11-04T15:23:33.888-07:00Round 3, Day 416: New thoughts on never being "normal"After writing to celebrate being one year sober again this time around, I've been quiet online. Just in case anyone follows and wonders whether that means I've fallen away from being sober, no worries. I'm here, and I'm sober! I'm not actually counting days anymore, so when I post I have to go to the wonderful <a href="http://www.livingsober.org.nz/" target="_blank">Living Sober</a> site and see what the number says. Last time when I got sober I drank at somewhere around 500 days, so I'm keeping track of some numbers here at least until then.<br />
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Whew! OK, that's it for the accounting. But what's been going on?<br />
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Last time I wrote, I said I was heading into some serious thinking about myself. Who am I? What do I want? What makes me happy? Now that I'm sober, I feel like drinking was a period of partially putting myself under a big rock. The parts that fit with the world were allowed out. The rest either stayed put, or just came out when I could pleasantly blur myself.<br />
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Part of the work I've been doing has been paying attention to what's going on with me, and tracing some of it to what may be very old patterns. I've been doing that reasonably intensively for a month or so, and I am somewhat shocked with what I'm finding.<br />
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First, I have so much trouble with people. I'm drawn to people in some ways. I really do want to participate in the world. But being in a room with a group of people is so much work for me, in a way that I just don't think is the case for most people. I like the buzz of the city, but mostly I prefer it when it's kind of impersonal. Actually being in a room with people, I take on board too much of what's going on emotionally with them, and as you can't expect people to bring only their settled and neutral selves out in public, there is usually an awful lot going on. This feels overwhelming. Usually I experience this as, "They hate me." And even though I can (mostly) rationally get to knowing that this isn't true, it takes a fair amount of work moment-to-moment to stay aware that it's not true. That's exhausting, and I can only do it sometimes.<br />
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As an aside, I see that that's one of the reasons AA didn't work for me. I liked hearing the stories, but being around people who could come into a room and know how to be with the others was more alienating than recovering home alone. I'd do better out walking in the rain, and that's what I usually did do. It's a lonely road sometimes, though. (And please don't tell me I didn't try hard enough. I did this for several months. I tried staying at the end and stacking chairs. I tried going up to talk to people, who said "keep coming back" but looked like they wanted to add, "But please talk to someone else when you do come back." There might be a better way of doing this, and that might work for you, but what I am saying is that is was massively uncomfortable and it didn't get easier and no one was friendly and my attempts to be friendly didn't work, and I generally felt so alienated that I worried I was at greater risk of drinking than I had been without the meeting. That's my experience. Maybe not yours, but mine.)<br />
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Recently, I tried signing up for a five-week meditation session. But when I went to the first class, it was clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to tolerate being there. The room was stuffy, and slightly smelly, and there were 25 people sitting in uncomfortable straight-backed chairs (the kind that are too high for me, so my feet can't reach the ground), and the chairs were splayed around the room in a kind of squiggly oval. I was a few minutes late, so I couldn't settle myself before it started, and when I joined the class, I could feel my whole body buzzing with the energy of everything that was going on in the room. We were about to do an exercise that involved paying attention to ourselves, except that's what I'd been doing since I arrived, and I was hearing, very clearly, a single, clear message in my mind: "Get me out of here." After twenty minutes, I stood up, took my bag and mu meditation cushion (which I saw no way of using), mimed a stomach problem, and walked out into the night. Walking to my car and sitting for a few minutes before driving home, I felt such clear relief, the kind you feel when you didn't know you were thirsty and then you drink a tall cool glass of water and you go, "Ah, yes, that was exactly what I needed."<br />
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Also, I have been so overwhelmed by what I need to do lately that I haven't been able to do anything except the things that are absolutely necessary to avoid crisis. That doesn't stave off the crisis for very long, but it means I keep out of one many days. Other days I have to lie around reading a mystery as the only way I can drop out of the world. Or sleep for ten or eleven hours, just to restore myself.<br />
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Besides the other people problem, and the probelm of feeling like I can't quite get anything done, there's the problem of getting too easily overstimulated. This is something I've had my whole life, but I've been paying close attention to it lately, trying to see if there are ways I can set up my life so I can cope with what's coming at me. It's partly why I've been trying out things like yoga and meditation classes, and partly why I've been thinking about how a person would feel way overwhelmed and overstimulated in a quiet room doing yoga (which happens to me more often than not.)<br />
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Several weeks ago at work, we had had a flood and so we were working in a temporary set-up that was so unbelievably busy and noisy. I felt like my whole body was vibrating. I spoke with a woman who is kind of a co-worker about it (she had a master key that could open a quiet room I was arranging to use later in my shift and I was explaining why I needed to do that) and she said something about having friends "on the spectrum" and understanding exactly what I meant. I knew she meant the autism spectrum, but I was kind of gob-smacked. What did she know that I didn't? A week later I asked her about it, and (after clarifying that she hadn't meant any insult) she said she had quite a few friends with Aspergers (now called high-functioning autism in the new blurry category of the DSM5), and she assumed by my description of my problem that I was signalling to her that I was, as she put it, "on the spectrum."<br />
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I went home and looked it up, and of course, being me, I read a few books and a whole lot of articles about all this, and then I did the many online tests you can do to see if you have any of the features of Aspergers. I have been somewhat stunned to find out that I do. I score up into the middle to high ranges of people with Aspergers, well beyond the cutoff points that indicate you might want to get this checked out. Apparently Asperger's looks very different in men than women, and most of what I knew about it came from pop culture stories about men with Asperger's. I'm not Stephen Hawking or Bill Gates or even Temple Grandin. But the descriptions of women with Aspergers are terrifyingly apt. They capture the exact way I find myself to be a little bit weird. They sound like me.<br />
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I'm just coming to terms with this and trying to figure out what to do. I may talk to someone about getting an official diagnosis. It costs money, but it can also help get some services and accommodations at work when needed. But it costs money, and you get little in return for that, and even the experts say that once you're an adult and there are very few services to help, sometimes just knowing is enough.<br />
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Emotionally, I have conflicting reactions to what I'm learning about myself. On the one hand, I am saddened to think that I'm not going to find my way to the kind of "comfortable with people and OK in the world" normal that I had been hoping to reach. But the more important part of all this is a huge relief. Whenever I describe a problem that seems insurmountable to me (like something with people, or getting overwhelmed with tasks or sounds or something like that) people often explain how I need to do things differently, as though I hadn't been trying to do that my whole life. Seeing that I may be different in a way that I can (and have) learned to work with but never quite change means I can maybe stop trying to find a way to be a person I'm not. I may not be able to get over extreme jumpiness, aversion to loud noises and bright lights and extreme sensory anything, difficulty with people, or problems with getting some things done. But I can accept myself as myself, and find a way to live that works for me.<br />
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(It also helps explain some of what I loved about alcohol. Drinking was a way of turning the volume down on the whole world. God, I loved being able to do that! Interestingly, there's at least a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that people with Asperger's drink as a way of helping negotiate the otherwise overwhelming social world, and that's sure true for me, though I know it's also true for many people who are what the Aspies call "neurotypical.")<br />
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This past year has been very different from my first year sober. I think I have a better handle on the things I need to change, and on what matters to me in living a good life. Starting to learn all this about myself fits pretty well with that. Three years ago I thought I'd quit drinking for a while and then become a normal drinker. Later, when that wasn't on, I thought I'd get sober and be one of the sober people who ends up with a big warm group of sober friends, but that's not my life here either. Now I think I'm getting rid of any images of "normal" altogether. It may just be that I'm a little bit weird in a way that no amount of time sober or yoga class or therapy can change. I think I'm OK with that. I'm getting there, anyway.<br />
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Because all this is so tough in person, I'm all the more grateful to be able to come here and talk about it with you all. Thanks as always for walking the road with me, and for your kind support. Wishing you peace and joy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-23985672886224233372016-09-26T16:59:00.003-07:002016-09-26T16:59:52.156-07:00One year sober, second time around: belonging, healingIt's a week or so late for me to celebrate on the blog but I am here now and I'm celebrating anyway! Today is day 376 of the third round of committed sober living for me, which means it's 10 days past my second time reaching a full year sober. Today I want to reflect on what's different this time, what's working for me, and what I'm learning now that I didn't know before.<br />
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First, some numbers: Because one thing I've learned is that cumulative sober time matters. Since July 2013, I've had three stretches of living sober. Over the past 3 years and 2 months, I've been sober for 2 years and 8 months. During that time, over two periods that totalled almost 6 months, I drank. For me, both times when I returned to drinking, stepping back into that world meant I quickly lost the day-to-day gains I had gleaned from being sober. The first time I came back to sober again around 2 months later. Last summer I drank -- lightly, then eventually at times heavily -- for just over 3 months before I decided that I genuinely enjoyed sober living more. Both times, drinking initially seemed to allow me to reconnect with the world I missed, the late night camaraderie and raucous humour of drinkers, the softer edged glow of wine filled evenings. Both times, it didn't work for long. Being sober worked its magic on me even when I tried to leave it behind. The longer I'd been sober, the more I felt drawn to the living with a clear mind and enjoying the quieter pleasures of sober living. After long stretches sober, late night boozy conversations (that no one could completely remember afterwards) and the warm glow of drinking with others seemed a poor substitute for the kind of real connection with others I longed for.<br />
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Getting sober again didn't entirely bring me that connection. I still only have tendrils that I am starting to see are growing into real connections. But I see that I do need to feel connection, I need to feel a sense of belonging to the world. And I see that alcohol gave me just an occasional, fleeting taste of that. Not one I could rely on. And eventually, not one that I could continue to substitute for the real thing.<br />
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This past weekend, I attended a conference, one I've attended now for three years. It's a very small group, about 16 people, and we spend three days living together, sharing meals and walks, listening to papers and discussing them. Three years ago, I was newly sober (3 months), and I was excited to spend days talking with people about ideas. Nights I sat up with the drinkers and sipped fizzy water, happy to be part of the group. It was all new and exciting, and I think that newness substituted some of the buzz that drinking used to bring. The second year, I led a discussion that went very well, and I felt like a contributing member of the group. I was newly sober, again, (one week!) and suffering a very bad flu, so at night I went to bed at nine and ignored the festive part of things. This year, I was, for the third time, sober at the conference. But this time I was solidly sober, and the newness of the event had worn off. And this time, I felt strongly the damage drinking does at these events, and how central it is to the social thing that's happening there as it's currently structured. People spend nights sitting up late drinking together, where they knit together a sense of belonging that's an important counterpoint to the solitude of of academic life. Evenings people knit themselves into the group via the social, and if during the day the conversation gets heated and even mean, the sense of belonging to the group helps heal the rifts. It's all ritual, and all the parts matter.<br />
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But it doesn't work. Some people don't sit up drinking. This year, I didn't. The first night, when I said goodnight early, one of the hard drinkers made a joke that all that San Pellegrino had done me in and I'd have been better off joining them in the wine so I could stay up. I said, "I'd rather go to sleep." And this was the tone of the evenings this year. The next night, I went to a yoga class after the days talks. I ate dinner with the group but by then many were already well into the drink, and as a group they were rude and boring. I noticed that only about a third of the group were hard drinkers. Among the others, some slipped in and out, seemingly enjoying the fun but not completely merging with the group. But that hard drinking group was a core of the event, so that belonging to it conferred a kind of glow that changed how what people said was taken up in conversation during the days, and there were many unexplained references like "as we were talking about last night" as though the whole group had been there, or at least anyone who mattered had been.<br />
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As you can tell from this description, I found the event quite alienating. At times, I didn't belong, nor did I want to belong to a group who would carry on in that manner. There's a lot to say about his that I'll skip here, because I really am talking about my changing relationship to alcohol, and my deepened awareness of the social role it plays. I see that alcohol is used to replace the hard work of finding ways to communicate with each other. Drinking was the route to instant membership in the group, and members were relieved from having to take responsibility for their statements. Rudeness and stupid comments were accepted from people because they were "good guys" and "you can't take him seriously." People who didn't join in during the evenings, (not just me) had to work harder to be heard during the day. So alcohol divided the group even as it knit a smaller one together.<br />
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It makes me feel sad to see that this kind of belonging is what used to feel meaningful to me. I'm happy to say that it's not what matters to me any more. After this full year sober, and three years of working on figuring out this drinking thing, I feel I see more clearly the great lie that alcohol offers. We all need to belong. But belonging means real sharing of yourself, making yourself vulnerable and being open to opposing perspectives and finding common sources of meaning through the real, hard work of communicating and authentic being with each other. That's what matters to me now. Ephemeral feelings of belonging that are built through conversations no one can remember and the camaraderie of shared hangovers is a sad substitute.<br />
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Of everything I've learned in my three years working on this, and especially over this past year living sober, that's been my most powerful lesson. These days, I don't have the kind of belonging that I know I want, and probably need. I am very happy with my husband, but in the wider world I'm still lonely, still on the outside a lot of the time. That may have been why this weekend was, for me, so very painful. But I do know that we all need to belong. And if alcohol offers a false way into that, in a world that doesn't offer much in the way of real belonging, I can see why it had such power over me for so long, and why it still has power over so many. I feel a deep compassion for the me of several years ago, and for anyone who needs alcohol for the glimmer of belonging it offers. <br />
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This time, at one full year sober, I feel like I am finding my way to bigger life changes. One is my shift away from the academic world, as I've found that it can't be the source of meaning and intellectual companionship I had hoped it to be. I have to look elsewhere for that, but I think I'm better equipped to find it now. Also, I am finally beginning to understand what people talk about when they talk about the wisdom of the body. I am loving this yoga thing I've started! (Imagine, me, loving yoga! It's like saying I finally realized turnips are delicious (still not likely) or that sleep is overrated (equally unlikely!)) And through it, I am starting to be able to know my own reactions. Yesterday, driving back to the airport after the final meeting of the conference, I realized I felt very sad, and that I wasn't quite breathing. I couldn't. I stopped at a little health food cafe to buy myself something to eat on the plane, but as I sat there, I realized what I really wanted was to sit in what felt like a healing space. Later, once my flight had landed back in Vancouver and I was walking home from the Skytrain, still not quite breathing, I noticed the red leaves still on the trees, and I felt lifted up by the beauty, surrounded by the flashes of that quick fall red and by the dark, constant green of the tall firs that line the road to my apartment. Walking along, I acknowledged to myself, "I really hated a lot of what went on this weekend," and with that I felt as though a metal band around my chest had fallen away and I took a deep, healing breath. (And that same deep, healing breath just breathed me again as I typed about it.) This is something that the yoga is bringing me, and it's what I have needed, though I wasn't open to it before now.<br />
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At this celebration of one year sober, I am confronting some big questions: Who am I? What makes me happy? What do I love? Where do I belong? I don't have answers. But I feel I'm on the road to some answers, and some joyful exploration of these meaningful questions. That's the next stage of sober living for me. And I feel blessed to be here.<br />
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Thanks as always, fellow travellers, for reading, for your fine company and your supportive comments. This sober blog space is one place of belonging for me. I hope it's one for you, too. Peace and joy to you.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-57049484895775064362016-09-12T16:09:00.004-07:002016-09-12T16:09:48.546-07:00Round 3, day 362: Language, people, bodiesI think the biggest thing I'm learning as I find my way through sober living is how much I have let other people influence me. I mentioned this in my last post, and I've been thinking about it since then. One thing I need to learn as I head into another sober year is how to live respectfully with others without being overly influenced by them.<br />
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I am sometimes complimented on being so intuitive about other people. I sense people's moods and interactions, I notice small reactions and upsets, and I find quickly ways of acting to soothe and care for these small upsets. Which would be fine if I did the same thing for myself.<br />
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Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying I'm so unselfish and kind that I care too much about others and too little about myself! What I mean is that I don't know how to know my own reaction to many situations without first taking in the reactions of others, and even then it can be hard to find what part of it all is me.<br />
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Here's an example: I have started doing this yoga thing. And I'm liking it! Hooray! But I have a very hard time understanding word descriptions of physical actions. It's like I'm hearing a second language that I don't speak fluently. Someone says, "move your right foot to the left," and I think "foot, OK, right foot is that one, left is that way, so I move this part that way," but then I wonder how my weight is supposed to shift while I'm doing that, and I see that here are quite a few ways one could move the right foot to the left. It's really only when I see someone else doing the action that I think, "Oh, OK, something like that," and then I try it. I can copy actions well enough, and I'm not a perfectionist about getting that kind of thing right. I just find the language-body links are not very clear for me. I used to be a potter and when I first started taking classes, I was much the same. I loved working with clay, but I found the descriptions of what we were supposed to do incomprehensible, and it wasn't until I found a teacher I trusted enough to ask her, "Please stop talking when you're showing me and just show me," that I could get the most out of instruction. In many ways I'm all about words. But words get in the way of my body. And when I am trying to be grounded in my own body, I seem to operate best when I step outside of language.<br />
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So in my yoga class, I often don't know what I'm supposed to do. Sometimes that's frustrating. But if I'm left to figure it out on my own, and I have someone to watch, I'm kind of OK. I'm very surprised to find I like it a lot, despite so much not knowing. But this morning was rough. The instructor was extremely verbal, and I had more trouble than usual following what he was saying. And he wanted to be attentive. So he rattled off instruction after instruction and noticed when I stopped moving and just watched people. Once he brought me blocks and showed me an alternate to what the others were doing, and I felt I had to do this alternate thing, which left me balancing pretty awkwardly, holding myself up by my arms, instead of just watching to see what the others were doing. Another time he came up to ask me to see him after class if I needed help with a pose. Another time he suggested I drop my left hip, and I had to stand up to face him, figure out which was the left hip, then figure out what "drop" meant. I completely lost what I was doing, when I know he was trying to give just a slight correction. Later again he asked if I wanted him to go over a certain set of moves with me, and I just shook my head without even making eye contact. There were breath instructions that seemed to go too fast for me, so I would be exhaling when people were being asked to inhale and then I'd try to shift myself to the breath instruction but that just left me short of breath. Eventually I was so frustrated I was in tears. It was the exact feeling I'd experienced years before when I took a yoga class, which I called "Yoga rage." I could hardly catch my breath, and I felt trapped in the room with what felt like an endless list of action instructions I couldn't understand and an instructor who was taking much more notice of me than I was comfortable with, and who I felt I has to placate somehow, though I had no way to do that. <br />
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All that might make it sound like the guy was a poor instructor, but that's not where I'm going here. It's that there were just too many things going on at the same time for me. The language-body thing is already a very challenging translation effort for me. And then when the instructor started to interact with me, I really just wanted to do whatever he wanted so he would leave me alone. I get that he was trying to help me. That's his job, and he's likely good at it. But talking to him while I was trying to do the moves meant all my focus was on him, and making sure he was OK (not frustrated with me, not distracted by me from what the class needed, etc). So it was just about impossible for me to engage in any conversation with him and stay in my body.<br />
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In the first class, I think I started to understand this, and I remembered this moment after the class today. A different instructor was showing me a pose I wasn't understanding, and he asked whether I could feel the movement in my hip. I answered, "When I'm talking to you, I'm just talking. I don't feel my body at all." And I think that's the crux of the problem I'm trying to talk about here. It's not an issue of yoga, or good teachers, though those things likely matter. It's that when I'm talking to someone else, I am (often) so out of body that I have little or no physical feeling. It's not that I go numb. It's more that I shift to living in language, and when I'm there, there's not a lot of body going on.<br />
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I think this is what I mean when I say I am overly influenced by others. I mean that I lose touch with my own physical being when I talk with people. And that means I am caught in noticing everything that's happening in the emotional world of the other person, and in the language, but there's not much me there. I come back to me when I'm biking or walking or running, and that's probably why these things are so good for me. When I'm with one of the (few) people I'm close to, I'm less cut off. But it still happens.<br />
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I know this has something do with my drinking. I used to love that moment of bringing a glass to my lips, and I think some of what I loved about that was the sheer physicality of it. I'm never, never going back to that. And I don't need to. These days I get some of that same pleasure with coffee, or ice cream, or fresh peaches in season, or a whole host of good tastes. So it's not that I'm always only in my head.<br />
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But what I want to learn is how to stay in myself so that I can talk to people without shifting so much into a "being in my head" mode that I lose touch with my physical being. I think this is the beginning of how I might start to know my own reactions. I'll be less influenced by others if I have a reaction that's separate from theirs, and I know what it is!<br />
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This is a little convoluted in my description, but maybe at least some people will know what I mean. Anyway, for now that's enough tangled words. Thanks as always for keeping me company while I figure this out. Peace and joy to you.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-25593579390380913982016-09-05T14:45:00.000-07:002016-09-05T17:24:21.630-07:00Round 3, day 355: rambly post about NOT crashing headlong into crisis!Hi blog world. Sorry I've been silent for such a long time. I've been in an odd patch, hunkered down thinking things through, and I seem to have needed to do that thinking away from talking with others.<br />
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First, don't worry, I'm not drinking. I say that just in case anyone is following and reads into a long silence that I might have slipped back to that. And I have no plan to drink, no desire to. Before when I drank again after long stretches sober, I spent some time thinking about how I was deluded about being sober, or hating the whole sober thing, that kind of thing. If you've been sober for a while or if you follow sober blogs, you know that lots of people go through that once in a while and drinking isn't the answer. But that's not what 's going on here.<br />
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Instead, I think I'm getting to the part of being sober where I realize I need to make some changes, and I need to do some more of what is probably called "working on myself," or anyway, taking care of myself. It's been a rough summer. My mother died -- and thanks for kind comments about this on my last post, which I very much appreciated but couldn't bring myself to answer. Mom's death was expected, and I'm doing OK with coping. Still, it's the end of a long, difficult process, losing my mom to dementia after a lifetime of dealing with the vibrant, intelligent, difficult person she was. So there's that.<br />
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Also, I've been struggling to figure out what I'm doing with my life, in particular with my academic work. I've talked about this here so many times I'm sure it's getting dull, and I still don't feel all that coherent about it, though I'm getting there. As it stands now, I've decided not to continue with pursuing a PhD in what I've been studying once my MA is complete, though preparing for a PhD is very much the main purpose of my MA program. Instead, I've been accepted into a library science program that starts in January, and I've decided to do that. So after more than 15 years of working in libraries/bookstores/publishing in one way or another, I've decided to train as a librarian. Now I feel compelled to say it's not the calm and peaceful quiet job people think when they think of the cardigan-wearing, glasses and hair-in-a-bun lady they remember from childhood libraries. I think there are lots of dynamic, interesting things I might be able to do with the degree. I think I wrote about this a while back, but since then I've done a fair amount of waffling (PhD? librarian? quit everything and move to a small town? just quit everything?) Now I've made a commitment to the program. Hooray for commitment! It means I have to finish my thesis and get it defended some time in the next few months. But it feels good to have made a decision I can stick with.<br />
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The even bigger issue, in which all this is nested, is that I see how important it is to find ways to stay connected to myself. Since I've started this blog (three years ago!) I've written over and over about finding my own way and finding my own voice. It's something that plagues me. On the one hand, in my life I come off as a strong, independent-minded woman who has no trouble speaking her own mind. And that's true, in part. But I find myself susceptible to losing my way, getting swallowed up by trying to figure out how the world works, and in doing so losing touch with what is matters most to me in that process. I think the academic world in which I've been immersed isn't so good at supporting people. In that world, I'm good at academics, and that's what counts. But though I started out keeping myself firmly planted in a healthy, day-to-day life, as I've got busier I've lost track of doing the things that support me as me. I don't cycle as often (in part because my husband's accident last summer means he can't cycle as much, but it's not just that.) I don't walk outdoors as often. I don't revel in the small moments of silence that keep me going. But more importantly, I've lost tough with how to connect what I'm doing day to day with a deeper source of meaning in my life. Starting last summer, I've been trying to speak with my supervisor about this, but those have been tough conversations. He ends up thinking I'm being critical of the work he's done, or even the way he's lived, and then the focus of the conversation shifts to me reassuring him that that's not what I'm saying instead of exploring how to stay connected to a world of meaning. I just end of feeling bad about needing to find meaning in my work, and then feeling like I'm alienating someone I've had a good connection with on top of all that. That's no fun, and it hasn't served me very well. I see that now.<br />
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In a way, I've been here before. Over the years, I have been swallowed up by the world, and eventually crashed into massive depressions. Once that happens, the world lets you go. If all you can do is sleep and cry, no one asks too much of you. At that point, you have all the time in the world you need to find your way to yourself, except you have no strength to do that with for quite some time. When I got sober (each of the THREE times I've done that! ack!) I did it by retreating into a quieter, more nurturing world. I slept well and ate well and walked/ran/cycled plenty. I treated myself like I was a living thing that needed care in order to stay alive, like I would treat a major depression. I know what works for me in that kind of crisis. After a while though, I felt better, and I got myself back to getting schoolwork done, writing papers and going to conferences and all that stuff. And I like that world. At the risk of outing myself as an even bigger nerd than you all know I am, I find academic conferences exciting! People getting together, stepping away from their day to day lives to talk about what they are thinking about and working on. But I have not been able to find a way to make the academic project sustaining for me. I feel like my studies have morphed into an area that's critical of some things that need to be criticized, but what I want to do is be part of the active world of living, not the stepping back world of criticism. I think people can do both. But I have not found a way to do so. And without being immersed in the active world of living, with all the messy hopes and sorrows that that world entails, I just dry up.<br />
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I think that's the best way of describing what's been happening to me over the past year or so. In my personal life, I'm happy. I love my husband, and I love our life together. But to follow this academic path, we've been considering moving to a bigger city in a less hospitable climate, farther away from his family and the ocean and mountains we love. And I've been feeling quite torn by it all. At the same time, I've been getting sick more often, and having spells of depression that are getting worse and closer together. I know what I might be heading into if I don't make some life changes, and it's been scaring me, but I haven't known what to do, what changes to make.<br />
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I don't think life has to be so hard. If everything looks super difficult, maybe there's another way. I've figured that out before. So recently, I've been trying to see what the easier way is. One thing I've been doing is noticing what I like doing and what I don't. What brings me joy, what doesn't. And trying to imagine a life that has more joy in it, without trying to ignore the inevitable pain and suffering that's in the world.<br />
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My answers have surprised me, though they might not surprise people close to me. I want to stay where I am. Same city, same apartment, for now. Same field I worked in before returning to university, though I'll be changed by what I've learned there. I want to write more. Blog more. Maybe take up a different kind of writing project again, rather than the academic writing I've been doing (or avoiding doing this summer.) I want to go outside more. Walk in the evenings with my husband. Do more hot yoga! (Ok that one's a big surprise to me, but I just started it and I love it. Oh, the joy of the hot room, and sweating!) I want to read novels, read mysteries, read poetry. I want to reread Rebecca Solnit and Thich Nhat Hanh and all those people who inspire me, and figure out how to live an engaged life, one that engages me with the world, one that sustains me and contributes to the world.<br />
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So I'm going to write a serviceable thesis and defend it, pronto. And in January, I start a different kind of school program, the MLIS, which is geared to working with projects and people in a way that I can connect to differently than my academic work has allowed. I'm almost one year sober this time around, and I think I'm looking at the kind of personal life changes that I need to make to sustain being sober. No, that's not quite it. I'm seeing that there are things I can do to help myself live more fully and joyfully, and being sober helps me see that way. Avoiding seeing them is easier when you drink, but that's something I don't do any more, and I never plan to do again.<br />
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I'm a bit under the weather this week with yet another of the mild illnesses that have been knocking me sideways as I've struggled with all this. But I feel filled with hope, and I think I am onto a solid way out of what I believe would otherwise end of in another of the kind of crash I never want to see again. I expect I'll have more to say on this later, but for now I think I'll get out of my big yellow chair and go outdoors for a walk.<br />
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If you're still around after the long gap between my posts and then this long and possibly tortured post, thanks very much. As always, I am grateful for your company as we all figure out how to live. Peace and joy to you.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-90319500081583330702016-07-14T12:18:00.003-07:002016-07-15T00:24:07.922-07:00Round 3, Day 302: Life, death, lifeI left a few more weeks than intended between my last post and this post. But I'm still here, still sober. More and more, I'm settling into being sober as a source of strength for me.<br />
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My mother died a little over a week ago. It wasn't unexpected. She had dementia and we all knew she was in the last stage of that illness. A year ago I visited and spent some time with her, when she still had some of her faculties. At that point she could sit up and interact with people, and she loved to laugh. After that visit people often asked, "Did she know who you were?" but one thing dementia teaches the family, or should teach the family if they are open to learning that lesson, is that visiting the sick person isn't about you, and it isn't about getting what you need from the person the sick person used to be. By last summer, my mother was years past knowing who I was. But she was alive, and somehow still vital. She was still herself, in a way that we understand as people but that the medical and scientific descriptions seem to miss. I was able to connect with her during our visit, and we laughed a lot. Over this past winter, she mostly lost her ability to sit up unassisted. She slept most of the time. Eventually she could hardly swallow. Occasionally, when she woke up, family members said she still smiled or laughed for a moment. Thanks to the wonders of the iPhone, I have a recent photo of my mother laughing with my youngest brother. By the end these moments happened very rarely. Now they are gone, except in memory.<br />
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My husband and I flew across the country at short notice, the way people living away do when family members die. The trip to where I'm from takes pretty much a whole day. We stayed with family, participated in the wake and funeral, then spent a couple of more days visiting and resting. The wake was a traditional Catholic wake, with an open casket, so for two days people who had known my mother, or who knew members of my large family, came to pay their respects to our family, and to the memory and the body of my mother. There is something about the open casket wake that I find comforting. For two days, in that room, the person who was my mother and the body of my mother were the same and not the same. My mother looked beautiful. She was dressed in a pretty blue dress, which made her look more like herself than she had wearing the drab easy-to-wash clothes she wore in the nursing home. Her hair was done in a way she would have liked, artfully mussed by a hairstylist relative who was horrified by the old-lady do that the morticians had done. From some angles, her face looked as it did when she was alive. The set of her mouth made it easy to imagine she was about to make the kind of sharp (and likely cutting) comment she was known for much of her life. But of course she lay perfectly still, still as only the dead can lie. In that room, we had photos of my mother laughing and dancing, and stories of things she'd said and done, but she wasn't coming back with any more sharp remarks or one more quick laugh. Yes, we all knew that, but the wake gave us space to be with that knowledge, to try it on and take it into ourselves. We did this for two days, and after that we closed the coffin, had the funeral, and then we put the coffin, with the body of my stylish, still mother in her pretty blue dress in it, in a hole in the ground. At the graveside, I was bent with grief. A hole in the ground is a lonely place, and my mother hated being alone. It seemed wrong to leave her there. I wanted to stay. But there was a funeral meal to be shared, and more stories to hear. The living have to eat, and talk, and I had to get on with that part of the funeral. For the rest of the day, I stood and sat with relatives and friends and talked some more about my mother. She was still with us, and at the same time she was alone in that hole in the ground.<br />
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My family lived in a small rural area, but my mother was born and raised in the city. A couple of days after the funeral, my husband and I walked through her childhood neighbourhood, past the house she grew up in and the school she taught in starting at age 16. It helped me see the city differently, walking from one end to the other, thinking about my mother's hard childhood and how she loved teaching and what it must have been like for her to be a young person so long ago, before she was my mother. One of my nephews had a sports event in the afternoon, so my husband and I walked across the city to meet up with some more family members and watch the young boys rowing on the lake. Some of us went out for fish and chips, and then my husband and I went walking some more, through the downtown and up a big well known hill that overlooked the city and the wild ocean.<br />
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When I sat down to write this post today, I didn't mean to write what I did. I was going to talk about drinking, or more accurately, not drinking. On the Saturday morning at work when I got the phone call from my family, Saturday afternoon at home making travel arrangements for the long flight, all day Sunday reading and doing sudoku and passing the time on the flight, at the wake and the funeral and during the days visiting afterwards, and then in the always somewhat guilty return flight home, I didn't drink. Many people did. I come from a drinking family and a drinking culture, and wakes and funerals are steeped in booze. People got drunk and loud. At least one person got drunk and passed out. A few people got drunk and, only then, cried. I didn't want that. I wanted to be sober. Just once, getting the bus on the way home from work the morning I got the news, as the bus passed a wine store I used to frequent, I wondered whether I might have some wine. But I didn't want to.<br />
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Somehow, over the past three years of being sober and then not, and sober and then not, and then sober, I have become sober. It's who I am. I was so grateful to be able to face the news and the travel and wake and funeral and all that time with family, to feel the grief I feel in my mother's death. I was able to experience the complicated love I feel for my family and the straightforward love I feel for my husband, and enjoy the powerful connection I have with the people and the place I come from, even when it was sad and painful. I had some amazing conversations, including one with a woman whose son I used to tutor, who took me aside at the wake to tell me about her near-death experience and caution me that death isn't something to fear. I was able to live in the presence of death. I didn't need to turn away from it all and find solace in drink. Life itself is solace, even when it's sad and filled with grief. And I'm grateful for that.<br />
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If you're still reading after this long post, thanks for keeping me company through this getting sober thing. I'm grateful for all your support. Peace and joy to you.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-83672690134497460602016-06-01T18:04:00.004-07:002016-06-01T18:04:57.758-07:00Round 3, day 259: Not just bobbing along anymoreRecently, this odd image has been flitting through my mind: a cork, bobbing along in the waves. It's insistent but fleeting, like a fragment of an old childhood memory you're not sure really ever happened, or a dream you had just before you woke up and now can't quite recall. Every now and then, when I'm out walking, crossing the street maybe, or when I'm sitting down to dinner, or just picking up a book, and I glimpse this cork, somewhere in my mind just for a moment, bobbing along.<br />
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And from the first time I saw it, I knew without doubt, that cork is me. It's taken me a while to understand it, but it's coming clear. I'm getting a sense of myself as a cork that's been bobbing along in the waves all these years. I see how much I have been pushed and pulled by the forces around me. And part of what's interesting is this: I see this as something that's in the past. I used to be like that. I'm not anymore.<br />
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There's something that many people talk about once they become sober, and that's happening to me, too. I realize what a people pleaser I have been! Now if you knew me in person, you'd probably say, No way! I mostly come off as decisive, sure of myself, quick to speak up. I'm someone who has no trouble putting myself forward. I'm not all that nice at times. When I hear people talk about people pleasing, they always sound like they fold themselves passively around the will of others, or anyway that's what I've always pictured, and that's not me.<br />
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But maybe it has been me. Despite seeming to be a strong person at times, I simply haven't been all that aware of myself as someone who can shape a life of my own. It's the old, "not good at wanting" thing that I have talked about here in at least one earlier post. Years ago, I was dating a guy who had such a forceful personality, and whenever we were going to eat out, I'd refuse to make a suggestion because I knew he would just make the case for going somewhere else. I didn't want to be attached to a plan only to have it argued away. For me it was easier to simply not want to do anything in particular, and then I could be happy with whatever we did do. At the time I thought it was all very zen, not needing to be attached or in control, that whole story. Later I saw I was being swallowed up by him, and I left him. (And that's a whole other story.) But these days I think I've done too much of that in my life. I've let myself fall into this or that situation and then made the best of it once I was there. I've done a whole lot of accepting, but not a lot of wanting.<br />
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One great exception to this is my relationship with my husband. Being with him has been an active choice, and it enriches my life. Meeting him was lucky. But we chose each other.<br />
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But in work, and school, and in so many things, I feel I am only now coming into a sense of myself as someone who wants this and not that. I'm just feeling my way with it all. It's early days for these shoots to be growing here. Some are barely peeking their teeny green heads out of the dirt. But I have a strong sense of me, alive and hoping, and learning how to want whatever it is I want. I don't know much how to do that yet, and I don't even have much of a language for it. But I wanted to say all this today, write it down here, so I can remember the new green feel of it all later once it's not so new anymore.<br />
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That's me today, glad to be here, sober and learning all this. Peace and joy to you all. And green shoots all around!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-37189167090635149992016-05-16T15:10:00.003-07:002016-05-16T15:10:58.964-07:00Round 3, Day 243: Finding my way back to joyI quit drinking (again) eight months ago today. This is my third major stint of sober time, and I'm starting to realize how much I've changed.<br />
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Recently I wrote that I have realized I've been going through a bit of a depression lately. I have a lot of uncertainty about what I'm doing with my academic work, which means a lot of my life has been uncertain, as it meant I didn't know where I'd be living or what I'd be doing a year from now. It felt like my whole life was up in the air, and that's a pretty unsettling place to be.<br />
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Somehow, over the past year or so, I’ve lost the joy in what I’m studying. When I returned to school a few years ago, it was such fun to encounter so many new ideas! I earned a degree and am most of the way through another, and I’ve
learned a lot. But without actively sharing what I’ve learned, something essential is missing. In my area (and probably in a lot of academic work) learning is such a solitary exercise. I always have spent a lot of time alone, reading and writing, and I love that. But I also need to interact with people. I realized that I don't want to do work that means I'm mostly alone in an office, struggling with something that I can't quite connect to any real person or worthwhile purpose.<br />
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This has been the central struggle for me over the past year. Surprisingly, no one I've spoken to in my academic life seems to have understood me on this, which may just be that I haven't expressed it all that well. But more recently, I've been reading stories of people who have left the academic world--people who quit their PhD programs before they completed them, people who finished and then worked outside academia, and people who worked as tenured faculty but left to work in what academics sometimes call "the real world." Many of their stories resonated with me. I see that, for now at least, leaving is for me. I'll finish my thesis and get my MA. But I'm already withdrawing from many things that are not directly connected with that project, and I won't continue on with the PhD as I'd planned. It's just not for me right now.<br />
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Part of what's happening here is that I am starting to have a better sense of who I am. A lot of what I have been experiencing as alienation over the past year is, I now see, a great thing! (Though if you'd told me that last September, I'd have bit your head off!) I don't have a clear direction yet regarding what I will do. But clearing a lot of this out of the way has helped me gain clarity on what I might want, and on what I definitely don't want.<br />
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<span lang="EN-US">I know enough about how depression
works in me. I go into a kind of system shutdown, a deep winter of the soul. I become unable to do things that are not good for me. And if I accept that, and wait and watch
carefully, and force nothing, I know I will find the tendrils that connect me
back to joy again. This isn’t a quick process. I’ve learned to trust myself on
this. I’m not generally patient. But there is no other way. I know that if I
don’t do this, things so very badly indeed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">That's where I've been lately, following those tendrils. Spending lots of time alone, doing whatever I want, which is often a whole lot of nothing. I've been reading a lot of mysteries, and running sometimes, and doing a few hikes. Lot's of cooking-- the spring vegetables are starting to show up at the farmers markets, and there's so much that's fresh and green right now! And the rhubarb is out, so there's that tart sweet pleasure to enjoy. I've been working library shifts, which is one of the ways I earn enough to go to school, and it's a way of being in the thick of people in the right sort of way. (Spoiler alert: I'm actually applying to train as a librarian, which seems like such a better fit for me and how I want to live. I won't hear for a month or so whether I'm accepted, and I won't start until January, but it's a tentative plan that has a lot of joy and hope and openness in it, and I'm very pleased with that.) I've been doing enough of the academic work to keep things ticking, but not a whole lot. I've been hanging out with my lovely husband, walking and eating and going to some great concerts. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">All of that is starting to feel pretty good. There really is a lot of joy here in my life, right now. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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What does this have to do with being sober? Well, everything, I think. For me, the first two times I quit drinking, I didn't feel a need to reevaluate everything in my life. But sooner or later, the tensions in my life pulled me back to the drink. (No need to get into too much detail here, but I will say that the busyness and stress and alienation of my academic work was part of that.) Now I am committed to not drinking. It has no appeal anymore, and if it ever did bring me fun and connection and some of what I'd longed for, that had stopped working for me ages ago anyway. And along with living without alcohol, I'm committed to finding a way to live that suits the person I am. Some of what I find seems obvious (after 14 years of working in libraries, I find I like libraries!) But it wasn't obvious to me earlier. This process of becoming more myself is a slow one, and it's not so easy, but I'm liking it. I think a lot of the pain and angst that I have felt (and that I've inflicted on people kind enough to read along here) has been the result of me not fitting too well in my life and not being able to see that. People talk about laying down the big burden that they don't need to carry anymore. That's exactly what this all feels like to me. </div>
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<br /></div>
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So that's me these days. I'm still a little low, but I also have a lot of moments of hope and joy, and that's what always gets me through these low spells. And I have a new appreciation for who I am, which means making some major life changes and avoiding others. I feel like I'm figuring this out, and I'm so very glad to be sober and finding my way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thanks as always for your company and support. Peace and joy to you, and a good dollop of hope, too!</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-90690570874689901112016-05-01T12:11:00.001-07:002016-05-01T12:12:26.220-07:00Round 3, Day 228: A little bit lostWhen I first realized I needed to get sober, it didn't start out as me thinking I needed to quit drinking. I knew I drank too much, and I knew I'd need to "cut down on the drinking." (Quick side note: cutting back wasn't the answer for me, but I gave it a few good runs, and now no one would be able to convince me that it's an option.)<br />
<br />
The bigger problem was a deep sense that I didn't know how to know what I felt. This is something I've written about on the blog here and there, and in some short fiction I've written as well. It's sometimes an obsession. I find myself easily swamped by the world, and when I am swamped, I don't know how to separate my own voice from the voice of the world.<br />
<br />
There's plenty of advice kicking around about this, except I don't find much of it all that helpful. People will say, "Listen to your inner voice," or "Don't give in to social pressure," as though it were clear to them which voices were the voices of others and which were their own. Maybe it is clear to them. It's not clear to me though. Sometimes I think my inner voice is a ventriloquist. I have read an enormous amount of fiction and memoir over the years, and I have an easy time imagining myself into the heart of a character. Recently, I was talking to an advisor about the direction I am taking (or not taking) with my academic work, and he said that I should only follow such and such a path if I "could absolutely not imagine doing anything else in the world." That doesn't help me much. I can imagine just about anything! That's the root of the problem. I can picture me in many possible lives. I just don't know how to know which one is the one I want to do. Not being able to imagine otherwise just sounds dim to me.<br />
<br />
When I started to get sober, I quickly thought that getting the drink out of the way would address this issue. I figured if I didn't drink anymore, all the ability to feel and connect and know would somehow bubble up naturally. That's a sweet idea. But it doesn't seem to work that way for me.<br />
<br />
For me, this is really the pressing issue. I guess I have been somewhat depressed lately. I felt some blessed relief when I withdrew from the various "shake up my life" academic applications. I'm not setting my husband and me up to move cities, countries, careers, or at least not in the next few months. OK. But I don't know what I am doing either.<br />
<br />
Being as uncertain as this leaves me swinging wildly between raging doubt and brief, temporary certainties about various possible paths. It's hard to even write about, as I can just hear the platitudes about taking things one day at a time, and they make me want to scream! If I am going to continue with school, I have to find a way to do it--some combination of a program, a supervisor, or an institution that will support my study. That's a long term plan that involves a series of steps, not just a single day focus. Long term planning requires a kind of muscular vision, an ability to see at least the thread of a possible path, along with the flexibility to take the better step along that path when that step is available. And having a vision is something I can do, but it all seems so wildly speculative, and it falls back to nothing so easily. Even if I were not going to continue with school, I'd need to find my way in the working world, and all the same things would be needed there.<br />
<br />
Somehow I see that, to get through this, I need a better sense of who I am and what I want. And I'm not sure how to get it. I'm middle aged, I'm reasonably smart and sociable and I've done lots of interesting things in my life. But in some important ways, I feel like a blank slate. Sure, not 100% blank. There are some things I'm sure I like, and some I don't. I despise the taste of turnip. I'm scared of barking dogs. I'm easily startled. Sometimes I get rattled in noisy, chaotic environments, but I worked in one for eight years and often thrived in it. I love the buzz of the city, and fast-paced, witty conversation. I also love sitting alone reading, and getting away from the buzzy city. I remember the glaring certainty of hating the taste of turnip as a two-year-old, spitting it across the kitchen table form my seat in the high-chair, and I remember quickly learning, with a different certainty, that spitting out food you don't like wasn't what people did. But most things aren't that certain. And I'm not two anymore.<br />
<br />
I have no answers today, and not much comfort to offer myself or anyone. At between 7 and 8 months sober, I don't feel I have much sense of myself and what I want in the world. The giant blank of it all frightens me. But this is where I am right now. I'm not at all tempted to drink, but the problems that the drink covered up are more glaring. And the escape drink provided is lost to me for good. I guess I wanted to write this because writing sometimes brings me closer to a real knowing. Maybe in time I'll know more. For now though, I'm just a little bit lost.<br />
<br />
Thanks for keeping me company in this somewhat bleak post. Wishing you peace and joy, and some knowing.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-6820036818614640142016-04-09T12:53:00.001-07:002016-04-09T14:31:07.039-07:00Round 3, Day 206: EasyFor the past couple of weeks, life has felt easy. That's come as a huge surprise to me. A couple of weeks ago I withdrew my applications from the academic programs to which I'd applied. Man, that was one big complicated circus! Neither program felt really right for me, but everyone involved tells me that nothing is perfect and you have to accept some imperfection when finding a program. And then I'd found out that we probably could manage to get around some of the legal restrictions I struggled with a few weeks ago, and then I received emails from both programs saying that I was first on the waiting list and was likely to get an offer within a few days. Argh! Once again, I was a twisted pretzel of anxiety. After some serious thinking, I decided to set the whole thing aside for now. That brought its own angst, because I still don't know what I'm doing next, or where or when I'll do it.<br />
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But setting aside the whole thing (for now) also brought a huge relief. Whatever I do, I don't want my husband and me to have to completely uproot our lives unless we're pretty sure it's a good idea. I have made major life moves many times, so I know how it goes. One friend said to me, "I never worry about you because you always land on your feet." Well, as I said to her, that's kind of the long view. When I have made major moves, each time I have landed hard and struggled with poverty and been depressed by being poor and unconnected in a new place. Each time it's taken me years to sort things out again. I don't want to do that kind of move again. And if we were to take up either of the possible options that might have become available to me, I thought there was a good chance that the big stress of the move and the new country might have taken a long time to recuperate from.<br />
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From a distance, I look pretty much like a normal person (whatever "normal" means), but I haven't always had the most stable mental health. Some of it is down to the drinking, and some is probably what made the drink such an attractive hideout for me. Over the years, I've learned how to set myself up in such a way that I am more stable. I've learned what works in my life and what doesn't. I know I need a fair amount of time to myself, and time with people I love, and time outdoors, and time to read and think and write. This whole academic application process has made me feel unsteady. I realized that I can't approach it the way I have done. If I'm going to continue my education, and I expect I will, I need to set things up in a way that it keeps me steady and stable. There's no point opening up amazing new opportunities for myself if I go crazy and can't make the best of them!<br />
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Part of what this whole experience has been a new take on where we live. Having considered moving, I thought about how we could best appreciate where we are for now. And that led to another big surprise. For years I've been an avid outdoor enthusiast. Partly because I have strong environmental convictions, and I have often been very poor, and I ride my bike to get around, I haven't had a car in ten years. Which means I live close to some truly amazing places, but I can rarely actually get out to any of them. Occasionally, my husband and I have found ways to bus or bike to a hike or an afternoon of kayaking or a camping trip, but it's trickier than it sounds, and requires plenty of time and organization. My time and organization skills get pretty darn used up, what with being in grad school and working two jobs.<br />
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So this week, I bought a car! It's very small, and runs on not too much gas. (Yes, I have some guilt regarding using fossil fuels. And I'm neither looking for anyone to excuse me on that score or to criticize my decision. I'll carry my own guilt there, thanks!) Yesterday, we went for a hike. Oh, the joy of walking in the damp, mossy woods! Stopping to sit on a rock and eat an apple, looking at the lake. This is some of what I love most in the world, and I have not got to it in years. When I last had the transport to get out hiking once in a while, I was new in this city and didn't know anyone I could hike with. My husband and I love doing many of the same things. And where we live--right now, not in five or ten years--we can do them! What a revelation!<br />
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Cars are not cheap, even small ones that don't use much gas. But since I quit drinking, I have estimated that I "save" $300 each month that I don't spend on wine. For the first 200 days of my last round of not drinking, I set aside $10/day, and if I had to borrow from it, I put it back right away. This time around, I did that for the first 100 days. So I had a little packet of money that I thought of as my sober money. I thought about taking a trip with it, but that seemed too much of a short-term thing to do. Because all of the possible moves for academic programs meant we would need a car, I'd thought about buying one, but I resented having to. I didn't want to use my sober money just to get around in the city where we'd end up living. I don't want to live somewhere where I can't bike and bus as my primary transport. But I realized I could sort of afford a car. And without having to use it to get to school or around the city (which is just plain easier on transit or a bike, and more fun anyway) I could buy a car and we could use it to get up into the mountains or away to visit my husband's family, and being able to do those things would open up our lives to so much more of the world.<br />
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Anyway, I did it. I'm surprised to say that my new car is such a symbol of freedom for me. Driving out to our hike yesterday, we drove past a liquor store. (Well, we probably drove past a hundred of them, but I noticed this one.) And I said to my husband, "I used to spend all my money on wine. Now I don't. And now, because I don't, I was able to buy this car and we can go hiking and camping and do all the things we love to do!" It's like being sober is even more of a gift for both of us.<br />
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The car is just part of the story. I also have a sense that life is already good, and it's already easy. I want to find a way to continue my education that adds to my life, not that takes away the good I already have.<br />
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Years ago, I remember reading a story (or maybe a memoir) that contained the line, "I have not valued that which I have loved." I've forgotten the source, and have never been able to track it down, so maybe I partly made up the phrasing. But the sentiment was so powerful! I saw how it would be possible to live in such a way that I didn't value what I loved, and how it would likely be the biggest source of regret in my life if I were to do that. I come back to that line once in a while when I need to re-orient myself. And I feel like that's what's happening these past few weeks. In my life, right now. I'm happy. I am so lucky to have met and married my wonderful husband. We live in a beautiful place, in a sweet little apartment that has nice light and cheap rent, in a city that's fantastic and a landscape that's awe-inspiring. For so long I was mired in the misery of drink, and now I'm not. I know that to old-timers, my 200+ days probably isn't a lot of sober time. But this is my third run at these long stretches of being sober, and it's coming up on three years since I started to seriously and continuously address this drink problem. Drinking has no appeal for me anymore. When I occasionally crave a drink, or when I see one and wish I could have one, it's easy for me to remember how the misery outweighs the glamour or the fun that the drink falsely promises. And I'm starting to see how drinking was part of me not seeing how wonderful my life already was, and is.<br />
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So yes, I have to figure out the school thing. And I will. But for now, I'm here and I'm happy, and life feels easy. And I'm grateful for all that I have (including my new car!)<br />
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Thanks for all the support you've all been as I have struggled though thinking about this whole drink problem thing. I'm so glad you are here to keep me company as I try to figure out how to live. Many thanks to you all. Peace and joy, and maybe even a little easy livin' to you all!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-49387830873817149782016-03-19T15:00:00.001-07:002016-03-19T15:00:20.133-07:00Round 3, Day 185: More thoughts about finding my own (sober) voiceThe other day I read a great article by neuroscientist and addiction memoirist Marc Lewis about the effects of alcohol on the brain. (It's on the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/16/why-humans-get-drunk-google" target="_blank">Guardian website</a>, if you want to read it yourself.) The article got me thinking, and I wanted to work out some of that thinking here.<br />
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One of the main effects that alcohol has on the brain, according to Lewis, is that is the prefrontal cortex is inhibited, which means, "your ability to see things from any perspective other than your own approaches nil." One of my interests in psychology is the central role of perspective-taking in being a person. It's interesting to realize that, when you're drinking, what looks like clear thinking is more like the inability to take in other points of view. We live in a world that prizes certainty and clarity, and having the illusion of that would be a great comfort, so it makes sense that that's some of the appeal of alcohol. But being able to take in multiple perspectives is essential, even if it's not always the straight road to crystal clarity of thought. Other perspectives enrich your thinking, and continuing to encounter new perspectives keeps you open to new approaches to important issues in life. At the same time, knowing that there may well be other perspectives still unknown to you or that you don't fully understand gives you the understanding that when you make a decision, even when it's a good decision, you're usually making working with limited knowledge of the world. You could always be wrong. But you do your best, and you accept that everyone is in the same situation, always working with partial knowledge, and so you throw in your lot with humanity, and that's as good as anyone can do. (That last bit is a very poor translation of some of the ideas of philosopher Richard Rorty, but it's good enough for where I'm going here.)<br />
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After reading the Marc Lewis article, I got to thinking about an implication that he doesn't get to in his piece but that might be important for people who are quitting drinking: Once you give up alcohol, you will lose access to an easy way to temporarily shut out other perspectives. That means if you are someone who is highly susceptible to other people's perspectives (as I am), you might have to build some silence into your life. Otherwise you may lose the ability to temporarily shut out other perspectives and therefore become unable to find your own voice.<br />
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To me, this matters. Since I started this blog, I've struggled to balance two sides of getting sober: taking up the advice of other people about how to get sober, and finding what works best for me. (There are plenty of people who say that your own thinking was what got you into having a drink problem, so you need to give up your own thinking and be obedient to what others say when you decide to get sober. I see that that works for some people, but it was never going to work for me. I wonder now whether that advice may work best for people who have trouble hearing other perspectives at all, rather than people who have trouble locating their own.)<br />
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I'm not a mother, but I have read so many blogs with stories about mothers who drank to shut out the world (mainly the kids) temporarily. Later they often felt badly about having done that. Yet anyone can see that having to take up other people's needs all the time is a surefire way to drown your own needs, or even the ability to know you have needs. Once you're doing that, drinking to quiet them all down almost makes sense. Women, whether we're mothers or not, are socialized into this way of being hyper-attentive to others. Finding a way out occasionally seems crucial.<br />
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Now, I am absolutely NOT making a case for drinking here. Not at all! What I'm trying to do is understand a little more about being drawn back into drinking many times, despite the misery that heavy drinking always brings me. And what I'm coming to, helped along by the informative bit of brain chemistry that Lewis so clearly explains, is that, having quit drinking, I need to cultivate a space of silence within which I can learn to hear my own voice.<br />
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I have been doing that in various ways--sometimes by cycling, running, or walking; sometimes via meditation and prayer; often by reading; definitely by writing this blog. And I can see that the whole "treat" phenomenon, which has usually eluded me, might be partly about this, finding a way to make a space for your own wants in the middle of the hectic world. For me, the "treat" talk has always left me cold, as it seems to be just swapping one indulgence for another, and that just leads me back to my primary indulgence, booze. I needed a more wholesale life change than that. But if Lewis is right (and I've no reason to think he isn't) then I can see that treats may have something in common with something that's been important to me, and maybe to many people who get sober, and that's making a space for myself that temporarily keeps out the cacophony of the world so that I can find my own voice in all the noise. It's temporary, of course. Once you find your voice, you have to go back to the world and take up the other voices and see how your own holds up in the larger conversation. And you have to accept that you might be wrong--just because it's your voice, doesn't mean it knows what's right, or even what's right for you. I think, for me, starting to be able to hear that voice has been a big part of getting sober. Now that I have an easier time discerning my own thoughts and feelings ( and I have to say, I'm still slow on this at times) learning how to think and feel my way through balancing my voice with the voices of the world is a big next step.<br />
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Thinking this through has been a help to me. It may or may not help anyone else. The case I'm making, if I'm making one at all, is that one important part of getting sober might be to find a way to set aside the noise of the world once in a while. That might be an important service that alcohol was providing, and even if the drink wasn't working anymore, being able to sometimes shut out the noise might be an important part of knowing what you think and feel yourself. Seems to be true for me, anyway.<br />
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As an aside, if you read this blog at times and have followed my big crisis of school applications and thinking about visas and so on, that whole drama has died down for now. I'm in conversation with people about longer term plans, but nothing is happening any time soon, and I feel pretty good about that. Anyway lately the sun has been shining and the cherry blossoms and magnolias are out, and that always makes me feel like I live in a world made of love!<br />
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If you're still here, thanks for keeping me company. Hope all is well!<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-51198087446443399662016-03-05T15:02:00.001-08:002016-03-05T15:02:31.703-08:00Round 3, Day 171: Sad news and tough choices, old cravings kicking inIt's been a challenging few weeks here. I did a bunch of interviews--some online, some in person--and had great hopes for starting a new academic program that would incorporate my academic interests and my values. I travelled to some far-flung places. I liked the people I met and chatted with, and enjoyed some fun department visits. But the truth is, there isn't anywhere that's turned up as a great fit for me. This week I found out that I wasn't accepted at the one place for which I'd had high hopes. I'm wait-listed, which means it's still a small possibility that I'll get accepted. But even there, I see that it's not a great fit for me in some important ways. Even if they were to offer me a place, I don't think it would be the right hing for me to take up. There are two other possibilities, but I really don't see them working out either. I had such hopes in all this, and it's been so much work. I feel pretty sad about it.<br />
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There are several reasons for things not working, I see now. All these programs involve my husband and I moving to a different country--that big one slightly to the south of Canada, specifically! Immigration laws and restrictions are proving more of a challenge than I'd thought. If we were to go, I would be living on a stipend, but he may not be allowed to work. I know people find their way past this kind of thing, but I am at something of a loss as to how we might do that. I'm not all that great at bureaucracy. We are not wealthy, so not working for a stretch of time seems tricky, and I worry about what he would do with himself. (He has been willing to give it a go, but we both are seeing that he can't just do nothing, and we can't figure what he could do that fits within the restrictions.). And neither of us is a genius with finances, so making a pittance go a long way for a span of several years is something I'm not sure we can do. I know people say you can do anything you set your mind to. But I have been desperately poor in my life, and I'm afraid of living like that again. I'm even more reluctant about asking my husband to do so, and maybe for several years.<br />
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I'm also pretty nervous about the different political climate in the nearby country, and the lack of socialized medicine. When my husband had his accident last year, we had the best health care available in Canada, including a stay on a specialized trauma ward for almost 2 weeks, and it didn't cost us a penny. If we hadn't, I'm not sure my husband would have recovered as well as he has. So I'm genuinely nervous about giving this up, and I don't know how much health care we could afford on my pittance, even if I were to be accepted at any of the programs. I know some people work it out. But some go bankrupt. And I'm afraid of that happening.<br />
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I guess my disappointment has two parts. One is the sadness of not finding a place to do the kind of work that interests me, which means I still have to figure out how to craft the next section of my education, and find a place where it makes sense to do that. The second is just the letdown of putting in all that effort and then not having a shiny, happy prize at the end. That one's less mature, I know, but it's there just the same.<br />
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The decisions aren't all in yet, but what I see is that we aren't going anywhere this year. That's not all sad. I love where we live--the apartment the city, the geography, my husband's family living nearby, etc. And I do have some good support at my university to help me try to figure out how to do what I want. (Sorry to be vague on the specifics, but explaining my interests would blow my privacy and bore my readers all in one go. Not necessary, I think!)<br />
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This whole process has been more stressful than I expected. It's been time-consuming and expensive, and it's also involved putting myself in the way of rejection more seriously than can possibly be comfortable for anyone. This past week I've been a bit of a wreck, checking email every few minutes (I knew I'd hear from one program this week). I've been so tense that I didn't even know what my own feelings were with regards to the different places I applied. I really don't like when I become as alienated from myself as all that. I've been thinking about something <a href="http://www.sobersassylife.com/fleeting-pleasures/" target="_blank">Jackie at Sober, Sassy Life</a> was writing recently about the pleasure of being an adult and making adult decisions. I know she's right, and I feel like I'm doing a little but of that now. That's what this all feels like yesterday and today, and there is some pleasure in making sensible decisions. But just the same, it's been a big letdown.<br />
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And right there with all the stress and then the letdown has been a burning desire to drink. Holy mother of god, for about three days this week, I very much wanted to drink! It was awful. I saw a guy on the bus carrying a BC Liquor Store bag with what was obviously two bottles of wine inside, and I felt so jealous that he could have wine while I couldn't. At times I just about had to sit on my hands, I so much wanted to get up and walk out and buy wine, and then come home and crawl into the merciful oblivion it offers. I cried, and I complained, and I was miserable. But I didn't drink. I mostly knew I wouldn't. Still, it was tough.<br />
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Last night I used the amazing <a href="http://www.livingsober.org.nz/" target="_blank">Living Sober website</a> to say how tough it's been, and I was cheered to get instant support from the wonderful people there. I didn't realize how much I needed that until I read people's kind comments and started to cry. I've been through long sober spells and periods of intensely wanting to drink before, but I always forget how much a little solidarity helps me though it. We sure do need to help each other.<br />
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Anyway, that's what's up here. A whole lot of effort and not much to show in the short term, just me, being an adult and coping with disappointment the way adults can, not by crawling into oblivion, but instead by feeling awful for a few days and reaching out to people and finding a way through. It's not a shiny new plan, but it's what I've got for now.<br />
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If you're still here, thanks for reading. Your support keeps me going. Peace and joy to you.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-9567379788191551462016-02-23T13:59:00.000-08:002016-02-23T13:59:14.505-08:00Round 3, Day 161: But if I add it all up, it's been more than two years! And every day counts.Thanks for all the kind words on my most recent post. I so appreciate the support of the blog community. I have been a bit madly busy and therefore it's taken me longer to get back to people, so I apologize. I read other people's blogs every day, and I read any comments I get here (though I know some people have said it's tricky to leave comments on Blogger and I have yet to sort out why that's the case.) But when I'm busy I read on my phone while I'm on the bus. and my phone typing skills are abysmal. I have very small hands but typing on the phone makes it seem I can neither read or spell and as though I am using a single large club instead of my otherwise useful hands to hit the teeny little keys.<br />
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Anyway, hello! Now I'm writing a post before I get to the list of school things I need to get done today, because it's best for me if I don't leave the blog world for too long.<br />
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On my last post, Rebecca left a comment about the more solid kind of confidence I said I'd been feeling lately. She said she had a similar experience, but had taken he a couple of years to reach that. That got me thinking about time and being sober. At the risk of entering the Great Debate About Counting Days, I want to talk about this a little.<br />
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Back in June, 2013, I had hit a kind of wall. I saw a counsellor, but didn't want to quit drinking as much as I wanted to get in touch with my ability to feel, which I kind of knew was a problem for me. I saw the counsellor, and I even talked about the drinking issue. (That is to say, I admitted to a real person that I drank too much! A huge step for me!) By July, I had decided to take a break from drinking, something I'd done many times over the years. I'd usually stop for a few weeks or a month, and the previous year I'd stopped for most of a semester. But this time I also took a lot of downtime while I did it, and I came across the world of sober blogs. During the week of not drinking, I'd started to feel better, and I thought, for the first time, about taking an extended time without drinking, not as something I had to give up, but as a gift to myself because I didn't want to to feel so crappy anymore. (I wrote about that <a href="http://thirstystill.blogspot.ca/2013/07/day-13-hello-from-me-plus-some-thoughts.html" target="_blank">here, in my first post</a>, if you're curious.) <br />
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If you've read my blog for long (and if you have, thanks!!!) you will know that twice during the past two years and seven months I decided to try drinking again. Once was a few weeks after the 100 days was up, (I drank on and off for 2 1/2 months) and once was last summer, after about 500 days sober, when I drank for almost 4 months before deciding it really didn't work anymore. Both stretches had some fun times drinking (usually early on) but both times I decided that, on balance, I was doing much more damage to myself than I was enjoying myself, and I quit again. That's why this is Round 3, and this time it's been 161 days since I drank.<br />
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But here's what I got thinking when I read Rebecca's comment: Really, for me, it's been over 2 1/2 years since I started this process in earnest. During this time, I have been sober for 2 years and one month. ( I just counted it up to see if I could and I got 773 days, though I'm not fully sure that's exactly right, and I don't care enough to dig out calendars and add it up carefully. Certainly it's within a few days of accurate.) I found that you just can't unlearn what you've learned. When I went back to drinking, I sure did question the idea that drinking was bad for me, and I resisted what sometimes seemed to me to be the easy certainties (and the sometimes easy camaraderie that went along with it) that the sober world seemed to have. As I've said far too many times, I had to find my own way. So I kept learning what worked for me, and what didn't, and it was rough going at times, and often lonely, both when I stopped blogging because I was drinking, and when I stopped drinking again. Either way it seems you leave a world of people behind. And as someone who probably spends too much time alone, leaving the few people I connect with, or radically changing whether I feel I belong to their world, well that was painful.<br />
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So why am I writing this? I got to thinking about how stop-and-start the quitting process is, and how sometimes you're moving along and learning and getting somewhere, even when it seems you're not. I was thinking about bloggers who quit blogging for a while and then drop away from the community for a host of reasons, sometimes because they are torn about drinking and it doesn't always feel like a place you can say, "Sometimes I want to quit, but sometimes I still want to drink, and I don't know how to resolve this, and all the answers I'm reading just don't cut it for me. But I'm still thinking." And I was thinking how when we count, it's almost like we are adopting an economic model of recovery, where every day added is one more coin that's yours and drinking makes you lose them all again, and having the most coins you can get is the goal of it all. I know no one really thinks like that. It's just that it starts to sound like a competition or something.<br />
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But we all know it's not a competition. Every day is its own day. Still, what I have found is this: from when I started this path towards quitting drinking, I've kept learning and growing, and I did so even when the path wasn't the clear, straightforward route that others were helpfully showing me.<br />
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So I guess I wanted to say hi to anyone who's trying to quit, whether its working for you right now or not, and whether you are stringing days together or managing a week or two sober before drinking again, or whether you are feeling that this time is the one that you are really doing it and you're leaving the drink behind for good. That's what I think these days, but what do I know? I wanted to say that I'm proud of my 161 days, and of my 773 (I think) days, and I think they help me live well today. And somehow, the periods away from being sober helped me get here, too.<br />
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OK, that's what I have today. I'm heading out tomorrow to travel across the country again to another grad school interview. I have not yet chewed my arm off coping with the worry or uncertainty about it, and I'm still managing to avoid substituting sugar as the worry-crutch. I don't know if I'll be accepted anywhere, and if I am, I'm not yet 100% sure picking up sticks and moving is the right thing to do. But I am moving forward, and even if it doesn't work out, it helps me figure out what I'm doing. Sometimes I wish I'd done all this in my 20s, or even 30s. But I didn't, and if I had I wouldn't be the me I am today. And I'm pretty dark OK with who I am. That's something I don't know I could have said a decade or two ago.<br />
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If you're still here, thanks for reading. I very much appreciate your company as I write to figure out how to live. If you're sober, hooray you! If you're trying, hooray you, too! Today I am feeling filled with love for everyone, and the sun is shining, so I'll send a big virtual hug to anyone who could use a hug. Peace and joy to you.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-5696824009904024382016-02-10T13:18:00.003-08:002016-02-10T13:18:48.821-08:00Round 3, Day 147: Sober!!!Today it's exactly 21 weeks since I gave up trying to make drinking work for me and returned to being sober, which really is a better way for me to live. As I mentioned last time, I've started cleaning up my diet and I'm getting more regular exercise again, and that's working well, too. I'm feeling pretty good overall, and I'm mostly happy and hopeful. To me, that's pretty good for the depths of February!<br />
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Right now it's the middle of interview season for the next stage of my grad school work. Tomorrow, I fly out to a distant American city that I've never visited (and that I won't name for now), where I will spend a few days meeting faculty and students, being interviewed to see if I'm a good fit for the program while I interview them to see if the program is a good fit for me. This stuff is nerve-wracking! Whatever happens will shape the next several years of my life. Our lives, I should say, since my husband will also be moving with me if I'm accepted to a place that works for me. I have a few of these interviews happening over a few weeks--some in person, some via Skype--so it may be a while before I know what's going to happen. It's scary, but we're both up for the adventure!<br />
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Maybe it's obvious, maybe not, but I will say it anyway: I don't see how I could have done this while I was drinking. I was sober most of the year before I applied to grad school and again for most of the time I've attended, with the exception of a few dark months last summer. I have more time than I would if I were guzzling wine every night, and my mind is more clear. (It's not altogether clear all the time, but I'm working on that with my diet and exercise changes. I may have to accept that the meno is coming and there might be fog rolling in sometimes along with that!) But one big thing that's better sober is that I am more honestly confident in myself. Drinking I had waves of confidence and waves of supreme despair, and it's not that those have all completely been smoothed over. I can still be up and down at times. But these days I feel better equipped to cope with the big stresses and uncertainties that come with making a big change. I am taking myself seriously enough to try to shape my life to do what I want to do with my life, even in ways that sometimes look like a bit of a long shot. I'm pretty darn pleased about that.<br />
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Going into this weekend, I know it's possible that things won't work out for me. I'll do my best and be my most engaged and interested self. (More accurately, I'll be the best version of me that doesn't swear liberally, which only takes the teensiest bit of extra effort!) Whatever happens, I'm taking a neat trip and I'll meet some interesting people, and I'll get to see some cool life possibilities. Hooray for that!<br />
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Thanks for reading along here and keeping me company. Wishing you peace and joy, and adventure if that's your thing!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-45170679755083970422016-02-02T16:33:00.001-08:002016-02-02T16:33:48.441-08:00Round 3, Day 139: Taking care Last week I had a wee revelation about what it means to take care of myself. I already thought I was pretty good at that. I let myself laze around and read mysteries when I'm stressed. I always get enough sleep. I catch myself quickly when I'm being hard on myself, and I check in with my husband or a friend when something is bothering me, so I can work it out without it dragging on and draining me. I stopped drinking. It sounds pretty good, right?<br />
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But I wasn't feeling great. I realized that, while the first time I quit drinking (back in July 2013) I felt healthy and energized, lately I was feeling a little bit logy and a little bit foggy more often than made sense. Yes, I have some stress going on, with writing a thesis and having some school applications in process, but I've had these kinds of stresses on and off since I went back to school a few years ago, and they didn't seem to have the same effect.<br />
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Might be an age thing, pre-meno, sure. But I started to think about what I could do to feel better. And I made a decision: It was time to slay the sugar monster!<br />
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After a few months getting back into the groove of not drinking again, I had found myself eating a lot of sugar. I mean, a lot! I know, lots of people go through this. But for years, I'd got used to eating a very low sugar diet, and it suited me. The first time I quit drinking, I was quite annoyed by how many people encouraged me to eat cake and ice cream, something I generally didn't do because I learned years ago that feel a bit crappy when I have too much sugar. Over time I kind of gave in. I figured some of the pleasures of sweet treats would be OK. First I was cheerfully having dessert when I ate out, which was only once in a while. But eventually, I was going to the bakery most afternoons, or grabbing a sugary trail bar or a cookie at school, or nibbling on toast at home. Since quitting drinking again this past fall, I seemed to be relying on sweets in a way that I hadn't in years.<br />
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Recently I've had a recurring eye infection that was resisting treatment. I was feeling brain foggy and slow and a bit podgy. I had even started baking, which meant licking the batter bowl, and having sweets on hand all the time, without even having to leave the house! I'd noticed that when I went to a certain bakery, I was a little too intense about wanting the golden beet cake with cream cheese icing. There were also a couple of uncomfortable incidents with almond croissants, and once I ended up apologizing to the lovely woman at the counter because she'd sold me the last one and then was letting her coworker serve it to someone else. (Imagine an otherwise pleasant middle-aged woman morphing into a cranky toddler and saying, in a sharp and not too quiet voice, "Hey, isn't that MY croissant?!!" It was, but still, there's no need to bite someone's head off about it. Jeepers.) I felt about those croissants the way I used to about my favourite wine, and seeing it served to someone else (after I'd bought it!) was like watching someone pour the last of the bottle into their own glass. Just writing it makes me feel unstable! Everything about the way I was eating sweets was looking like the way I used to drink. Except it was something I could do any time of day, not just during the evening. Dang! Last Tuesday, I decided that was enough, and I stopped.<br />
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Now I'm not trying some fancy new regime here. Just no sugar. And no bread. Easy on the fruit. Lots of veg and fish and plenty of butter and olive oil and eggs and some meat and cheese and nuts, that sort of thing. When I ate like this before, it seemed to suit me well. I know it sounds like I'm talking about restrictions, but the restrictions set me up to structure healthy meals instead of basing my food choices around sweets and convenience.<br />
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Already I feel more energized. I started running again, just a little, which suits me. And I've been cycling, something I love but had really stopped doing. And drinking lots of water, and teas. I'm down a couple of pounds and have lost a few inches off the waist already, and my eye is clearing up. It hasn't been hard, and I feel pretty good about it.<br />
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It's tricky to try to find how to take care of ourselves. In the recovery world, there are so many voices, and they all offer solutions that sound beguiling. Some advocate a treats-based regimen, others do yoga. Some people run, some meditate. People go to meetings or they don't, or they go back and forth on that one. Some people pray, others are committed atheists. Some find themselves through introspection, others lose themselves in service. I like trying new things, but it's a fine line between trying some new things to see if they suit and adopting new bad habits to replace the old ones. That's what I think I had been doing with food. So to me, these days, taking care means paying attention to what's not working, and stopping that. It means getting back to what seems to work for me, which is--it's not rocket science here--eating well and exercising enough!<br />
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On a bigger scale, I think all of my regular versions of self care fall under giving myself a break. But taking care might sometimes mean the opposite. It could be getting up early to work on my thesis so I have another page or two written. It might mean running when I'm feeling lazy (how about right now?) or cycling in the rain because I'll feel better once I do. I used to be better at all this. Somehow, I think I adopted the idea that quitting drinking was such a herculean task, so any discomfort I had about anything else had to be assuaged because I wasn't drinking and I deserved it. But that's silly. Getting sober is great, but it's something I did so I could live more fully. Letting myself off the hook once in a while when I'm feeling challenged is probably necessary. But sometimes, maybe even often, pushing myself is probably closer to what I need to do to take good care of myself.<br />
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Anyway, that's where I am these days. Just taking care, and keeping on trying to figure out what that means to me.<br />
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If you're still here, thanks for reading. I hope you're finding out how to best take care of yourself, too. Me, I'm heading out for a short run! Peace and joy and happy trails to you!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-48860921727314271852016-01-17T14:52:00.001-08:002016-01-17T16:25:07.174-08:00Round 3, day 123: Trusting lifeRecently I've noticed some big changes in how I approach the world. I have begun to trust. For me, that's life changing!<br />
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I've always been a little bit paranoid. It's not that I think people are out to get me, exactly. It's just that in my basic, felt but unstated assumptions about life, I haven't felt that the world is a good place for me. I've felt this mostly in my dealings with people. Small negatives have often kicked off big reactions. If I am talking to someone important to me who's having a bad day, it's not a stretch for me to think that that person has taken against me. Either they have changed their mind about me or, worse, they have come to realize that all the esteem they had previously held me in was mistaken, and that I am some version of useless/worthless/disappointing. Now, that sounds worse than it is, because for years I have known that I have this tendency, and I know that most reasonable people don't suddenly take against people. But at best I've had to engage in a massive workaround, in which I feel like the person hates me but intellectually I know that they probably don't, so I try to imagine how I might behave if the relationship were not tainted by this new hatred or disappointment on behalf of the other person, and I do my best to act that way. This paranoia doesn't apply to everyone, but if I don't see you for a few weeks, I am likely to start to assume that you hate me or something like that. And then I realize I'm doing that, and I do the workaround. Or I just ignore it all, and fall out of contact. You can imagine how exhausting that is.<br />
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Now I know some people will say that's "imposter syndrome." Sure, maybe it is, but naming it doesn't solve it for me. And some will say (or have said) all I have to do is change my thoughts! But you know, I have been working on this for years. I have had over a decade of therapy (though I was pretty messed up at the beginning of that, so I don't want to sound like I'm knocking therapists for being slow to help!) I don't find my own thoughts to be something that can be erased and rewritten. They are tangled up with feelings. And this paranoid kind of feeling has been real, and persistent, and it's been a source of extreme pain for me for many years. The best I've been able do is the kind of "act as if" approach I've described above.<br />
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So the change I'm talking about here is huge. These days, I'm starting to trust people. Seriously. For example, instead of assuming that my supervisor is losing interest in my work, for example, I have assumed he's got a lot going on himself, and I've thought about what I need from him as a supervisor and how I can make that work. I've noticed that lately I just don't start with the assumption that someone has taken against me, or is disappointed in me. What I'm doing doesn't look all that different from the outside. But it feels different.<br />
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Since I started writing about getting sober, I've talked about participating in the world. I know I can hold myself a little apart, and I also know that the full greenness of life isn't achievable if you separate from others. If you do that, you dry up. At times, I've returned to drinking because aspects of the social were more easily available when I drank, and though this stopped working, I didn't know what else to do. These days I'm sober, and I feel like I am starting to step into the world and participate more fully. I am connecting.<br />
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Because I noticed this new (and amazing) way of being, I wanted to write it down so I don't forget about it! I can have these great realizations and then just lose them again once things get busy, and that's come back to bite my sorry ass when I've forgotten all that's grounded me and kept me sane and sober. I lose my way so easily. So I'm writing this to slow down and notice the change, and hopefully hold onto it. I've been thinking about what I'm doing differently, and though I'm no great fan of lists, I think there are three things:<br />
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First, I'm sober. That clears away some of the mental dross that makes it hard to sort out feelings. I know when I quit drinking a couple of years ago, I had moments of this, the sense that I could walk up to a group of people and talk to them without the usual feelings of unease that would usually swamp me. I know alcohol does some strange things to feeling, and it feeds the paranoia. That's gone, and that's a huge help.<br />
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Second, I have been working on the cognitive part of all this. I know how to examine my feelings and thoughts and work out which feelings are based on my old habits rather than anything that's in the situation. My husband is a great sounding board here. He accepts my feelings as real and valid, even when they are a little crazy, and within that safely I am able to start to sort out what's really happening and what I am imagining, or even what I'm bringing about by what I imagine. I'm getting better at this, and it works better without drinking.<br />
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Third--and I never, ever, ever thought I'd say this but here goes--I have been praying. All my life, whenever anything went wrong or when I was waiting for news or struggling with something, my mother would tell me, "Say a little prayer now." As happens to many people, as a teenager I wasn't able to start developing a more mature faith, and the simple faith of my childhood started to ring hollow. For most of my adult life, I wasn't able to pray, or I didn't know how. I tried, but the closest I could come to anything that felt authentic was calling my mother and asking her to pray for me. Which I did, many times. We often didn't get along, and we sure didn't have any kind of ideal mother-daughter relationship, but when I needed to, I would call her and she would pray. Even after I lost faith in pretty much everything a few times, I usually held onto believing in my mother's prayers.<br />
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For the past several years, my mother has had severe dementia. She's doing as well as one can with that, but if you know dementia at all, you know talking to someone with dementia is a different kind of conversation. My mother can be present in moments, and she is very funny. She's even lovely and sweet, which she wasn't always when she had her wits about her! But her days of praying for me are long gone. So four months ago, when I knew I needed to quit drinking again and I knew I needed a deeper commitment to life to keep me sober, I started to pray. Every night, before I go to sleep, I say the three prayers that I said every night as a child. Then I thank god for everything I have, and I ask god to help me know what it is I need to do, and to give me strength to do it. Sometimes this is in words, sometimes it's more like opening myself to something. I'm not going to try to describe it in much detail, as I don't think I can. What matters is I have started to do my own praying. Somehow, this has brought me closer to my mother. And I think it's central to this trust in life I'm developing.<br />
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Now don't get me wrong. It's not that I think god is looking out for me so I don't have to do anything myself. It's much more subtle than that. It's more that I trust that things will be OK, even if they don't work out the way I want, or if there are big disasters along the way. I trust that I can act, and others can act, and we can try to work things out. I'm not suddenly sanguine about the world--there are serious problems with the environment, and we need to be working for economic and social justice. These things are not OK as they are. The best way to put it is maybe this: I trust life, and I trust that I can get on in my life.<br />
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Well, I don't know if I've made any sense to anyone here. This has been a huge shift for me, and it's important to me. I'll probably come back to writing about it again, as it's still a little beyond words. But I am grateful for what feels like a wonderful opening in my life. And yes, being sober is a big part of this.<br />
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Anyway, if you're still here, thanks for reading and keeping me company. Peace and joy to you.<br />
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<i>(PS I edited the title after posting because I'd written "day 122" but I'm actually 123 days sober, not 122. Sure the numbers don't matter but still I want to claim them all! And 1-2-3 has such a nice ring to it.)</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-6705214565627895122016-01-04T17:14:00.001-08:002016-01-04T17:14:31.878-08:00Round 3, Day 110: Connecting, waitingI'm back from a lovely, sober few days away visiting my husband's family. Not drinking is so much easier these days. Once in a while over the holidays I had a little pang of wanting a drink. But I am getting much better at talking myself down from these pangs when they happen, or distracting myself until they pass. Really though, that longing for drink isn't all that intense any more. It's more like a tired, half-hearted part of me still chimes in once in a while with "maybe a drink?" but it isn't all that compelling. I know people say that when you revert to drinking again, it doesn't take long to pick up where you left off. Well, that seems to be my experience with quitting drinking for me this time around. I feel I've already reverted the habit of not drinking that I established over the past couple of years. I've already been through over a full year of not drinking, so I don't have all that many "firsts" to contend with. And having gone back to drinking twice after long spells without booze, only to find that drinking wasn't going to work any more as either an escape or a refuge, I simply can't kid myself that there's any point in it for me. That romance is dead and gone, it seems.<br />
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Because I start these posts with a tongue-in-cheek "Round 3," I thought I might make a note of what's been different this time compared to the last two rounds of getting sober. The first time I quit, over two years ago, I thought the world would open up and shake in congratulations at my having accomplished 100 days without drinking. In fact, no one cared much. Feeling like I was part of something bigger than me in this sober blog world was so important to me, but I was way too over-invested in needing connection with others, without really knowing how to connect, or who I might connect with. So when 100 days came and went and people who I thought were cheering me on missed what was, to me, an enormous milestone, I was devastated. I'd been feeling like I didn't belong after all, and I know that was a part of me moving away from the blog world, and the letdown was huge. Right now I feel so far from how sad and hurt I was at the time that it's almost hard to take it seriously, but I want to honour that feeling here. Recently, <a href="http://www.lauramckowen.com/blog/four-challenges-of-sobriety" target="_blank">Laura McKowen</a> wrote about the incredible loneliness of early sobriety, and I found great comfort in that. Every trace of friendship and connection in those early days was a lifeline, and every small hurt was amplified as a result. Now I'm relieved to know that many people feel like that when they first stop drinking. And because I know that, I'm more aware that I need to pay attention to taking care of myself and not let myself be too hurt by small slights online or in my day-to-day life. My first response to small personal slights is still, "She probably hates me," but I have got much better at setting those thoughts aside, accepting the feelings that come with them but not getting knocked too far off course as a result.<br />
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After drinking for a few months and then quitting again, the next time I made it to 100 days was my birthday. That time I was way more careful about the letdown that can come with sober milestones. I had been in the online sober community longer, so I felt I was developing some real friendships here. I was better at knowing what I needed and working at setting it up for myself. But I was feeling what I called at the time a "giant hole of longing," and it was tough coping with that.<br />
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This time, I don't feel so much longing or sadness or alienation. I think I am more mature about what it might mean emotionally to live as an adult. I still often feel disconnected from people, but I am working on making better connections and realizing that the feeling of disconnect is more an old habit than a reflection of how I really am in relation to those around me. My 100 days sober coincided with Christmas Day. My husband and I spent a wonderful day together--we slept late, ate a yummy brunch, went for a long walk that ended at the cinema, where we watched the lovely movie, Brooklyn. (Go see it! It's a beautiful film, one that lives up to the novel in a way that few films do.) I acknowledged my accomplishment with my husband, but we are both used to me being sober now, and we both prefer it. I didn't need to make much fuss over the number of days, nor did I want to spend time online talking about myself that day. The online sober world is an important support for me, but I often get as much support reading and commenting on other blogs as I do writing about my own celebrations and struggles. Still, I am proud of myself for getting hold of the drinking and returning to being sober, and for making it to 100 (now 110!) sober days. Sober suits me, and I am very much planning to stay that way.<br />
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Just the same, I'm in a kind of holding pattern about some things, and that means I'm on the edge of enormous stress that I can't even let myself feel right now. Based on some soul searching abut what I'm doing with my life, I've put in applications for a few school programs that would mean a change in direction for me academically. Being accepted into any of them would also mean making a big move geographically. The application process for these programs is insanely competitive, so the next few weeks will be filled with regular email checking to see whether I have been invited to an in-person interview, which will mean plane tickets and massive preparation and a couple of days being on while investigating whether a program and supervisor is right for me, followed by more waiting to see what's been decided. Or I may not make the first cut of interviews at any program, which means a couple of months of waiting and wondering, all the while working on my thesis and engaging with students in my TA duties, and trying to see if I can fill in some shifts from my old job here and there because flying to interviews will be expensive and I will need the cash. I'm excited about it all, but I'm crazy-nervous, too.<br />
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All that is just to say it's not going to be an easy month ahead. Getting sober is a good practice in dealing with trouble, though, and I am trying to use what I've learned from the sober stuff to deal with all this other stress. Today I let myself take an extra day off from all I have to do, and I spent the day reading a mystery by a new favourite writer. I think I'll just go back to that now for the day, and then tomorrow I will try to come up with a plan that will help me get things done and take care of myself. I feel a little numb, and I know that's a response to the worry and uncertainty about what will happen in all this. But I also know that many intense feelings will come and go over the next while, and none of them matter all that much. I'm happy to be where I am in my life in 2016, sober and trying to make some big life changes. I don't expect it will all magically work out, but I know I will deal with what happens as it happens. I can't tell if what I feel is calm or numb, or maybe it's flashes of that elusive thing I've heard about, patience? Either way, I have some work to do, and a whole lot of waiting. And for now, I'll read for a while longer, and have some dinner, and forget about the work and the waiting for one evening.<br />
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Thanks for keeping me company as I figure out how to live sober. I hope you're figuring it out, too. Peace and joy to you all in this new year.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-10541796949743239552015-12-15T14:58:00.000-08:002015-12-15T14:58:12.664-08:00Round 3, Day 90: Joy. (And a great book!)I'm no humbug, but I have not generally loved the festive season the way some seem to do. My family is very far away, and when I've visited at Christmas it's always been a fraught sort of affair. I stopped trying to make that work a long time ago. I've attended my fair share of orphan Christmas events, and I've been invited to join many people's family festivities over the years, but I find myself filled with sadness at many such events. For a number of years, I worked in a community centre and I usually took many of the holiday shifts, which was a good way to escape a certain part of the festive season, and at the same time a sway to participate in something that was usually mostly fun. Along with this, I've been with my husband for the past five Christmases, and we have developed our own very quiet Christmas tradition, which usually means a good meal by ourselves and a long walk or bike ride. A few days after Christmas we visit his parents, and that's always lovely.<br />
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I know that might sound sad, but the fact is, I have managed to find a peaceful enough way to get through Christmas, ducking a lot of obligatory cheer that would otherwise have rendered me feeling lonely and blue. And I have liked the pause that happens, when a lot of the world stops doing the usual thing, and there is actually time to slow down and enjoy the company of people I love.<br />
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So the other evening, we went to an early solstice concert. The music was beautiful: contemporary arrangements of viola, harp, piano, and vocals, and short pieces were interspersed with poetry readings, all somehow celebrating the sadness and beauty of this dark time of year. Such a wonderful, beautiful show! The last piece was a solstice carol performed by the whole ensemble (which included the composer) and the audience was invited to join in on the chorus, which we sang in a round. By the end, my face was streaming with tears and I felt filled with love for the composers, performers, poets, readers, and everyone in the room who had come together for what seemed to me a perfect way to acknowledge the season. At the end of the show, the organizer came across the room to give me a great large hug. He said part way through the show, he saw me wiping my eyes, and he was wiping his eyes, and seeing me weep made him weep even harder, and as the show ended and we all sang together and my face streamed with tears, his did too, and he told me he sang that carol directly to me. And then we hugged and cried about how beautiful it all was.<br />
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Throughout all this, I was sober. This event is part of a music series at which wine is served, and it has been one of the hardest places for me to resist drinking. Everyone always looks elegant and relaxed, and the music is always wonderful, and joining in on all this seemed always to involve joining the drinking. The fact that afterward I would go home and drink too much wine was always invisible in the moment. The past few years I have attended many of these events, and I have learned to sip a Perrier and enjoy the music and accept feeling a little teeny bit left out by not being able to drink. So the other evening, when I felt overcome with the beauty of the evening and my own joy in being fully part of it, it was only later that I realized that wine (or lack of wine) had nothing to do with the experience for me. I had only briefly missed having some, and once the show started I was absolutely swept away into the experience, and no drink would have made that any better. And though I was weeping publicly, I wasn't worried about being drunk and embarrassed! I was just happy to be part of it all. Sober.<br />
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Other than that, this past week I have attended several holiday functions, and I have enjoyed myself. I get the occasional pang, but I don't feel a steady longing to drink, and I'm greatly relieved about that. When I get these pangs though, I'm pretty honest about them. I don't pretend that booze is nothing, or that there's no pleasure in drinking, or that there is no camaraderie that's brought about by drinking with people, because I think I would be lying to myself to say any of these things. Instead I sometimes wail or cry and I acknowledge that I may be missing out somewhat. But I also remember the darkness that comes over me when I drink too much, and how hard it has been to shake that darkness yet again. And I think about how happy I have been these days--a little too busy and in uncomfortable flux in part of my life and insanely stressed in some ways, yes. Still, I'm happy. And I don't think I have ever felt this kind of happiness when I've been drinking. I've certainly never been able to live in feeling something like this, something that I think is probably what people talk about when they use the word "joy."<br />
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So that's where I am on day 90 of my third serious go at not drinking. In many ways the actual not drinking is mostly easy now, as it's been a habit most for the past 2 1/2 years. But I'm still trying to find my way with how I keep on with it. Despite my recent post about struggling at meetings sometimes, I have been attending once a week, and I get something there. I started reading a great book, <i><a href="http://books.upress.virginia.edu/title/4767" target="_blank">Sobering Wisdom: Philosophical Explorations of Twelve Step Spirituality</a></i>, an edited volume of philosophy essays on aspects of the twelve steps, compiled by philosophers Jerome A. Miller and Nicholas Plants. I know many people find a great deal of solace in the twelve steps, and in the AA program. I know that I need a spiritual way ahead if I am going to keep on this sober path, and I know that this is the right path for me, though I can so easily lose my way here. But I'm kind of an egghead, and I like to think about things, and sometimes in the AA and twelve step world (in person and online) intellectual curiosity about how the whole thing works isn't welcomed. I get that for some people thinking can stand in for doing, and coming up with reasons why something is wrong can prevent one from trying something. You've probably seen me do that, and maybe you do it too. So I figured the book would be a fine companion to my own explorations. And as it's written by a bunch or philosophers, it's not going to tell me that my problem is I think too much! I'm going to read it slowly and give it a proper review in January, but I thought I'd mention it now in case any other sober egghead types want to get themselves a thoughtful take on thinking through these ideas. (Maybe as an early sober Christmas gift for yourself? That's what I did.)<br />
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That's about all I have for now. Thanks for walking along with me here as we live through these long dark nights and wait for the light to come round again. Wishing you all peace and joy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-92180147654597850602015-12-07T15:51:00.001-08:002015-12-07T17:10:54.100-08:00Round 3, Day 82: I don't know my way about, but I know I'm here. <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Almost 12 weeks into this round of quitting drinking, and I'm still here and still sober. Maybe I shouldn't be calling it a "round", as though I'm planning to start up drinking again at the end of it. I'm not. When I count my days like that, what I'm really doing is acknowledging to myself (and to anyone who wants to know, I guess) that I was sober for four months and then 16 months, and that I only drank for two months and then four months in between there. So while I've been sober now for 82 days in a row, I don't disavow the fact that I have been sober for 23 of the past 29 months. To me, that's pretty darn good, and I'm reminding myself to take full credit for that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why all this counting? Well, I think it's because getting sober is so influenced by a certain kind of day-counting, and people sometimes talk about where they are as though all the back and forth of sorting things out isn't part of the process, as if only the most recent stretch of sober days in a row counts, somehow. That hasn't been my experience. For me, the back and forth of trying to quit have been a real, important part of quitting. I sometimes date events by "that time in 2010 I quit drinking for a month" or "back when I was taking a heavy course-load and quit drinking for three months" or even "that time I biked 25 km back and forth to work and got down to one glass of wine a day most days." I have been increasingly aware that drink was a problem, and I have been trying (sometimes on and off) to address that problem since 2002. For me, drinking got tangled up with deep depressions, but for years I didn't even know the drink thing might be a problem, or related to depression in any serious way. OK, so now I know. It is related. When I drink, sooner or later I drink too much, and sooner or later I get depressed. And my friends, let me tell you, that sucks!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I used to be what is sometimes non-technically called "crazy." (No disrespect intended, to me or anyone else. I'm drawing on a way of talking adopted by some people who reject a lot of the diagnostic language and all that goes with it. Irit Shimrat's great book, <i><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1412018.Call_Me_Crazy" target="_blank">Call Me Crazy</a></i>, is a good source on this refreshing way of thinking, and a great read besides.) For a few years I went through several serious psychiatric crises, and I live with what I think is a healthy small amount of terror that I may go crazy again. Putting my life back together after each crisis was a lot of work, and each time there are some things (friends, jobs, apartments, furniture, favourite red pants, time) that are gone for good. These days I'm not so crazy. I am not medicated, as drugs don't work solve anything for me, and most of what gets called help doesn't seem to help me much either. But I have learned how to live with however it is that I am, and I live pretty darn OK. Among what counts as "normal," I pass. And I don't give away my details unless I see someone else struggling. There's a certain amount of feeling left out that happens with passing as normal in a world that pays close attention to the normal and the diagnostic categories. (I study psychology, so I'm kind of in the thick of this worldview. Here's to resistance, I say!) I'm mostly used to that. But I don't need to accentuate it further. Moving towards belonging, not towards alienation, that's important to me. Doesn't come easy, but it matters.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Now that I see clearly that the drink is linked to a bad state of mind for me, and I see that, when I return to drinking, I have tons of fun for a while but then I fall into the pit again, I have decided that it makes sense for me not to drink. To support my decision, I've been trying to go to AA, but it hasn't felt like a good fit for me. I know I wrote a few weeks ago that I was trying it, and I was being patient. I have been, and I am. But I have trouble there. I react badly to the often implicit sexism, and the group dynamics often remind me of the worst parts of being a teenager. I don't identify as "alcoholic," any more than I identify as "major depressive" or "insert-diagnosis-here-ic." I know that in mental health, recovery communities are moving away from that kind of language, aiming to see the full person and not just the problem, disease, or diagnosis, whatever it is. (Makes me think of a poem I love, Ginsberg's <i><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179382" target="_blank">Sunflower Sutra</a></i>, in which the speaker calls out, "We're not our skin of grime!" Oh how much I love that poem!) I'm trying to figure out how to live well, and how to keep this resolve not to drink alive enough that it's supportive of who I want to be, but not so front and centre that it defines or consumes me. Attending AA meetings makes me feel, simultaneously, that the drink problem defines me, and that my version of the problem isn't bad enough anyway. So it's just another group to which I don't quite belong. Frankly, I'm not sure that's doing me much good.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This morning, I read a <a href="https://nomoresally.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/its-about-sobriety-but-really-its-about-adulting/" target="_blank">great post at NoMoreSally</a> about getting sober as a kind of being an adult and getting on with life. She speaks to a lot of what I'm talking about here. It's food for thought, that's for sure.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In his wonderful though often impenetrable <i>Philosophical Investigations</i>, Wittgenstein said, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;">a philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don't know my way about'" (PI 123). </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;">That seems to be a good take on my problem. OK, now I don't drink. But how do I live? </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: serif; font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;">This isn't a post with answers. I'm finding my way, and I have more questions than anything else. I am often lost. At the same time, I continue to feel a fierce aversion to certainties about any of this. Some people will say, "Just don't drink," and the longer you are sober, the better life gets. That hasn't quite been true for me in the past. Sober was and is a good start, but it remains only a start. I need something else. I don't quite know what that something else is, and I suppose my gut feeling is that it's no one thing. I have a better sense of what I am doing in my academic work, and that's helpful. My husband is fantastic. I spend too much time on my own, but so does every grad student I know, and I'm working on changing that. I'm doing lots of other stuff too, but by now this post is long enough. Maybe all this is just to say I am here, trudging along like everyone else: sober, living, confused, but here. And that's just fine.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;">If you're still here, thanks for reading and walking along with me! Wishing you peace and joy on this rainy grey December west coast day. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;">(* Post edited to add: something wacky is happening to the font here and I have to keep resetting it to "normal," but it keeps reverting to several typefaces and font sizes. Which I know is funny. But sorry if it makes the rambling post even harder to read!)</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: serif; font-size: 16.5px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-49393676670805149302015-11-16T12:32:00.001-08:002015-11-16T15:59:59.533-08:00Round 3, Day 61: Patience, trust, and other (sober) people. I've been settling into being sober in what feels like a different way than I had in the past, and I want to write a little bit about it, because I'm surprised. The short version of all this is, nearly nine weeks into being sober this time, I'm doing well.<br />
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The first major difference I see is that I am more patient. It's not that I know what I'm doing with this getting sober gig. I just know that drinking stopped working, and my previous stints at getting sober both ended when I began to really dislike all the emphasis on self that the sober world seemed to require. I still don't like that emphasis. But I don't know what else to do, so I am trying some different things to see how they go.<br />
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One thing that's sort of different is that I have started to go to meetings. I did this a few times before, so it's not exactly new, but I'm trying again. And that's where the patience comes in. I go just to sit and listen to what people say. I don't ask myself to plunge in and make new friends or get a sponsor or even talk to anyone most of the time. (I have, to date this time around, spoken to one person, briefly. It was OK.) I have to confess, I have been a little bitter about how meetings have gone in the past, and I still have some of that. People seem to know each other, and they smile and hug each other, and no one is actually all that friendly to me. I have a sense that if I burst into sobs and wailed, "someone help me," then someone would, but that's not going to happen, because it's just not how I am experiencing my need for help. It's not that I'm all that together, and I understand that in being vulnerable you have to give up something, but I simply don't know what it is I have to give up or do differently in order to make some of that famous connection with people in these places. The other day at a meeting, someone spoke about exactly that. He said he never did have that feeling of being part of some big thing when he came to meetings, and a lot of the language and practices left him somewhat alienated, and because of that he sort of thought it might never work out for him, that maybe he was never going to recover, or maybe he didn't deserve to. But he kept going, and he said it was like a very slow educational process as opposed to a gigantic spiritual awakening. Eventually, though, he said he did slowly change, in a way that suited who he was and felt intellectually honest to him. Well that really spoke to me! I have been trying to trust that just sitting and listening and being patient is part of some process, even if I don't know what the process is or how it works.<br />
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Another related thing I am slightly bitter about, if that's the right way to put is, is that the kind of trouble I run into isn't what most of what's on offer seems to be designed around. There seems to be a lot of help available for people who struggle with cravings and fight the urge to pick up a drink on a regular basis. (I know that's no easy place to be, so there's no sense in which I mean to sound as though I think anyone else has it easy. If what I say sounds that way, it's not at all what I mean.) My struggle is more cerebral, but it's no less a struggle for all that. If I decide not to drink on a day, I more or less know I can do that. Where I struggle is to keep my decision fixed. Now some might say I am deluding myself into thinking that's anything other than a different way of falling into a craving. But I think it is different, because I simply can't address the problem at the level of craving. I do need to keep myself focused on my decision how how to hold onto that resolve not to drink, and I don't always know how to get help with holding onto that focus. Before, when I drank after being sober I always did wait a while and think it through and still come to the decision that it was the best thing for me to do. It probably wasn't, but the problem wasn't one of caving to an impulse. In a way that's scarier, though, because it means in some important ways I can't trust my own reasoning, though I can't possible even live if I don't trust my ability to reason. I'm not struggling with that these days, but I know if I don't make some changes, it will likely come back. The trick is, I don't really know yet what those changes are. Despite all this not knowing, even in this, I feel a kind of patience, a trust that I am on the right road and doing fine and that's enough for now.<br />
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One thing I am changing is some important stuff about my academic work. I'll talk about that more another time. But for now I want to say I feel I have managed to make some decisions, and make them from deep within being the person I am. I was able to see that, as I explained it to my husband, one way lay black death and one way lay green sprouting life, and I decided to move toward the life, even if it means making big changes. If that sounds fey, sorry! What I mean to say is that I have more of a sense of knowing who I am, and I was able to act in that knowledge, and that's utterly new to me. I am grateful for that, and I am staying with doing all the things that got me there.<br />
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OK, so I thought this was going to be a cheery and upbeat post, and I see that it may sound somewhat bleak! Dang. I don't actually feel bleak. After the first month or so of the devastating flatness that I seem to always feel at first after quitting (3x now I am starting to know a pattern), I feel hopeful. I am less likely to get my back up when someone tells me with absolute certainty that they did something or other and I should do exactly that. I have some trust that I am finding my own way through this, and I am doing that by paying close attention to what seems to work for me and what doesn't, and other people's ironclad certainties don't faze me much one way or the other.<br />
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I do need people in this business of getting sober. And I have some. There are bloggers--and you know who you are!--who have helped me along for ages. Many thanks and giant hugs to you! My husband is kind and supportive and about as great as he could be in this. I am lucky in that score! I also need to know some in-person sober people, and I find that the hardest thing to sort out. But I have some trust that I am getting somewhere in this. For now I'm sober, and most days it's not all that much of a struggle to stay there, and I'm very happy about that. <br />
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Thanks so much for reading! Wishing you all peace and joy on this rainy November afternoon.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-19159557829986567302015-10-25T17:58:00.004-07:002015-10-25T18:00:47.346-07:00Round 3, Day 39: Less reacting. More slowing down. Many tears. I just realized I haven't written in a couple of weeks, so here I am. Hello! Still sober and doing OK, so that's the short version of the story.<br />
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This time around, just over five weeks into my third serious go at quitting drinking, I'm trying to do some things differently. Looking back at my older posts, I see that my thinking isn't all that different from some of what I went through earlier. I should probably come up with a great metaphor about peeling away layers or digging deeper or something like that, but I don't want to just fall into cliche here. Instead I'll try to describe what I mean.<br />
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The first two times I quit, I'm not sure I really owned up to how hard it is to quit drinking. I kind of did online, and I kind of did with my partner (now husband!), but I was slippery about it. I thought maybe quitting was kind of tough, but I could do it, which meant I could always do it again, which meant trying drinking again was no problem. Part of this, I know (and I'll come back to this point) is me reacting to the argument that you might not be able to quit the next time. The old argument from fear. Which only fills me with a strange compulsion to say, screw you, I'm not afraid, I can quit again if I want to. I'm not living my life in fear! But this reaction, I see now, is far too invested in what other people say and do about their own actions. It has nothing to do with me. And reacting to it paves over my own experience. So in a way, it wasn't that I was pretending that quitting wasn't all that hard. It's more that I wasn't paying much attention to my own experience. Or when I did, I thought, "Well yeah, OK, life is hard, suck it up!" or something like that. Which is still a reaction to the experience, and not the experience itself.<br />
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This time, I am slowing down in the tough parts and feeling them. And man, they are not much fun. A few times in the past couple of weeks--twice in restaurants on a little vacation we took, and twice coming through the door after a rough day--I actually cried because I wanted wine and couldn't have it. The last one was a great big sobbing, nose running and eyes red for the evening and a headache that stays for a full day kind of crying. On that occasion, I was tired and hungry and a bit cranky about some school/work-related personal issues, and I was fighting off how much I wanted a glass of wine, and when I arrived home, I found my husband (who rarely drinks) had just bought a bottle of scotch and left it on the counter and was sitting in the living room, listening to music and sipping a wee dram. I instantly broke down, and cried and cried and cried, and I said how unfair it was, and how sad I was that I couldn't have a glass of wine. And then I said (and realized) that I felt so ashamed that I couldn't do that. That if I were a better, or stronger person, I would be able to have a drink and enjoy it and then stop, like lots of people can. That if I had caught the whole problem earlier, I would be able to do just that. That I likely wouldn't ever be able to drink again, and that was devastating.<br />
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Now please don't tell me all these things are not true. On a factual level, of course they're not. But I'm starting to see that sticking to the facts and logic of the situation is often my downfall. I know, I know, I can make the same arguments about how booze is no good and life is great without it. But unless I admit how painful it is to have to quit, how much I just plain don't want it to be true that drinking doesn't work for me anymore, then I am sooner or later going to get swallowed up, again, in wanting to drink, and when that happens I won't even feel it but I will build a convincing argument about why it's a good idea to try drinking again. The change I need to make isn't about facts. It's on the emotional level. And that means I have to feel the sadness and the loss of not drinking again, even if it's illogical. (And maybe then I'll feel whatever loss is hiding beneath that.)<br />
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One thing I've been doing to help me in all this is meditation. I have been meditating on and off since I was 14 and a teacher have me the little book, "How to Meditate." And for a while I sat with a zen group, but got put off by some of the dogma that crept into the way this group practiced. I'd really left off practicing altogether for the past several years. But for the past few weeks I've been sitting for 20 minutes in the morning most days or, when I'm really rushed, using 20 minutes on transit to do a breathing meditation. (No need to look weird there. You just sit quietly and breathe. It's kind of lovely.) Also, I took a cue from something <a href="http://mrsdisgoingwithin.blogspot.ca/2015/10/curious-open-accepting-loving.html" target="_blank">Mrs D posted on her newer blog</a> (thanks, Mrs D!) and have been avoiding looking at the computer until after breakfast, instead of jumping into blogs/email/news the moment I get up, and that seems to help ground me a little better in my day.<br />
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I know from when I was a more serious zen student that it's not just the sitting meditation that's needed, so I've been trying to slow myself down whenever I have any strong feeling, just to see what's going on. That's a big help to me, because often I have no idea what I'm feeling. Only when it's a big wave of emotion that I can't possibly ignore do I know there's even any feeling there. Usually, with those big waves, I go for comfort--a hug from my husband, or a cup of tea, or a walk, or even a little lie down on the couch, they all work. I still do that, but at the same time, I'm paying attention to the feeling, and doing that helps me know what the feeling is about, and what's under it, and then what's under that.<br />
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There's another part to this whole "learning to feel" project. When I went to see a psychologist a couple of years ago, mostly to get help with the drinking, what I said was that I didn't have any idea how to know what I felt, and I knew I needed to get a handle on that. These days I'm finally starting to get to it. I wrote last post about having to make some decisions about my academic program, and I have been working on that over the past few weeks. My biggest realization--and I have to say I am floored by it--is how much I am influenced by reacting to what other people are saying and doing and (as if I knew that, too) thinking. It's not as simple as wanting people to approve of me. No, it's something like this: in any situation, I take the situation and the people in it as givens, and try to see how I can fit within things as they are. Now if you knew me, you wouldn't think that. I come off as strong and confident, like someone who knows what they are doing. And I do, if knowing what you're doing is swimming in the current that's around you. But my confusion about my school plans needs some deeper thinking than that. I might have to extract myself from that current and find one that's better suited to what I want to do. So being able to listen to myself and what I want to do is important. And that's where I get lost. Utterly lost.<br />
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Maybe that sounds bleak. But to me it feels like an opening, because I am starting to recognize my own patterns, and that's got to be at least the beginning of it all.<br />
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Years ago in a writing class, I wrote about a character based pretty closely on me, and in a pivotal scene she said, "I'm not very good at wanting." (Except for the one woman who got it, my classmates found it a strange line, and I started to see that they had some sense of normal that I just didn't get. Oops!) I have thought about that line so much over the years, and I see that it's true on an even deeper level than I knew at the time. So my project these days is to pay attention to whatever glimmers of feeling I find myself in, and when I feel the great big waves of feeling, to stay with them and pay attention too, and see if I can start finding my way through this. Can I say I want to learn how to want? It's something like that. I know feelings are supposed to be a source of something important, that they can help guide us in the world, and I'm trying to find my way to those feelings, even if it means sitting through a whole lot of "I want wine" and "I want cake." (And, as I write this the next thing that comes to mind is, "I want my mother." It's probably going to come back to that, isn't it? God help me.)<br />
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I have been reading <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9780881634679" target="_blank">Robert Stolorow on trauma</a>, in part for school and in part for myself, and I dug around the web to see what else I could find him saying. I came across a short piece about vulnerability, in which he quotes the poet David Whyte as saying:<br />
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<span lang="EN-US">“Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing
indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not
a choice , vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding
under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from
the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt
to be something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding
of the grief of others. More seriously, refusing our vulnerability we refuse
the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential,
tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.” (from David Whyte, <i><a href="http://www.davidwhyte.com/consolations.html" target="_blank">Consolations</a></i>, Many Rivers Press, 2015.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I haven't read that book, but I will. And I will keep on trying to stay with these vulnerable moments, so I can stop closing down in the face of life. It's time to do less reacting, less deflecting myself out of those tough moments, more slowing down and feeling whatever it is I'm feeling. I'm expecting more tears. But I'm expecting some moments of deep joy, too.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Wishing you deep joy of your own, despite your tears. Thanks for reading! xo</span></div>
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<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-45549993612038066252015-10-05T17:14:00.002-07:002015-10-05T17:20:08.533-07:00Round 3, Day 19: Listening to you, listening to me.Well, I have written before about listening, but if you write you may find that the same themes come back over and over, and this is a big one for me. This week I have been thinking a lot about two kinds of listening that I guess complement each other: listening to others, and listening to myself.<br />
<br />
Listening to others is, in one sense, a challenge for me. I resist a lot of recovery wisdom, in part because it's sometimes presented in language that makes things sound more straightforward than makes sense to me. I am both blessed and cursed with seeing many issues from multiple perspectives, and I try not to resolve things too tightly into one perspective as I think it will simply leave out too much, or will stop ringing true for me. But I know that people who have been through major changes know something that can help me, and when they are generous enough to offer their experience, I need to find a way to take that up in a way that's helpful. Not much else to say about that, except I'm trying, and please be patient with me!<br />
<br />
On the other hand, over the past few months, before my recent return to being sober, I feel like I lost my ability to listen to myself. Now, some of that isn't all that surprising. I was a bit busier than is good for me with school, just because it all crept up on me (I have decreased some of that now), and then my partner's accident earlier in the summer (he's doing well now) resulted in me not having very much free time for a couple of months. I am used to having a reasonable amount of time to myself, and it's one of the ways I keep myself on track. (I used to suffer severe depressions and now mostly I don't, so keeping myself on track is worth the time and effort it takes. It might sound like a luxury, but it's pretty basic survival for me.)<br />
<br />
Anyway. One of the things I think I have lost my way in is my academic work. I don't write a lot about that here, for a whole lot of reasons, but I'm going to talk a little bit about it now because I think it's central to this listening thing. In many ways, I'm not sure about the academic world. In some ways it's very good--I like my thesis project, and I think it's definitely worth doing. And of course it's a privilege to be doing it at all. I get that. But I don't run into a lot of people who have set up their lives in ways that bring them balance and meaning, and that's been gnawing at me. The other day, I had lunch with two people who are quite senior to me, and who in many ways I admire. But their lives seem rigid, somehow. Maybe that's not it, rigid. Maybe what I want to say is that their lives seem so compartmentalized, and I don't think I can live like that. I can't spend most of my time doing what needs to be done in the hopes of scraping out a little time to do work that matters to me. Now, maybe I don't have to. But I feel like I need a role model, and I don't have one. Part of the problem may be that the department I am working might not be the best fit for me. But if it isn't, I have to find a place that is, and then make enormous changes, and it's hard to know where to start. I just don't always know how to connect to the sources of meaning that I need to keep connected to in order to keep myself going, and I'm not sure whether that's a personal problem or an institutional problem, or whether it's a matter of me just not fitting where I am. But I wrote about not feeling like I fit anywhere, so it seems a bit rich to think that I am going to be able to feel that in school. And yet, if I can't, I'm not sure I can do what it takes to keep me in it for the long haul. It's not the hard work that I mind (though sometimes I do, of course!) It's more the fear of being swallowed up by the academic machine and not being able to hear what's left of my own voice. That scares me.<br />
<br />
I really don't know if that makes sense to anyone. Maybe I sound like I am whinging. But I know that I have some major doubts about what I am doing, and these doubts are not unconnected to the drinking. So I'm trying to look them square in the face and say, "Hello doubt. What's up with you these days?" rather than racing past them in the hopes that they disappear. And I'm not expecting any great answers from myself on this, or at least not yet. I'm just admitting that I have big questions. And they are painful.<br />
<br />
On the not drinking front, things have been actually pretty darned easy. My "not drinking" habits were well-established after 16 months sober, and I feel like I have reverted to them with a certain ease. I've felt low, and I've felt altogether just too much, that's for sure. But I haven't felt like drinking. (Well, except once, fleetingly, at a particularly festive recent dinner party, but I was still getting over the flu then and I really didn't want to feel any worse than I already did. Still, since drinking while ill was never a problem when I was drinking, I'm pleased that even that one evening, the temptation was only slight.) No, for me, I am starting to realize that the problem isn't being overcome with craving. Not anymore. The problem is more trying to figure out how to live so that I stay connected to my sources of meaning. If I lose them, and things start to seem pointless, that's when drinking starts to look appealing. As in, if it's all pointless anyway, why not just drink? I don't <i>think</i> it's all pointless. But I do <i>feel</i> like that at times. Working on that is what I need to do, and what I'm writing about.<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading, if you made it through all that! It's nice to have some company while I face down these doubts. Wishing you peace, and joy, and maybe even a little fall sunshine.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8137766683602731513.post-19204165276248679522015-09-28T13:46:00.001-07:002015-09-28T13:46:39.634-07:00Round 3, day 12: isolation and connectionToday is the twelfth day of this recent stretch of not drinking. I am recovering from a flu I've had since my family visit in August (yes, a 4-week bug! Or maybe a psychosomatic illness brought on by visiting my family? Who can say?) I'm still a little logy after a less active than usual summer, still a bit low from the summer of drinking, and I am a bit worried about a couple of projects I'm working on, one in particular on which I am just plain behind and will have to admit that in a meeting this week. So life is not just a walk in the park these days.<br />
<br />
Maybe that all sounds dreary. But despite it, I'm doing well. I feel so much more calm and able to face the world after not even two weeks away from drinking. I don't know yet how I'm going to face it. But I can accept that I will, and that's a huge step in the right direction. (A few weeks ago I was fantasizing temporary catastrophes that would pluck me from the world for a few months without harming anyone. But there is no such thing. All catastrophes harm someone. And imagining that as the only way forward was certainly harming me!)<br />
<br />
This past weekend I attended a conference, one that's usually incredibly social--a small group of people spend all day together in meetings and conversation, and all evening at dinner and then sitting up late drinking together. Last year I attended and didn't drink, and it was great, but this year I am new (again) to not drinking, and I wasn't sure whether it would be hard. In fact, it was the opposite. Despite feeling somewhat ill, I very much enjoyed my time. I had some great conversations, and I felt very much like a part of the small group. But I realized something about how the drinking works at these events. Even more than last year, I saw that the drinking was meant for a kind of bonding, and it does that, but it also had the opposite effect. Both this year and last, some people didn't drink much, and for them, the drinking seemed grand. For others, as they drank more, they got more stuck into certain grooves of talk that seemed to disconnect people, so that the conversation went on and but it wasn't all that interesting. Now I went to bed early, so maybe it did all turn super interesting later on, or maybe the bonding of staying up late talking was worth more than anything in particular that was being said. I don't know, and I wasn't well enough to test that out. But it surprised me that one part of drinking, which is a kind of group bonding, seemed only partial, isolating as much as it bonded.<br />
<br />
Maybe that sounds judgemental. I hope not, but it might. I don't mean it that way, though. I just think I mean this: I might be finally, absolutely finished with the drinking. Last time around, I could still see residual things about drinking that I was giving up. This time, it's less that I am giving up something than that I am making a different decision, one that chooses a certain way of spending time (being present and engaged) over another (bonding over drink.) I felt like I could separate the day and evening events, and I didn't need to participate in the whole circus to be a part of the conversation. In fact, by having one evening away with a friend, and going to bed early the next, I was better able to engage with what was happening at the meetings during the day.<br />
<br />
Last time I wrote, I was talking about emotions, and I still don't know much what to make of all that. I have been thinking about the period during the past summer before I decided to drink again. I felt isolated, and I felt like the sober world was a big game of trying to isolate from the rest of life. And I thought that drinking again might be a way to participate more fully in the world as it is. Now that I write that, I see that I had the <i>exact same thought</i> when I decided to drink again after my four months being sober in 2013. That's why what I think I observed this weekend feels powerful to me. I think I can finally see my way through the lie that booze helps people bond, that it's a way around a kind of alienation and isolation. I know, I know, I know, sooner or later drinkers isolate, staying home altogether instead of going out to mix with the world, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is that even when drinking with a lovely group of people, even when it's a group of people who are committed to really communicating, drinking can get in the way of people actually being able to listen and talk to each other.<br />
<br />
And I know I am given to isolation and alienation. I don't always struggle with this, and I don't always know why it's happening when it's happening. But I know that at times, the world of people seems far away and hard to connect with, and I hate it all. And when I feel that disconnect, I want to run screaming away from whatever world I'm locked out of. I guess I have used drinking like a stick of dynamite to blast myself back into a world, and that works a little bit, for a while, but sooner or later I am isolated again. If that happens and I am already drinking, I don't have another way to blast back, and I feel too low to do it on my own steam. Which leaves me more or less nowhere, and alone.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure any of this will make sense to anyone. I'm writing it because I think the most important thing I have to do is to get hold of the reasons I gave up on being sober, twice, when both times it was working so well for me. I think I mistook one of the problems of living, which is feeling left out of the world, for a problem of being sober. I see that now. And I see that my own feeling a bit apart from the world goes much deeper, and that's what I have to find a way to address, this sense of not really belonging in the world.<br />
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Almost two weeks in here and lots of thinking on the go. I think I'm getting somewhere with it. As always, thanks for reading, and for your comments! Wishing you peace and joy, and belonging.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08288935120774241198noreply@blogger.com21