I was not going to write about recovery today, I really wasn’t. I was prepared to write about the first stop on the Preschool for Mimi Grand Tour, which began at 7:30 this morning at our local Waldorf school.
However.
I have been seized by the nastiest cravings. I have no idea why they’ve struck now. I bought a beer at the grocery store for Jon on Monday. I am staring down 10 months’ sobriety. I feel guilty that I have not yet gotten a sponsor. My rehab center’s annual reunion is in three weeks’ time. Things are stressful. Things are great.
I certainly know by now that cravings are capricious and strike when the occasion suits them. These have been notable because there have been so many in such a short time, and they’ve been so sneaky. They have been the nastiest kind, too, the ‘it’s okay, just one won’t hurt’ kind. Not an hour ago I was perusing cooking schools on-line and one place noted that they serve wine with all of their classes and my mind was already choosing between a cab and a shiraz before the rest of my brain caught up enough to put on the brakes. That. Was. Spooky.
So, I am now turning my thoughts away from the Waldorf school and to strategies to deal with this, and I hope to find one or two that do not require vats of ice cream.
I was tooling around the internet this morning and I stumbled on this post by Jane, who wrote:
Wow, 8 lbs lost since the summer! My head was full of glee. I immediately thought, “Just 7 more pounds and I’ll be at my goal weight of 115. If I stop eating for a while I could get there!”. Wait, I’m going to go back and bold the key part of that sentance… Yes, I thought, “If I stop eating.” Not, “If I eat healthier” or “If I go on a diet” or “If I start exercising”. See CRAZY.
and this:
Not eating makes me feel powerful. And a little naughty. Like I have a secret strength that no one else has. Kind of like when I had my secret bottle of wine for strength and support? Hmmm, maybe. Looking back, I can see that my “pickyness” as a child/teen had a lot to do with control.
Yikes. I SO could have written this. Right down to the “intestinal problem” which she wisely declined to elaborate on, as will I.
When we brought Mimi home, by train (across Russia) and plane (across the Atlantic) and automobile (across Phoenix), I was overwrought, encountering more emotion in a few weeks than I’d probably felt in my whole life. Plus I always lose weight when I travel, choosing to subsist on bottled water and crackers. Jon, on the other hand, has a stomach of titanium, eating everything including the whole boiled fish we were served on the train. Seriously: the man can eat Russian train fish.
But this time the weight didn’t come back once I was home. Sheer terror, I think, kept it going down for a while. But reading Jane’s post up there helped me to realize how much of that weight loss was also about control. I’d never considered that becoming a mother would make me feel so out of control and powerless. I’d expected to feel powerful, now that I was responsible for keeping this little being alive, all by myself for hours at a time. I’d expected to rise to the occasion and flex my mommy muscles and lift up the world.
I didn’t. I shrank.
By Christmas, I looked awful, but my sick brain told me I looked fine. My clothes were falling off. I was close to 100 lbs, which at 5′ 6″ is not good. I preferred photos taken from a distance, like this one:
See this picture of Florida? Taken from space? I love it. What I don’t love is that I feel as if I am right there in it. My head is floating around somewhere above my shoulders, my ears are leaking, and I have a cough so deep it feels like it is coming from my stomach.
All add up to bolster my excuse for falling off of the NaBloPoMo challenge the very first week.
Which I at first attempted to rectify as any good addict would. Addicts are clever, totally self-deluded sonofaguns.
I am smart arrogant enough to know how to back-post on a blog, and my first thought is to put yesterday’s date on this.
But of course, help me with the insanity of this, please: NO ONE CARES. I have been blogging for, what?, three months, tops. I have TWO followers (and I love them both. Thank you, followers, so so much). I tell myself I am blogging for myself, but of course that too is disingenuous. I really want to connect with you, Internet.
So let’s play this out.
I would back-date a post and put it up. Every time I then saw it, I would remember that it was back-dated. Eventually I would forget to remember this, but some little part of me would register that something was off.
That? Is an identifier of a real good addict. Tired of lying to everyone else, no longer getting a thrill from deceiving family, friends, and co-workers, we tackle the final frontier: we lie to ourselves.
And if that’s not the height of arrogance, I don’t know what is. To think it matters so much to APPEAR to meet some standard that I’ll fake it to MYSELF, because NO ONE ELSE IS EVEN LOOKING.
And I so do want to form an honest relationship with you, cyber-friends. So I will publish this and not look back.
I feel more like an alcoholic now than I did before I stopped drinking.
Last night in the Sky Club (an airport lounge — a perk left over from my travelling days) I realized I could drink with impunity. My only witness would be myself. This new self that tells on herself. So i didn’t drink.
My first reaction to the Orlando airport upon landing was to take a deep breath, love the smell, and feel at home. I love that stupid airport.
Then the day sank. Mom was nervous to have me around. They’re acting like the (heavily fallen) saintly daughter has come home forever. There was talk of how to divide up grocery duties and do I want to get a car.
I wanted to run back to Arizona. To Jon. To the house I own and have created. I wanted to go home!
I AM SO MIXED UP. What is wrong with me? I wish I had more of a community here. I love reading the blogs but am not interacting with bloggers yet. I wish I had some people to comment. I am cyber-lonely.
Then tonight I wanted to drink more than I have since May. Even kinds of liquor that I don’t like tempted me. Just one slug of vodka, my demons said — you’ll relax and no one will even know. Ha. My Self would.
When I pinch my thoughts together and look at them, I recognize that I’m far more worried about being an alcoholic and all that entails than of the actual act of not drinking. So far, that I have done, albeit with white knuckles. But I don’t want to say “no, thank you, I don’t drink” and I don’t want to envy people sipping nice Bordeaux and i don’t want to have done this to myself. I want to be NORMAL. That’s it. For the first time in my life, I want to be NORMAL.
And the scare tactics! A dieter isn’t punished for one taste of birthday cake, but an alkie? One sip and you’re doomed, or so he legends say. I don’t like that, but then again I do: it;s the only reason I didn’t drink today.
