This morning I felt unsettled, uneasy, jumpy, awkward. I twice flipped my pen almost into the hall just shifting my grip. I came this close to missing my chair when I sat. Everything felt a few degrees from normal.
What the hell is this? Work isn't the best place to soul-search, but I wanted to nail it down before I tripped down the stairs or fell into a recycling bin.
I took some time at lunch to purposefully relax and a few thoughts kept surfacing: What if I can't? And if I can, does that mean I have to haul this shit around for the rest of my life? Will I ever become a thoughtless non-drinker?
I admonished myself for putting the cart before the horse, but part of me said LISTEN, dammit and so I did. Valid questions. Unanswerable at this point, but valid nonetheless, and that's when I recognized what the nerves and the flinging pens and all meant.
Fear. Simple as that.
Fear that I can't, fear that I won't, fear that I will but my relationships will change. Fear that I put it out there. Fear that I won't follow through, fear that it will get worse if I don't. Fear that I'll feel that raw needy off-footedness I felt when I stopped drinking last time.
And then I breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
That off-footedness isn't going to kill me. I have friends and family who are aware and would completely understand if I pulled myself out of rotation for a few weeks. It's that simple. If I need to I can say, "Hey. I need two weeks to burrow into the bedsheets. I love you but I am one raw nerve and don't want to talk, don't want to email, can't deal with interaction."
Quite likely I won't need that, but lately I've been feeling the need to shrink, to focus, to not spread out all over the place. I've wanted to check out, but it doesn't feel like withdrawal, it feels like instinct. Like I need to curl into a corner and lick some self-inflicted wounds clean.
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YOU are one HELL of a writer, Mel. Fucking AMAZING to read your words.
I love this part:
"What if I can't? And if I can, does that mean I have to haul this shit around for the rest of my life? Will I ever become a thoughtless non-drinker?"
Well, yeah. Yeah to both. Yes, you haul it around for the rest of your life, but, also, yeah, it becomes less burdensome until, *yeah*, you'd be a "thoughtless non-drinker." It is a fairytale to think that this shit (that you and I both struggle with) will *ever* go away for good. In AA, they have this COMPLETELY obtuse line that goes like, "And even when I wasn't drinking, the Drinking was doing push-ups and getting stronger and waiting for me to slip." It is the honest truth. That's what happens. I know. I've been there, doing that. You don't want to be like me.
So...what? I don't feel comfortable offering any words of wisdom. I can, however, share my tale with you--most of which you already know--and cross everything in my body for you that you may, someday, *want* sobriety more than the buzz. For me? That occurence has not gleaned itself to me, yet. Yet.
Think about that word, "yet", and apply it to your drinking. In AA, the "yets" are what has not happened...yet. You've never been arrested (it sucks) you've never lost your family's love or respect, you've never...YET.
Dig on it, Mel.
(BTW? You WOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER lose my Love or Respect. And I think the rest of us agree.)
Love you, Melvin.
--AA-Bomb
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