Rain, rain, rain. At least there is sunshine in my heart. And now that I’m sober I can truly savour that feeling in full without having to be distracted by alcohol induced anxiety and a body that is quite literally screaming out as I’m poisoning myself. But yes, the weather is really shite right now, which doesn’t help when I need those long walks every day to try to shift some of this additional fatness I seem to have acquired by cutting out the wine and discovering sweets. Ho-hum. Weirdly, I think I’ve improved if we just stick with the superficial aspect – looks – since I quit drinking. My skin has been transformed and has a healthy glow and my eyes are brighter. And inside I finally feel like myself again. Alcohol robbed me of me, you see.
And so now I’m back, I have discovered I really missed me over this last decade when I was trapped in countless wine bottles, then graduated to boxes. There is a peace and calm within me again that only returned when I showed Sauvignon Blanc the door, a distinct sense that I can only describe as finding my way back home. I will in all likelihood always be a person who feels everything strongly but that doesn’t need to be negative. It’s negative when you add a depressant like alcohol though and how could it not be? Makes perfect sense.
When I was drinking I’d wake up at 4am, heart pounding and terrible, compulsive thoughts taking over my mind with horrendous images and anxiety I just couldn’t escape from. That’s what alcohol does to me. I’m not saying I never feel anxious when I’m sober – hey, I’m an emotional hurricane – but it’s rare and when I do it’s almost without exception linked to a specific cause. I am probably quite nervous by nature, I do fret about stuff and I’m sometimes a bit nutty when yanked out of my own habitat and routines, but I can’t for the life of me say I think that’s a problem. I’m just a bit stressy sometimes. Wouldn’t it be great if we were all totally serene creatures and never got riled about anything? Would it? No, don’t think so. It might be easier to never feel stress but it’s part of life, no? Is it so unnatural to feel a bit stressed at plunging into something unknown, like a new destination, a new group of people or a situation we are not used to? OK, if it’s stress that becomes overwhelming and brings us down, obviously that’s not a GOOD thing, but a certain level of jitters at heading into something new can’t be anything but perfectly, beautifully and quite simply normal? But hey, perhaps that’s just me. I do think there is positive stress, not just negative.
Last night was different from my sober nights thus far actually. I’ve had the occasional unsettling dream since I quit drinking (but nothing like the mad, dark, awful nightmares I’d often have when I was boozing) and each time it’s been about drinking, that I’d started again and I’d just somehow gone and done this thing I no longer want to do and am so grateful I don’t have to do anymore: drunk. Those dreams are shitty, have on the couple of occasions I’ve had them given me a real sinking feeling, a feeling of defeat and disappointment. But once I’ve woken up and discovered that they were just dreams and I’m gloriously sober and hangover free I’ve taken it to be my Higher Power’s way of reminding me of the horror of drinking and what a gift I’m giving myself by turning my back on it.
Anyway, last night I had a different dream. I can’t quite explain it but it left a horrible aftertaste that I still cannot shake. Do you ever get that? Dreams that you can’t explain where the weirdest shit goes down and the dream is really graphic, full of details and endless story lines and you remember it really clearly afterwards? Well, it was one of those. I was tucking into a heart. Not a cute chocolate heart or heart shaped biscuit or anything – an actual HEART. As in the organ. Raw. Bloody. And it was my own. I was in some fancy setting with a perfectly laid table but all the tables around me and the entire room empty, just me sitting there slicing this heart and eating it. Fucking disgusting. Then suddenly my dad is standing by the table and I burst into tears. And then I’m sentenced to prison. And it’s my own heart I’ve eaten some of. The prison term was going to be four years and I was feeling really sad over how I would make this work for my son and husband, how they might cope and how we’d get through it. And how I’d miss out on four years with them. It was so sad. You know, if you fancy a shot at analysing my fucked up brain for coming up with this sort of madness and suggest what diagnosis this might be, feel free. Honestly, I’d be really interested to hear any views on what this might all have been about!
We have recently run out of Nordic Noir series to binge watch and finally decided to give in to Game of Thrones because everyone keeps going on about how amazing it is. We’re just a handful of episodes in and I am yet undecided as this isn’t really my thing but I’m starting to quite enjoy it actually. In the episode we watched last night the blond chick with the sexy savage husband had to eat a heart in some sort of ceremonial setting to prove she’s a worthy queen or something, and she did this in all its gory glory at the same time as she managed to pout sexily and not get her perfectly applied eye make-up smudged. The sexy savage was very pleased with brave wifey’s blood soaked pouting and proudly carried her around afterwards. So that may well be where the heart munching shenanigans originated. And the dwarf dude spent a bit of time locked in a cell. Oh, I don’t know. But weird shit took place in my little head last night and God knows why. Still, I slept well, another solid – if fucked up – block of sleep. Yay sobriety!
Going to see if Ivy and Willow are heading to the women’s meeting tonight. Sparks is and it’ll be good to see her, I enjoy her sparkiness. Hopefully it’ll be one of those meetings where I have a little revelation or someone shares something that really makes me think. That stuff is awesome. And if it isn’t, it’ll still be great to be part of that group of women with whom I share this crazy thing: the inability to stop if I have one drink and if I hear nothing else that is true for me we will always have that one thing to bind us. As always, I’ll try to listen out for the similarities.
I ain’t gonna lie – today I’m not going to drink and I’m very sorry but there is nothing difficult about that. Not a thing. Not today!
Storm in a Wine Glass 