Day 6

Hello, world.

I don't really know what I want to write about today, I suppose I'm just checking in. It'll be a week tomorrow which feels both like a big milestone, and a small one - but mainly I'm focusing on just doing this one day at a time.

My brain is definitely starting to wake up again. I managed to figure something out in Photoshop last night which has eluded me for the past 12 months, and I'm about to launch into some fairly technical stuff at work which isn't too daunting. I'm lacking a bit of mojo for work at the moment but I've been like that all year if the truth be told. Hoping that will come back, as I start to come back too.

Sleep is still an issue. I'm tending to drop off around 1am, and I have to be up at 6.30 to get E ready for school (you have never seen anyone move as slowly in the morning as her!). Definitely feeling like I'm crawling towards Saturday and the promise of no alarm clock...I have been going to bed around 10pm and reading for a bit but sleep eludes me even when I do everything 'right'.

Yesterday evening I had to battle some pretty big cravings. I think I was as close to cracking as I have come so far. Not really sure what triggered it other than that I was tired, running my bath, and thought how nice it would be to soak and drink. Sober Friend R has recommended Eisberg as being a reasonably acceptable alternative but I do remember trying it last time around and loathing it. I think perhaps a year of sobriety has made him forget what wine actually tastes like ;)

Anyway, I decided there wasn't anything in the house that I liked well enough to break my streak for - there is gin, but happily I'm not dreadfully keen on it, some sort of strange yellowish 'bathtub' gin. I tried to distract myself on r/stopdrinking but reading about other people's benders just made me want what they had been drinking! In the end I just went to bed with a book, and that did the trick.

I have a meeting / cake session at 3pm today with a client, so it's a short day at least. Best get on with it!

Day 6 Part 2 - Defence

I'm on the defensive.

Called my mum, and mentioned the tingly feeling and how I hadn't realised I was so tired, and she made some relatively mild comment about me going out / drinking - so I fairly casually mentioned that I'd not had a drink since last Monday.

Of course, what I was hoping for was a "Oh well done!" but what I actually got was a certainty that I was going through withdrawal and not tiredness (even though I've had this before about 10 times) and a comment about my ability to "hit the sauce rather hard" or something along those lines.

Okay, fair enough, an accurate observation, but it hurt. And when I came back with "well, I acknowledge that, but I don't think this is withdrawal" I was shut down, told that there was an edge in my voice and that she was going to change the subject.

Hurts a bit more in retrospect knowing she'd already read the Facebook thread where I talked about the fizz and dropped in to it casually that I hadn't been drinking.

Rational brain knows this is my mum's way of expressing her concern, and trying to avoid conflict. And rational brain knows she loves me to the end of the earth, and that I have to just accept that sometimes, often, she says the real, sensible thing rather than the cheerleading mum thing that I really hope she will say. But tonight my needy, recovering, alkie brain really just needs someone to not judge, to not remind me of my failings, but rather to say "well done, you!" or even "how can I help?".

Coupled with a minor disagreement with hubs about something on telly (which I have translated to "You're a bad person Susie how could you possibly judge someone like that"), I'm feeling like I want to curl up and burst into tears.

Again, rational brain knows this is stupid and unnecessary. But it's not the one in charge at the moment.

On the plus side, fever tree tonic with elderflower cordial, and crushed mint and strawberries, is bloody amazing.

Goals

I've not blogged before so please tell me nicely if I break any etiquette rules or anything. This post is prompted by something I read in Ruby Tuesday Abstains. She was talking about setting goals for the year - and she accepted that although she might not achieve all of them, achieving goal number 1 (to stop drinking) would make achieving the others more likely.

I love that thinking, and I wish I could be the same. I am so afraid to fail that often I won't try - or at least, I won't verbalise my goals, so that nobody knows if I don't make it. I think it's the reason why nobody other than my husband knows that this sobriety is intended to be forever. The few other people who have noticed I've stopped drinking are assuming it's a short term thing, and I'm not correcting them.

Hopefully as time goes on I'll manage to be a bit more confident and positive. But I do like the idea of goal setting. So here are my goals for this week...

• Don't drink alcohol.
• Have a consistent time for getting in and out of bed (maybe 10pm, up at 6? It would be nice to get the dog walked and a little work done before everyone else wakes up!).
• Try to make healthier choices with food; think before I just randomly throw things into my mouth.
• Remember to take my antidepressants every day.

The food one should be easy as I have no appetite at all at the moment - hoping this keeps up, as it would be great to lose weight as a side effect of all of this! I've never been a small person but lately I've stopped really caring, and as a result I've piled it on and most of my clothes don't fit. I don't have the mental capacity to properly diet at the moment, and I'm trying to go easy on myself for that.

Today's goal is just to get through it, and hope that this weird fizzy feeling goes away. A couple of work things to deal with, and just to keep breathing.