Moving Along...You can come too!!!

After over four years here at Blogger I'm moving over to my very own website!

HERE IT IS!!!!

Come visit me at my new digs. You can still email me about anything, and I'll still be writing blog posts. I'm also offering Life + Recovery Coaching over there too.

Thank you to everyone who reads along with me here, I hope that you'll continue to be part of the Soberbia community. With this community I have grown into the woman I am today. Let's keep going. BIG LOVE.

Half

I am six months sober today.

This afternoon I tried my hand at sewing. After an hour I sort of sighed and moved on. I won't say I gave up since I'm going to try more. But my eyes were kind of crossing, and the picture didn't really make sense, and so before I got frustrated and cranky I did something else.

Today I had a free day- I ate what I wanted. I bought a scarf, and another book for my Kindle. I sort of waffled around the house listening to it rain. I thought about stuff. About how different I am than I was six short months ago. About things I'm ready to try. About happiness. And me.

I thought about the next step. The next part contentment. Goals for the next six months, since I accomplished the one goal I had for the past six months: staying sober.

1. bringing yoga back into my life.
2. eating the way I know makes me feel the best
3.  regular dog walks
4. saving money
5. opening myself to vulnerability

Rearrange all those letters and they spell: SOBER

My challenge-ish thing I want to try for the next six months is living my dream life. Living the life I want- not the one my ego pushes off on me. Listening to my heart, to my me. Not listening to the voices that say "not good enough" or "more more more" or the feelings that run through the cookies blindly. Listening to the voices of joy, of sad. Hearing what I need when I would normally waste an hour on the computer or eating past fullness.

Taking pauses. Chewing it all up. Concentrating on slowing down. On counting to 10. Breathing in. Finding my passion and my patience.

This seems like a tall order for a half year. But I am up for it. I am excited by the possibilities!

Long ago back at the New Year I chose a word. That word was INVEST. I'm ready to put my word to good use. I'm ready to invest in myself. I can now trust that I'm worthy of it.

I thrive on rules. I learn this about myself almost daily. I like a short leash. I like to know what to expect. I don't like the freedom to go with the flow: this does not work for me. When I go with the flow I flounder and flail and always end up taking waaaayyyyyyy more rope than I need, and then I'm either tangled or hanging by it at the end of the day. I need things to be set. I like organization. I like no's. Boundaries. Fences. Lines. All of these things make me feel safe, relieved.

I want to set some goals. Like:

1. lose that 20 lbs I've been trying to lose forever.
2. train for a half marathon/marathon- have a set running schedule
3. yoga class 3x a week.
4. strength training
5. write an hour a day
6. limit computer time- maybe once a week for surfing and wasting time instead of 5 times a day
7. stick with a budget
8. spend more time with the kids
9. have a date twice a month with husband
10. work on my flailing libido
11. give up caffeine
12. stick with a Paleo/whole 30 way of eating. Banish sugar.
13 Get to work on the garden
14. be silly and happy
15. stay sober
16. continue to be open to deeper friendship connections
17. be proud of who i am

But then there's this thing that always happens when I make the grandest plans.

Life.

So there are those things I want to do, ways I want to become the normal rhythm of my life so that I do them without thought or question. Like how I stay sober without the struggle to avoid the wine store anymore. I just do it. It's who I am now.

My mother commented today with her eyes shining wetly with pride, "You are so much easier to be around now" when I shared with her that I was celebrating six months of sobriety today. And we laughed about it, and I tapped myself on the head and said, "It's easier out there and in here."

Something happened to me when I decided to quit drinking. I made a commitment, a whole hearted promise, that I was going to succeed. I made a deal with myself that I would not drink so I could live. So I could be the person I wanted, in my heart of hearts, to be.

And now it's time to do just that. So while all those goals seem silly, or restrictive, or like too much maybe to you to me they seem like a big white bright ball of hope. They seem to say "Look at me. Look how big your hopes can be now, when a short six months ago you were just praying for the courage to not drink that day. Look how your world has stretched and moved to include any possibility you choose. Look how fucking strong you are now." So now that I've quit drinking it's time to be really brave. It's time to see what I can do. It's time to explore the map of who I am. Unafraid. Not worried that it's too hard, or too much; but embracing the challenge of living a life full on- full of love, and of joy- full of failure, full of trying.

Trusting the Universe

Or the title could be: How I Stopped White Knuckling It and Started Letting Go. Having faith that whatever happens happens. Not in the "it is what is is" way (which I hate) but more in the "What will be will be" one. Que sera sera. In the I can't control it but I'm OK with it way. Not in the nothing I can do anyway so who cares way. But with some control included. See?

Sometimes I am grasping at everything: concentrating on how life isn't what I want it to be rather than making it what I want it to be. Be a better runner? Then run. Be in better shape? Then don't eat dessert twice every night sometimes twice a day a week. Be a better mom? Then pay a-fucking-ttention to what's going on and stop checking the computer. Clean house? Take an hour or two and just do it. Plant the garden? Plant it then!

I have a habit of wanting things, and then waiting for someone else to do them,. And then getting mad when they don't get done. Lord, help me.

Or the subtitle could be: Getting/Giving Up Control. I have another habit: Giving things up. Now that I've finally given up booze forevah I have other stuff to take care of. I never drank coffee before when I was hungover a few/several/every day a week. It made me nervous and sickish, and I already felt bad enough without the cursed thought patrol coursing at ninety miles an hours through my head. So I would just chug water and ibuprofen and wait for 5 o'clock somewhere.

Then sobriety arrived (hello there and welcome, and thank you sweet baby jesus) and I started drinking coffee. It was innocent at first: just a cup in the morning while I wrote my blog. Then another a little bit after I got to work. Then another before I left work. Then maybe another after I got home before I walked over to get my oldest at school. And then all these cups became necessity not luxury. And suddenly I was pissed off every evening, gritting my teeth through bath time and stories please please please is it time for fucking bed yet? And I was waking up at 2:30 in the morning mind racing unable to get back to sleep. (and when you get up at 4 or 4:30 what's the point?)

So, sadly, coffee and I aren't meant to be either. It would have been much cooler if we were, but getting sober isn't just about giving up booze. It's also about learning what works now that I am coherent enough to identify what does and what doesn't. Learning myself. Getting comfortable. Being mostly happy, or at the least content-ish. Which means I'll be experimenting with things. Like giving up coffee.(yes, this obviously works- I feel mucho better-o today (day 4)) Or running more. Running longer distances slower, running short distances faster. Giving up things like cheesecake and cookies and having things like dark chocolate or a little maple syrup in my oatmeal. Because those things make me feel better in my head for a long time, while eight cookies makes me feel better until the last crumb goes down and then I regret them all immediately. Which might make me reach for a couple more cookies. So giving that stuff up gets me some control. And with that control comes peace. Peace in my mind.

Which is my new prayer. I am not spectacularly religious, but I do believe in prayer. And so my new prayer goes like this: "Please help me do the things that make me happy and give me peace." I'm relaxing my knuckles by gaining some control. Giving myself permission to do whatever I want makes me unhappy. Just because I stopped drinking it doesn't make it OK for me to keep passing my stopping points. That just starts the rounds of bad how-could-yous that I've given up. So being sober is all about not drinking, but also all about not behaving like an       -aholic. Whether that includes cookie-aholic or coffee-aholic or giving things up-aholic. Setting some damn limits around here. Like I'm five years old and don't know any better. Parenting myself. Teaching myself.

And trusting that the universe is listening. And that maybe, just maybe, I'm listening too.

Inner Instructions

Um, what? What is that? It's kind of what I feel like when I'm trying to direct myself and my life, kind of like I'm making a shuriken. Whatever the hell that is.

I was five months sober yesterday. I'm so good at the not drinking part of being sober, but I've been pounding sugar like crazy. (no, really. I ate two pieces of cheesecake the other day. Then a sliver of pie. Then I broke off the crust of the pie and ate it. Then I finished all the yogurt pretzels.) I'm eating alcoholically.  Terrific. And also coffee. Coffee. COFFEE!!!!

I wonder at the part of people that says, "enough". When they were giving out "enough" I must have been in the bathroom. I don't really have that part. It's my missing piece. La la la la la.....what's that you just said? "Eeeeeee-huh? Eeeeeeee-nuff? I don't understand."

Yesterday I went on one of the worst runs of my entire life. It sucked from step one. I plodded along and plodded along, hating it, mad at myself for being so slow and so not wanting to run when I really wanted to run. Then all of the sudden I said to myself, "ENOUGH!" And I stopped running. And I walked. And then a really fit girl ran past me so I ran a little more because I imagined that that was what I looked like running and so I should probably be running. And then I walked. Adjusted my shirt. Glared at my pouffy belly. Agh!

But then. I said, out loud, "Who cares about your stupid pouffy belly?" And I laughed at myself, and all the angry inner instructions I bark at myself all day. Pretty much a bunch of crap about how I'm not doing it right, and I don't measure up. More about how I look to other people. (Horror. I kid myself that I don't care about that, but I guess I do.) No wonder I was pounding wine like it was my job. No wonder I down cookies like they're wine. I'm trying to shut my inner instructions the fuck up.

I need to stop trying to make a shuriken. I could start listening to the real inner instructions- you know the ones that aren't my ego. The ones that say things like: "Coffee is really messing up your sleep. You need to stop drinking it" and "Don't buy a pound of yogurt pretzels just so you can eat them all" and "Hey there, when you run, eat right, and get enough sleep you feel awesome. Let's go back to that."

So I haven't had coffee since Saturday. The headaches have been awful, but it's my body readjusting so they are kind of (kind of) a nice reminder that I'm resetting. The sugary stuff I want is gone (I ate it all) and I'm not going to buy more. Why can't we just do the things that make us feel right? Why do we resist what makes us feel the best? What the hell is wrong with me?

Nothing. *waves*  Just over here being human, working on some new instructions.

Predicting the Future

I woke up way too early trying to finagle the future again. I wish there were some way to figure out the answer right now. To know the very best choice. To maybe have someone who tells me what to do and then they are always right and I live in bliss for eternity. But a real person. Who might look a lot like Yoda. And sound like Maggie Smith.

When I was drinking, my life just kind of scooched along. It was sort of boring really. The only thing I really really worried about was my drinking. It encompassed everything. It affected everything. It took up all the space in my head. It was big. And solo. A one man band.

Now, holy shit. There is a carnival going on up there. Look over here! Here's this! And that! And this! There are so many options I am starting to feel a little overwhelmed. But in a good way, mostly. The hard part is not knowing how it ends. Not knowing what really is the best choice. Where is Dionne Warwick when I need her? Psychic friends? Hello?

The hardest part of early sobriety for me right now is reigning it all in. I feel like I want to pack all the missed possibilities in. Like right now. Is it possible to be too excited about life? I don't want to go off all willy nilly and end up with handfuls of fits and starts and no results.

And then I think about all the years I spent drinking and wishing for sobriety. And now here it is. Wish come true. Whoa. I mean really. WHOA.

So does that mean that maybe my other wishes can come true, too?

My life is really big right now. It's like I've been speeding around on a windy day in a convertible. Everything's sort of blown all around. I might need some smoothing. Some refining. Perhaps a pretty scarf to keep things together.

I need to remember that I don't need to predict the future because I can trust it. Me. At the carnival. In my pretty scarf.

Middle of the Road

Ahhhh, life and curveballs. Just when I start cruising along feeling all in charge...zing! And me, being me, I get all wound up and start thinking and trying to manipulate things into the way I think they should go and waking up in the middle of the night just so I can think some more.

Yesterday I had a lovely walk and talk with a friend who is also a manager at the company where I work. She's suggested I apply to be her right hand woman, although I have no experience with her department and she's having a baby in six months so I would be in charge of things at the busiest time of the year. The challenge would be amazing, and hard, and the schedule totally does not work for my family. Seeing as how I want to be part of it. 

Taking this position would also mean I wouldn't go back to school. Which I still may not do anyway. Trying to decide on what I want to be when I grow up is a complicated tangle. 

Yesterday I was feeling anxious about the talk, and then we had it, and then I came home and ate all the rest of the children's Valentine's candy. Well, not all, I did leave them both one piece. And they didn't know about the two caramels in the mailbox from a neighbor. And then I broke off a chunk of the candy bar husband bought me (My favorite 85% kind- the kind that is so NOT the" I'm stewing on something and need to feed the beast" kind.) and ate that. All while I was making dinner. 

I should have stopped, and fixed myself a nice ginger seltzer. I should have sat down on the couch for a minute and said a real hello to the kiddos. Taken a breath. 

Not built in a day.

One of the cool things about early sobriety is that you start to realize that things take time. And that THAT'S OK. And that eating nine pieces of chocolate may not be the smartest thing to do, but it won't make me black out or feel like a miserable wreck all the next day. It did make my eight year old cry when I fessed up (I didn't tell the four year old- I'm not completely nuts) but he forgave me. "It was my candy Mom. MINE. And YOU ATE IT. But, if you let me use my Nexus before bed I'll forgive you." And then we played Crazy Eights, and read stories, and life rolled along. And I was forgiven.

Sometimes you have to forgive yourself when you don't know the answer. When you don't know which way to turn. When that road looks good, but this path is cool too....and look there! Sometimes maybe I just need to sit down in the middle of the road and look around. People will beep, wag fingers, yell at me to move. Oh, people. Always trying to tell people what to do. 

I will make myself a ginger seltzer. Sit down. Take a breath. Think it through. Put on a seatbelt and a turn signal when the time is right. Press the gas and move when it feels right. Move right along. 

Curse Show

I'm not sure what it is about sobriety that makes me want to cuss like crazy. And not like "Awwww, fuck." Like "Fuck yeah!" or "Holy shit!"

Yesterday on my run my ego started whining, "This is kind of hard. Shouldn't we slow down and get comfortable?" And I spoke up, "Fuck you! RUN! It's supposed to be hard!" Then I chanted "Fuck you, run fuck you, run, fuck you, run" until I finished my last mile really fast for me. And then I walked and beamed and felt great since I gave that ol' ego bastard a beat down.

Oh, life. Aren't you funny? When I got home the dogs were filthy. Beaming at the back door, hair all stringy from the mud. Only their heads we a little dry. And us with a broken shower dog rinser thing-y. Cue ego: "Oh, no. This is haaarrrrddddd. What will we do? Let's just avoid this situation." I was noticing a trend here. Things get hard, ego hands you the easy card. Or a wine glass. Fuck you. Deal.

Instead we made a dog pen in the dining room so they could eat, drink, and dry off. (Side note: Dogs still messy. You should see the dirt on the couch from it drying and falling off while Jelly slept. Holy shit.)

As an encore life had this one last thing while I was two minutes from finishing dinner: "Mom? Hampton just threw up all over the coffee table." (my oldest said this so casually I thought he was kidding.) I walked in to the room to look. Yep. Barf. Coffee table, rug. And then all over the kitchen floor where he tried to make it to the toilet. Ego: "Waaahhhhhhhhh!!! Whhhhhyyyyyyyy?????? Who will clean this up?" I actually considered for a brief millisecond calling my husband at work so he could come home and clean it up.

And then I handled it. Fuck you. Big girl boots. Clomp. Clomp.

Sobriety. It's this cool place where you suddenly get to decide. You decide you can do hard things, and then you do them. It's this place where you have to yell strong words like 'fuck' and 'shut the fuck up' to that whiny part of you that's such a damned coward. It's where I get to feel like a superhero because I do hard things like run fast, handle dirty dogs, and mop up vomit.

It's where, in the night, I can go to my little sick four year old son. I hear his tiny voice "Mommy? Mommy?" and I'm there. I'm all there. I can rub his back, and look into his olive brown eyes. Push back his dirty blond hair. Hold the trash can while he barfs. And I'm not drunk. I'm not drunk.

Fuck yeah. :)

Freeing the Birds

Once again my job has me thinking. My job is not fancy, or very important. It supplies good health insurance, and until now has allowed me the schedule I need to take care of my kiddos without having to pay for any child care. (I work 7-2, husband works 4-11ish)

Look at me, putting the cart before the horse. I don't know that my schedule will change. I just have that sinking feeling. You know the one where you've got a good new routine going and then for some reason wha-powie! the universe needs you to move. You aren't in the right place.

Oh. Maybe I'm not in the right place. Maybe I need to be really willing to move. To change jobs. To give up health insurance as some sort of justification for staying in a low paying job that I'm not really happy in. Maybe if I think about it objectively instead of emotionally I can come up with a better solution. I'm not trapped after all.

That one word- trapped- got me really thinking this morning. All my thinking from a meeting yesterday at work until this morning was trapped thinking. No options thinking. I'm stuck. No solutions. Nothing I can do. Helpless.I can't. Can't have a different schedule. Can't go to part time and lose my health insurance. Can't understand why things just won't roll along smoothly the way I want them to. Can't you just let me be for a bit? Get steady? Get it together? Keep it together?

When I was drinking I always had the "if only's":

"If only I wasn't so worried about money I could quit drinking."

"If only being a mother wasn't so stressful I could quit drinking."

"If only these jeans fit better I could quit drinking."

Now I think I have a case of the "can'ts":

"Can't you just let my job be less problematic so I can stay sober?"

"Can't life be easy so I can be sober?"

"Can't these jeans fit better so I can be stay sober?" ;)

Y'all! Then I had this great thought. I have been looking at it all wrong. All wrong! Because I have always felt trapped instead of free to make choices. Choices that may be right or wrong, but choices! Here I spend all this time whining to the universe and God about "If only" and "can't" and I've been talking about the wrong things the whole time. No wonder no one is listening, even I'm not paying attention!

So look at me, up there swinging from that ladder. Hanging from it, you could say. It looks hopeless. Helpless.

But then. Ho ho. I think I'll swing my feet up and then grab a rung. I think I'll climb up to that big strong branch holding the ladder and look around. I'll shimmy down that tree and check out all those roots at the bottom. I'll decide to look at it differently. I'll decide to be un-trapped.

Perspective and perception can change the way I think about things. I'm so glad to be sober so these thoughts can get through my mind soup. Instead of worrying and fighting my own head fight and resisting change I can embrace it. (carefully though, maybe we'll just go to "second base" today...) Looking at things rationally instead of wailing away about things being unfair. Seeing the options. Weighing them. Not taking it so personally.

When I first stopped drinking every day felt like a gift. A beautiful glowing healthy anything's possible gift. And then days turned to weeks, and now it's been almost two months (which is so short, but so long!) and I have to remind myself that every day still is a gift. And then I have these mind blowing conversations with myself and I'm freeing the birds.

Giving Up Gracefully

I didn't eat pigeons, but I did eat biscuits. Two of them. With jam my husband made from strawberries we picked last May. And they were delicious.

I was doing this "thing" called the Whole30. One of those detox/minimalist diets that are all the rage now. Speaking of rage...well, that's a strong term for what I was feeling. I was really just sick of it. I'm tired of the messages from everywhere that we aren't good enough just the way we are. That we always have to be a little thinner, or more enlightened, or have longer, stronger hair. Run faster, run farther,more more more moremoremoremore. My neighbor, who is a size two for fuck's sake, still thinks she's fat.

Since when is my life all about struggle and dissatisfaction every day? Oh, right. Only everyday. But then two things happened yesterday. One was something Belle commented on the post I wrote yesterday, "you're not broken. you don't need to be fixed." And two: I realized that everything is available. And that I have some common sense. And all that stuff they say about choices is true. 

I thought about the biscuit I've wanted for weeks now. I compared it to wanting a glass if wine. I thought about how choosing not to have the wine makes my life easier. Less complicated. I thought about how, if I had that one glass of wine I would probably have seven or eight. How it would wreck my medium stable grasp on sobriety. How a biscuit would probably just be a biscuit. 

It's hard to find the balance of making sure the booze carries the weight it needs to (fucking soul destroyer) and not giving it too much power (meh, no thanks). That's true then for all these decisions, isn't it? Biscuit or no biscuit, run three miles or don't, yell or take a breath, read or take a nap, rob a bank or go to work, jeans or yoga pants. 

The choice about sobriety was made for me a long time ago- I must be it. Or I am a mess. So it's not really a choice any more, it's decided. The answer is always no. 

But these other choices- Choices Light- I'd like to take these as they come. And I'd like to stop worrying about what everyone else thinks I should do or be, and start deciding that for myself. 

I went upstairs yesterday morning with the kids and shook my husband awake. Asked him to go get biscuits. Gave up twenty-six days of hard choices gracefully. It was time.