However, I'm going to have to wait another six days.
Why? Because the good ol'
Catholics decided that even though "Jesus fasted and was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days" (which is what the tradition was based on), "Sunday (the Lord's Day) should never be a day of fasting, but a day of celebration! So each Sunday we suspend our Lenten disciplines and celebrate. Lent is 40 'fasting' days spread out over a total of 46 days beginning on Ash Wednesday." (Per another random news source,
Wilstar.)
My first reaction is: if you're gonna do it, do it! If you choose to give up something for a set amount of time, don't have 'days off' where you can go back to your old ways! Make the decision, make the commitment, then follow through!
My second reaction is: Bah humbug. (wrong season but whatever....) I want a drink!
Overall, it hasn't been too bad. When I'm working, I'm not really even thinking of drinking. But there are a few key moments in which there's not a lot that can take my mind off of the fact that I CAN'T drink. Some are:
- cooking dinner with the boy
- book club
- my birthday (which SUCKS to fall during lent!)
- dusk, working at my home office, listening to the new
Sade album
- this very moment
I am really proud of myself for sticking to my promise. And as an added bonus, the boy stopped with me. Not because I asked him to and not technically FOR me, but his support for me is such a lovely gesture.. and one of the main reasons I'm actually following through.
Though I feel pretty confident that I can stop when I want to, part of this break has been to notice my patterns. I realize I am likely to reach for a bottle to either numb a painful memory or to ignore an uncomfortable situation. And it's not only when I'm awake. Since I haven't consumed enough to fall into a deep sleep (read:
blackout), my dreams have turned into nightmares and usually contain some characters from my past, with whom I still have unfinished business to address.
I asked a friend who is now clean & sober,
Val, for her advice on how to get through a time when you just REALLY wanted a drink. Just one drink (so I say). She told me, "
you need to think it all the way through. If you know one drink is going to lead to more drinks, who is the person you will eventually turn into?" Which flashes me back to my nights of turning into crazy-angry-sad-stupid girl... someone I DEFINITELY don't want to turn into.
This is true of any vice. My friend, Sheri, wrote a ridiculously to-the-T piece on stopping BEFORE one about food, instead of alcohol. In
her words:
"Comments like these, in my mind, completely discount how friggin’ excruciating it is to sit with a group of friends or family who are having orgasms over how delicious their chocolate dessert that I could smell from a mile away and devour in less time than it takes the average person to put sugar in their coffee, and smile and make conversation and not pick up the fork next to me for just one small bite. I can see the whole scenario sometimes when I am sitting there. I’ll just have one small bite, right? Who cares? One little bite isn’t going to kill me. But then, I am immediately flooded with a barrage of imagery akin to Alice falling down the rabbit hole. One bite leads to two. Two bites leads to me stopping for ice cream on the way home (cause there’s no way I would ever let a group of people watch me completely lose everything I’ve been working on for years) which then leads me back to the life I used to live, eating cookie dough for dinner until I made myself sick, then doing sit-ups while waiting for the nausea to pass so I can continue eating. So I stop before that first bite and I just wait for the friggin meal to end. Eight years of not eating sugar and it’s still as hard as ever to say no. To ignore the itch in my fingers to pick up that stupid fork. To ignore the Cin-A-Bon cart at the mall. To grab the splenda at the coffee shop instead. It still completely sucks! It just sucks quieter than it used to."
I guess the expression --
One Day At A Time -- really does work. If I can continue to take each moment as it come, each day as it comes, each drink as it comes, there's a greater chance for me to maintain some sort of a healthy lifestyle while I incorporate alcohol back into my life.
In six days, that is.