27

Yup, twenty-seven days. Three cubed. Thirty minus three. Almost four weeks. Pretty neat.

I can write that now, of course, since the simmering frustration/anger/irritation which so often rules my evenings tends to miraculously vanish around nine. It's the getting from "home from work" to "finally myself again" which is the hard part.

It is exactly those feelings which were my biggest trigger and I think they all sum to "hey wait a minute; you should all be sucking up to/doing for/praising me, not the other way around!" Did I mention I was the only child -of- an only child? Yeah well selfish or not that is still pretty much my baseline when I walk in the door a lot of - hell, most - nights. Gonna have to work on that but not right away. Right now I'm happy with getting through Family Time without being overly sarcastic, hostile, weepy or maudlin.

Close enough to Day 30 I put my box of chocolates in its online shopping basket. Deliberately going with the chocolate despite all the food/body image issues because I think one of the reasons why I quit quitting last time was that I had started in on too much "no sugar, must exercise, avoid additives and junk" fix-up-whole-life pretty hard thinking "well I quit this one Really Bad Habit so now it's time to knock off these others." It was still too soon. Six months doesn't seem like it ought to be "too soon" but in my case anything that felt too much like "deprived" got big bounce-back. This time I am actively telling myself "sure the food thing is important but right now the sober thing is way -more- important so do not - I mean at all - try to actively give up anything ELSE." Also "Definitely don't try that no-sugar thing again any time soon"

Staying sober and remaining both functional within and civil to the rest of the family is more than enough challenge. Everything else can come later.