Twenty...

...and barely hanging on.

Full of the negative emotions. Can barely stand to be in my own skin.  Water heater in the other house went out which has caused Spouse and Eldest to have all sorts of emotion-laden conversations with me in the past 24 hours, some of which contained really choice passive-aggressive barbs. Family can push one's buttons better than any other humans on the planet.

I'm managing but not particularly well. "Put-upon" was how my mother always called that particular feeling of resentment and it was an absolute guaranteed free ticket to drink. I'm fighting with all that baggage on top of everything else.

Some of the everything else is that Spouse was all hot to quit drinking along with me and in fact that's a big part OF the being in the other house as that neighborhood and climate is much preferable and thus "it will be so much easier."  Yeah, well, that went all to hell. Two nights ago it was, "well Eldest bought it and brought it home without even talking about it" and last night was "oh after all THAT [water heater didn't stay fixed after service call] are you kidding?!?" and this evening it's just "my nutrition tonight will probably be in liquid form" and in retrospect there were a couple other nights too. We all have That Voice, we know how to play the "deserve it because" and "reasons" cards....

...which is why it's all super-annoying even as I keep telling myself over and over "not MY issue.  Not MY problem." Talk about adding fast-burning kindling to the fires of emotion!  But hey, it is what it is...and part of that is "an SEP: Somebody ELSE's Problem."  I read somewhere 12-Step based "don't take anyone else's inventory" and I'm coming back to that statement over and over. Also "Spouse's sobriety is not my sobriety."

Between thinking those like a mantra and perusing the sober blogosphere I think my head may not actually explode tonight. Was touch-and-go there for a while.

The funny thing is that as of twenty minutes ago the car is gone so I couldn't get booze even if I wanted it.  Well, okay, that's not quite true: I could walk 10 minutes along our road and another 20-25 along a state highway, neither of which have sidewalks, to the General Store (yes, it really is called The [name of village] General Store) to buy beer of up to 13% alcohol in amounts ranging from individual bottles to a case. Not gonna do that though...hadn't even considered it till I was typing the words "couldn't get."

(There have been times in my life when I might well have given the above plan serious consideration though.  Hell, even a month ago when I was in my most recent phase of "not quit" if I had been sitting around with a friend who proposed "hey why not? It's a pretty night; let's walk up and get some beer--it'll be fun!" I would have been totally on board. "Easily corruptible" has always been one of my problems.)

Yeah, well...it's not so much the drinking as much as it is the Not Feeling These Miserable Feelings and that's starting to happen on its own.  I keep telling myself on a regular basis that humans can't feel the same emotion for too very long no matter how intense or miserable it is because the neurons just plain run out of neurotransmitters and have to make more.  That seems to be what's finally happening to me and I'm grateful for it.

Gonna get some more iced tea, put my last lemon wedge in it and work on finishing that afghan I've mentioned before. May check back in with another post; may not.  But in any case this whole blogging thing--reading others and writing my own--has once again paid off.