Day 66

A rough one.

Slept fitfully with crazy dreams - plenty OF sleep just kept doing that wake, roll over, go back to sleep thing all night long. Woke up still feeling weird but when I got to work and smells - like from the cafeteria - were really getting to me I wrote it all off as hormonal. It's either that or some mosquito-borne encephalitis or a brain tumor and those latter two are just plain silly.  So hormones it is.

Work started off not too badly but got progressively worse as the day wore on. Unpleasant meetings, changes in the benefits, stupid questions, rescheduling for last-minute unpleasant meetings...the whole shebang. By the time I left (90 minutes past usual time) I was so fed up That Voice was having a field day.

What the hell why am I even bothering things are sucky and just going to get suckier so why kill yourself with this sober business on top of everything else you know how good that buzz would be right now and it isn't like anybody is gonna notice or care and you've got all this other crap to do the very second you get in the house and it's not like they are gonna notice or care about any of THAT either so you should do Something to stop feeling this awful...

Yeah, the whole show. In full surround-sound in my brain on the drive home.  The only thing saving me was the rational part of my head saying "but it won't HELP. Oh sure it sounds like a good idea now but you'll get lousy sleep and feel shitty in the morning and you've got WORK to do in the morning." This got shortened to "it won't help" over and over and that worked, more or less.

Probably didn't hurt that I wasn't driving by anyplace that sold boo--no, wait, that's not true because That Voice helpfully pointed out Tom's [the corner store] sells that strong beer you know as I was getting close. I ignored it.

When I got home I suddenly realized I had not just one but all four of the HALT things going--way too freaking Hungry, totally Angry about the work stuff,  Loneliness was still carrying over from yesterday and Tired had been hanging around all day but especially in the afternoon when I made double-strength iced tea because I couldn't very well take a nap before my 5:30 meeting. Somehow just figuring out "well DU-U-uh, no wonder you feel like this" took a big part of the edge off and also allowed me to start doing things to make myself feel better....like have some chocolate the second I got the dog walked, and have some more tea, and put my feet up and call Spouse to vent about work all before I started on the dinner.

It eased up. Once again I thought of that Caroline Knapp line about cravings that goes something like "...and you think it will never pass but it always does..." At the time it's awful but eventually it DOES pass and now a few hours later things are okay again. Hell, after I'd had dinner things were okay again. Looking back it was really only somewhere between 45 and 75 minutes that I was going through the full-on craving/wanting loop even though it seemed at the time like it had always been there and would always continue to be there.

I write this so that when it happens next time I can also, in addition to "but it won't HELP" have "this will pass." 

I'm so glad I didn't succumb.  Wouldn't mind feeling better overall than I do right now but at least I'm feeling it sober which is a victory right there.