Day 76

Well, technically 75 1/2 as I'm starting this post in the early afternoon because I'm fading fast.  So. Very. Tired. Both physically and emotionally. Probably more of the latter.




However I wanted to share today's discovery which is that my renewed interest in the local library system has become a big sober tool. That part is a bit "well, duh!" but the why came to me today: it's because escaping into the written word was one of my major childhood survival skills. I've said many times that books were my first best drug and although that's probably a rotten way to phrase it on a sobriety blog I think you get the idea. The author Lauren Groff, in her first novel The Monster of Templeton had one of her characters say




   When I was small and easily wounded, books were my carapace.




That line was so profound for me that I have it stuck to my office wall.


 (Right between Oscar Wilde's "the truth is rarely pure and never simple" and "Ce n'est pas à nous" which I found in a Michael Gruber novel and means "ours not to question" but I'm seriously digressing. The stuff on my office walls is a post unto itself.)


Now that I'm having to live through All These Emotions without anesthetic I've rediscovered my carapace and it helps. Lots. Maybe there's something from your own childhood - single-digits childhood, well before that whole tween thing started - that was a carapace or a comfort then which might be one again now.

[later]

In keeping with self-comfort, dinner was a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.  Haven't had one in so long I can't remember - maybe a year or more - and it was really good. Had to stop on the way home for ice at the grocery (yes the fridge makes ice but 1) it isn't as good and 2) I can go through a whole hopper in half a day - I like really iced tea) so I also got a prepackaged two-slices-of-cake from the bakery department. For the next few days it's just ABL and I: Middle and his brother-in-law went down to Chaos South to see the rest of the family and Youngest is back with MiL to be closer to the school for her driver's ed course.  I had some cherry ice-cream topping for the cake so we had total mega-dessert which we both enjoyed very much.

From dessert I went straight to the couch with a book.

It's now about three hours since I crossed the threshold and I'm orders of magnitude better than I was. Not yet baseline but getting there. Self-care works.  Soothing instead of ignoring the inner cranky tantrum-y child is always the better choice yet I find it surprisingly hard to do.  Something to ponder.