Day 518

Today has been hard.

She’s been dead four years this past April and I dreamed about my mother for the first time last night. She’d be turning 76 tomorrow if she’d lived. She came to me with this big 3-ring binder of stuff in page protectors that she had been doing as a school assignment and wanted me to review even though I didn’t really want to. I leafed through it and it was weird and had a hard time, in the dream, figuring out what to say about it. I could tell she wanted some sort of support but I wasn’t sure I could give any.

As if that weren’t disconcerting enough it then morphed into my first drinking dream in many months. I wanted a big martini half Ketel One half gin. Had to repeat the order twice then after I finally got it realized “wait a minute I don’t drink.” In the dream I ended up not drinking even though I wanted to do so pretty badly.

That was a lousy way to start the day. My walk didn’t help as much as I had thought it would, either, and then I went shopping for a new bathroom mirror and the whole experience wasn’t particularly pleasant. Also I had - heck, still have, the overwhelming thought “tomorrow is my last day of vacation.” The brightest point of the whole day was restaurant leftovers for lunch.

Family drama and drinking became that afternoon/evening double feature and I found not drinking to be harder than it’s been since the very start of this whole enterprise. Eldest was having too-shelf vodka with San Pellegrino water - she switched from gin to the drink which used to be mine. I have a lot of complicated feelings about that but for many minutes at a time the biggest feeling was a bizarre urge to drink a huge swig from her glass. I didn’t but it was far more a struggle than I had expected and I was hugely grateful to have this blog as part of my armor.

It changed me from sad to glad I only have one more day of vacation. Being around all this drinking is taking more of a toll than I thought - especially now that my mother - whose death certificate flat out says “gastrointestinal hemorrhage due to or as a result of alcohol abuse” is so much on my mind.

Winning my battle against the bottle tonight was worth it though as not 30 minutes later all the drinkers were asleep where they sat. Reduced the appeal greatly. I was even able to take Eldest’s full glass away from the precarious place near her sleeping self and put it in the fridge without furth—well, without -much- further temptation.

Tomorrow I will finish my current good audiobook on the morning walk. Tomorrow is also my 17 month Soberversary. I’m trying to think of what I could do to make it special - I’ve been giving serious thought to trying the Afghani restaurant near the local office supply store. If it’s still there, that is. This would be in addition to, not instead of, a purchased sober treat of some kind.

Oh and the new tile floor looks fantastic.