Day 1036

I had to count up the days to answer an e-letter and thought I might as well throw it up as a post.  I don't think about days so much any more but I do know that May 21 is my three-year soberversary so I'm looking forward to that. 

Things here are...well, a lot more chaotic than usual.  I brought Spouse and his two dogs back up to our house over the weekend so that's the driver of the chaos. It's overall a greater good but it's gonna take a while to get used to it especially as I'm still recovering. I myself am having good days and not-so-good days.  Because I came back up to cold weather and dry air, the -inside- of my throat, where the ETT was, is still irritated and although it's not particularly sore I'm a bit hoarse...and the muscles in my neck occasionally still "twinge" but not much or for very long.  The bigger issue is the mood swings though-- apparently since the parathyroid/calcium/Vitamin D pathway is all part of the "hormonal axis" that's kind of to be expected but it took me over an hour of digging through more superficial post-op instructions to find that out and I was starting to wonder if I were having mental issues of my own.  Also the GI disturbances I've been having are part of it -- apparently the calcium/parathyroid pathway affects the pancreas in some way.  The good news is that Days 7-10 should theoretically be the worst "bottoming out" part and things should start getting better from here which is good because yesterday I was rather a weepy mess for more of the evening than I would have liked. The incision itself is small and healing well -- I took the steri-strip off Sunday night. So that's all good.

My relative in the inpatient unit is being discharged today-- that should be another overall Greater Good.  

I'm tired and more stressed than usual but it all seems do-able.  I'm sure it would NOT have seemed do-able back in my drinking days.  What's even better is that now, because I've traveled the path myself, I feel like I can actually be support for my two newly-sober relatives. That's nice. 

Been A While

I don’t know how I would have manage these past few weeks if I had still been a drinker. I’m so glad I don’t have to really even consider it.

One of my family is currently in an inpatient center to get help with personality disorder and an alcohol abuse problem and another family member is quitting alcohol on their own. I can write that now, since it is all happening, but you can imagine the few weeks before now were an explosion of dysfunction. And laundry.

I am so glad I put my own oxygen mask on first, y’know?

You can tell how much the family stuff was shaping my world — I totally forgot to tell y’all that my parathyroid surgery on Tuesday 3/19 went just fine. Flew out, had the surgery, did the post-op thing, felt good enough the night of surgery to walk a few blocks to a restaurant instead of eating hotel food, flew back the next day. It all went exactly as planned...and all ended up playing second fiddle to raging mental illness and alcohol abuse.

Yeah, I still have resentment. It’s diminishing all the time and isn’t nearly as big as other emotions like concern and compassion but I’m not gonna lie and say I’m not good and pissed that the life evenys if others have, once again, taken center stage ahead of my own. Fortunately I’m just tons better at dealing with my own emotions than I used to be and that’s a direct result of continued sobriety.

That’s not to say I’m -fine- with all of this — I’m bursting into tears on the average of three times a day - but that’s still better than drowning all the feelings with a bottle.

It is so worth it to get rid of booze. I’m able to actually -help- my family and that feels good. Also just by continuing to live as a non-drinker I’m a support person for their journeys which gives me a really warm feeling in my heart.

Still Here

Still doing my sober thing and just so grateful to BE sober so I can keep dealing with the life I’ve been handed. Lots of family stuff and yeah, my own surgery a week from today. All that and Daylight Savings Time too!

No wonder I went to bed at nine o’clock. Sleep soon I hope...but I had to touch base with my strongest best support: blogging.

It takes a long while but -good- self care gets to be just as habitual as bad routines were.

Day 1000-something

Pretty sure it’s 1011 but I’m not actually checking the calendar. I’m in our other house and it’s 6:30 in  the morning and I’m kinda hiding from my family so I thought I’d check in.

Youngest turned out to be fine, praise be, but Eldest is really struggling with law school to the point of maybe taking a semester off and part of why I’m here in this house is to take Spouse and the doggies back up to House of Chaos so there will be minimum distractions so she can make a good decision. Also because she and Spouse aren’t doing all that well with each other right now. Yes I have all kinds of feelings about all of this. 

With regard to booze I’m holding strong and doing well and just so happy to have a foundation of sobriety in my life. Even more so since alcohol is becoming a bigger player in the lives of those around me.

Food, on the other hand, hasn’t been going as well. Overall I’m in a -much- better place than I was a year ago and better than even 6 months ago but it’s not as good as it was a couple weeks ago. The weird illness of Youngest plus the bad weather had me both stress eating and using sugar like a drug and it’s been really hard to pull back from that. It’s not -huge- overeating like an entire bag/package/carton of anything in one go but it’s enough to make me feel bad about myself. Working on it.

My parathyroid surgery is in FL on March 19 and I’m all set for that including my ride to/from the airport. So that will be fixed and maybe I can start putting down bone mass again. 

Otherwise it’s been a lot of coming to terms with what my life currently IS versus what I thought it would be or might wish it to become and isn’t that true of all of us?