135 days sober - 4 months and 14 days

4 months and 14 days sober! When I say it out loud, it doesn’t seem that much of a milestone and although time is passing by quickly, my sobriety seems to be going very slowly!  I have said this before, but until I have reached a year being sober, I honestly feel I have not yet achieved anything.  Sounds harsh I know but I need a goal to help me through.  I know once I have reached a year that I can keep going.  My hopes are that by then I won’t crave a drink, I won’t feel I am missing out or feel I need it to socialise.  Going out and not drinking is a big thing for me, I have never been one of those people that can just have a couple of wines and that’s it, I have no idea how people do that! For me its all or nothing and come to think of it, I am probably like that with most things in life.  Although I have never got drunk on family holidays with the kids, things change when the kids are around or even Rob to an extent.  When I lived alone and Rob and the kids were not there for the night I would drink, I would easily polish of a bottle and then go and get more and if that meant getting in the car then so be it!  When I am alone, that’s when I can just drink to my hearts content and no one can say a word, to me that was heaven.  I would be lying my arse of if I said I don’t miss doing that, feeling numb, feeling totally and fully relaxed.  This is the problem I have, I enjoyed it sometimes and its that feeling that I want to fuck off!  I wouldn’t sit at home and have a glass or two to relax, if I drank alone and on emotion then I wanted to not feel a thing.  The next day however was the killer, especially if I had said something horrible to Rob or called my Mum crying! All the usual shite!!  I listen to this podcast about sobriety and she loves not drinking, she loves the feeling of being sober.  Now I love the sober feeling absolutely, I love not having the guilt of lying to the man I love and to my family and friends, I love not starting a row just so I have an excuse to drink.  But my head still doesn’t say “omg I absolutely never want to drink again”.  Maybe I am being way to hard on myself, maybe I am expecting way too much too soon, seeing as I have been drinking since I was 14, I surely cant expect it to be that easy.

I haven’t craved a drink in a while actually, I am ok seeing it in the supermarkets and don’t give it much thought at all.  Still gets me to see the miniature bottles though, I would drink them for a quick fix and then easily dispose of them.  So of course being in lockdown has made it easier for me, Robs been here and the kids have and I have simply been too busy to give it much thought.   Rob is going to start gradually going into the office maybe one day a week to begin with and then slowly build it up when we come out of complete lockdown.  He wants to let me get used to him not being around (Jeez, that makes me sound like a dog lol!)  The thought of sitting at home every day working and being alone makes me go slightly anxious, 5 days a week with no one around.  I have to be at home as I have to work so its not like I can pop out and do bits and bobs.  So I decided to join a gym, a David Lloyds one.  The good thing about this is that I can actually work from there.  My plan is to drop kids to school, go straight to the gym and have a coffee and work in the business lounge, I can then get a 30 min class in and on my lunch break go for a swim.  I plan to try and do this 3 days a week and then at the weekend.  I have never been an exercise person, I have never been overweight so haven’t felt the need too.  However, this is absolutely 100% for my mental health.  I read that working out just 3 times a week can do you more good than the strongest anti-depressants on the market.  Of course, the bonus is I lose weight and get fitter doing it.  I said to my Mum that I could sit here until I am blue in the face and say I will not drink, but I said that would be me kidding myself.  I can’t guarantee that I won’t drink, I can’t guarantee I wont have a bad day and press the ‘fuck it’ button.  So, I want and need to do everything I can to lower that risk and the first thing to do is take care of my mind and body.  I could go for a walk and do things that are free but I find it very boring if I am on my own and work gets in the way and I wont end up going.  If I am at the gym and it’s a social environment, then I absolutely will.  I also feel like I am 35 going on 55, my back is so painful, my neck hurts and I generally feel unfit.  Probably like many people do now.  I will also try and go into the office more but let’s face it, everything has changed with covid. So many people will wfh full time now because they have proved they can, I mean even Rob will be at home more after all this, 2 days a week maybe depending on meetings etc.  I will go in sometimes when I can and when the kids are not at home.  

I have recently started coming down from my sertraline, the dosage is now half of what I used to take.  I have been on them for nearly 11 years and I want to come off them for good, my moods have changed slightly and I get more headaches, I feel like I am in PMS more often now.  The doctor said these symptoms shouldn’t last for to long but if I get worse then I may need to go back up again.  I really wish I hadn’t been put on them in the first place.  She has said to me that if my PMS doesn’t improve, she may put me on something else when I come of these, which I am fine with if it helps my PMS.  I am feeling exhausted atm, like a walking zombie.  I thought maybe it’s a side effect of the tablets, then I thought its because I am getting up at 6am to get kids to school.  The doctor took my bloods and my blood pressure.  My blood pressure is very low which explains the tiredness and dizziness.  I have the copper coil as birth control and it makes me bleed incredibly heavy and is getting worse, she thinks it may because of that.  She has advised I go on the mireana one which can stop periods all together. I have read good and bad things, but I don’t think I have much choice now.   Obviously, I still may want another baby so I get Rob in for the snip because that would make things so much easier for me!! 😊

I was in the car the other day and listening to some 2002 and 2003 chart hits.  OMG, all sorts of memories came flooding back, good and bad! I was then working out how old I was and I don’t know if its because I am getting older but I was all of a sudden thinking where the hell all this time has gone.  I am 4 years away from 40 and I certainly don’t feel it and hopefully don’t look it either!  So these songs took me back to moment in my life and I started to piece them all together.  It started to occur to me how much I had actually gone through in a very short space of time.   I was so lost back then, I was too young to realise it but I had no path, no guidance and certainly no stability.  When I compare it to my friends lives, they would have all been at home and living a relatively normal life. As I have said before, my parents split up when I was 11 nearly 12, 7 days into secondary school.  This itself must have completely derailed me but not just that, it was the way it was all done.  I went from being at home to somewhere completely different in the space of 24 hours, living with another man and my Mum with someone that wasn’t my Dad.  When I look back, it was so traumatic.  My Mum then got ill with the brain aneurysm, I then went back to live with my Dad.  Those tender years in a young girls life is when they need there Mum, puberty and all those changes is something only a Mother can support you with and it must have deeply affected me at that age. I was already messed up then and I didn’t even know it, I feel sad for that little girl.  The girl that pretended she was pregnant at only 12, the girl who started smoking, the girl who needed someone just to say it was all going to be ok.  These days, chances are you would get sent to therapy or something, but it was not like that then.  I look back and realise my childhood was pretty much over after that, I grew up very quickly.  My Dad bless his heart had no control over me, I could pretty much wrap him around my finger.  My Mum was also going through her own mental health issue and drinking problems, so I don’t think I had anybody to actually guide me.  Then at 15 the rape happened in Newquay, then a year later we were moving there, to the place and the road it happened. I went out clubbing at 16, I dated a guy who was 34 and he was the DJ in the club.  Now that to me now is sick but at the time it was normal, I was an adult or so I thought. All that time all I needed was someone to say NO to me, someone to have control over me.  Even to this day I struggle big time when people say no to me, that sounds selfish but it’s the truth.  If my Mum had been sober and I had lived with her then she would have been the one to do that, 100%.  But she wasn’t in any sort of place to have control.  Rob loves my Dad to absolute pieces, but he believes I needed a serious firm hand and my Dad bless him was never able to control me even as a little girl lol!! I then left Newquay and moved back with my Mum which ended up being hell as I have discussed in the blogs.  I then met my first real serious boyfriend at 17, got pregnant and had an abortion was deeply upsetting for me and quite a traumatic experience.  I craved to have that baby but was all for the wrong reasons completely.  I had a few boyfriends after that until I met my ex-husband.  I fell pregnant with him quite quickly and was the best thing that ever happened to me.  I had complete and utter stability, everything I had craved for, for so long.  My daughter was honestly my little miracle, I truly believe I would have gone down and down and may not have come back up.  My ex also had parents who were just the family I suppose I had always wanted, I attached myself to them and loved them so much.  I felt very happy and content, I remember being pregnant with my son and my god I was so happy.  Motherhood was for me, in every way possible.  Being pregnant and having them both was the most amazing thing I ever done.  So of course, when we separated, I was devastated, not because I was so in love with him, because I lost my stability, my family and even his parents because I genuinely loved them.  So again of course I went down a bad path, I was alone for the first time in a long time, my babies were not at home and I found it so difficult.   That’s when I had my first car crash, I also put myself in other danger.  I suppose it was like a death wish without realising it.  So once I got with Rob, I was so happy with him but all the issues I have had all come to the surface.  I had never actually dealt with anything from my past and it was Rob that made me confront them.  He was the one that took me to the doctors and the one to speak to them when I froze up, he held my hand all through.  Every week after seeing my psychiatrist he would listen to everything and was unbelievably understanding.  Rob has a controlling way over me, not in a bad way but in a way that I need.  He will say no to me and I have more respect for him because of it.  He certainly isn’t someone you can walk all over…..  SO all that from some hit songs I was listening too in my car.  I came home and told Rob everything that was going through my head and he makes it all so clear to me.  The blessing of getting older is that you truly connect with yourself and if you are lucky enough, really start to understand and make sense of your life.  I feel sad when I think of my younger years, but it also made me who I am and I wouldn’t want to change that for anything.  I honestly feel like I understand myself more than I ever have and that is the most positive thing.  I don’t dwell on the past or feel upset by it because I am very lucky to have amazing parents, children, partner and friends but I do like to understand why I react and why I do or have done certain things.  Its not always through any fault of your own, its just how your brain is wired from early childhood traumas.   This all comes back to my drinking and when I drink because I am feeling emotions, the emotions I don’t like or cant deal with.   I just know that the more I work on myself and the more I understand the more it helps with everything, including the drinking.  My aim is to never drink again because there is no safe limit for me unfortunately and I have to keep telling myself that this is just the beginning.  I have a long way to go and I am so ready and actually looking forward to the journey.

 

This is a very old poem from I think from the 1500’s.  I love this poem because it’s what I work on all the time.  Not to shut your emotions out, welcome them, embrace them.  You may not like them but sit with them and then let them go.   Hope you enjoy it too. 

Lots of love

 

Stacey xx

 

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.