Lessons from my potty-mouthed toddler (Day 7)

You know how you tell anecdotes sometimes that are kinda funny but, as the storyteller, you know there’s a darker aspect to it than the fluffy outer shell?

I’ve noticed that I don’t get too depressed when I’m drinking, but I do suffer what I refer to as “lack of resilience”. It’s like I have zero capacity to handle even the slightest of setbacks. So, the funny-dark story comes in because of a time I was trying to leave the house with my two small humans, and I dropped my coffee on our slate entryway. It was in one of those unspillable cups and just made a massive clanging noise, didn’t even spill. But in my frustrated, zero-resilience state, I exclaimed loudly, “f*cking HELL!”

My sweet 3 year old dutifully chirrupped in her singsongy little voice, “fucking HELL, fucking HELL” for at least the next ten minutes.

I tell the story as a funny anecdote to my less-than-admirable mom actions that rub off on my kids (she stopped saying it after I told her it was a mistake and we shouldn’t use language like that). But I know the truth, that I was hungover and low on patience and it wasn’t a big deal to drop my coffee except that Ev.Er.Y.Thing is a big deal when you’re hung over.

So yesterday, this happened:

Coffee spill

Except now I’m almost a week sober and my resilience is regrowing. I didn’t even exclaim, more just remarked, “oh fudge.” Then I calmly cleaned it up. My toddler didn’t notice because it wasn’t charged with emotion. And I didn’t feel like a complete asshat for failing to bounce back from the absolute tiniest of inconveniences.

I know there is WAY more going on in the world right now that rightfully deserves my attention and outrage, and spilled or dropped coffee is NOT it. I am grateful today for a sobriety that allows me to open up my worldview and spend less time focusing on the tiny nothings of my day to day that used to be a big deal.

Crabby but hangover-free (Day 2)

I’ve done day 2 many times, and usually it ends up about the same: no hangover, but I feel very impatient and irritable. I’ve never drank so heavily that I have medically-concerning detox symptoms, mostly just a negative state of mind that mostly affects just me. According to this site, I can expect night sweats tonight. Not so bad!

Since I’ve been at day 2 so many times, I am trying to be extremely mindful of what hasn’t worked, where I go wrong, and what I can do differently. I got out on a walk today with the kids, on a trail not just a sidewalk, and tried to be really intentional about soaking in the feel of it all. I know there’s a link between nature and easing of depression symptoms so I figure it can’t hurt with whatever low space my mental health is in. I took a bunch of supplements this morning (milk thistle to help the ol’ liver, vitamin B which is apparently stripped away by booze, probiotics because the poison in booze annihilates one’s gut bacteria). I’m trying to focus on hydration. I could be doing better from a nutrition standpoint but oh well.

I’m also keenly aware of staying humble. I downloaded a sober counter app that includes quick hit encouragement on a bunch of topics and one I read said something like “there is no recovery without work”. I can’t start thinking I have this in the bag. I don’t. I can’t stop reading, and learning, and re-learning the same thing yet again. That’s a lot of my problem, is letting that sly wine witch speak silky-voiced lies into my subconscious about having been good for a few days, or deserving it, or whatever.

Bottom line for me, always, is that my life is better when I don’t drink. It’s not terrible when I do. I have no horrid rock bottom stories (although plenty of cringe-worthy ones which I’m sure will come up later). But it’s better when I don’t.

Like Lewis David says in his Ten Day Alcohol Detox Plan, sobriety is my safe space. It is comforting, homey, and gives me a sense of well-being and goodness that are out of reach when I drink.

There’s no doubt that everything is better booze-free, so now I just need to get to the bottom of why oh WHY I keep going back to it when I know it’s just a big bottle of despair.