Happy 100 days to DDG & Lynda :)

Happy 100 days to DDG (holy am i ever glad to see you hit this date!) and Happy 100 days to Lynda (and to Mr. Lynda who is following along, too).

Here’s what Lynda has to say:

WOW!!  Thank you for inviting me on this journey.  It has been been truly amazing and I am so grateful and appreciative that I could come along and I’m planning on staying on this bus because I love the other passengers and driver. What have I enjoyed about this? Clarity in thinking and conversations, confidence, acceptance — life is like this, so just do it and move on, clear skin, brushing teeth at night … seeing people, understanding self, a calm knowing, “falling” asleep and feeling the wonderment of that, savoring coffee, playing 3 hour tennis matches, evening walks, early morning breakfasts, being of service with gratitude, not enough hours in a day to do the things I want to do, being available, increased intimacy in all relationships…. and this is just the beginning. Were/are there challenges?  You bet there are.  I choose not to list them because life has challenges whether we drink them away or not…. [emphasis added]

Now let me say this. Getting sober is hard. 

It’s really hard. When we’re used to squishing down feelings with booze, it’s so completely disorienting to remove the booze and to live life naked. (I wrote something about this to Quill yesterday).

i also think we’re all trying to be sober because we’re trying to sort some shit out.
and just because the tectonic plates cannot visibly be seen to be moving
does not mean that they’re not.
moving.

cuz they are

being sober isn’t a race or a destination or a popularity contest
it’s a tool
sobriety is a lever that we can use to open stuff up to get unstuck

and for some people being sober is how they avoid dying.
and how they get their life ‘back’
and how they keep their children
and how they repair their relationships

for me, being sober the first month was hard
and i wasn’t always sure what the point was
except i didn’t want to go back to day 1 so i kept going.

then i realized that i still was thinking that i wanted to drink at the end of
30 days, so i renewed it for another 60 days (90 total).

and here we are today, 370 days later.

i did not intend to do this. i intended to do 30 days just to prove that i could.
and something happened.
the tectonic plates shifted.
you can’t see it happening.
doesn’t meant it’s not.
happening.

*NOTE: I’m putting together a collection of my blog posts, in chronological order, so you can see where i was on day 18 and see if it’s like where you are! If you want me to send it to you when it’s finished, put your name in the box here:  http://eepurl.com/BqAEn

Belle

I want to put this online, to hold myself accountable. I want to document the noise in my head. I'm tired of thinking about drinking. date of last drink: june 30, 2012

  • Never really thought of it like that, but I guess I’ve stopped for Lent for 3 years in a row and the pressure to stop for good has kind of kept growing over that period. I wouldn’t have stopped for any reason if I didn’t really think I needed to. So, yeah, the gradual shifting of tectonic plates

  • “being sober isn’t a race or a destination or a popularity contest
    it’s a tool
    sobriety is a lever that we can use to open stuff up to get unstuck”
    amen to that sister – love to you and all here