Avoidance
Over the past week and a half, since I decided to stop drinking, I've been taking an inventory of where I am in life. It's not such a bad life. I've got a great job, great kids, a great house, a great husband. And yet I've been drinking to avoid everything. Drinking a lot. I'm so glad I decided to quit, but that means facing up to everything I don't do, and actually doing things.
The first time I got drunk, I was 18 at college. I think even then I knew I had a problem. I loved the feeling of being drunk so much, that the next night I went on a hunt around campus to find more alcohol. And the next night. And the next night. I wanted to be drunk all of the time. Weekends started on Wednesday night most weeks, and I spent every day until Sunday drunk. I used to run a daycare at a church on Sunday mornings, and most mornings I showed up completely hung over. I never went to class much, put off writing papers until the very last minute, and somehow skated through.
Drinking is just one example of how I deal with most of my life: By avoiding things. Even when I'm sober, I avoid everything. Household chores, work assignments, signing the kids up for school activities, calling my mother, taking care of my garden, walking the dog. Everything. Everywhere I look, you can see what I avoid. I used to call it "procrastination", but procrastinating means that at some point, you finally get around to doing the thing you're procrastinating. Not me. I have picture frames all over the house that are empty -- because I am avoiding putting pictures in them. Stacks of paper all over the kitchen, because I'm avoiding dealing with whatever is in that pile. My email box has 5,800 emails in it, because I can't take the time to delete some. Seriously.
I'm committing to getting a lot of that cleaned up, and to start living life instead of avoiding it. A big part of that means not drinking. I'm worried I'll get complacent and start drinking again in a few weeks, so I'm mostly writing this down to remember.