Hey everyone! Glad to hear that most of you had a better weekend than I did. I stayed sober yesterday although it was hard with a hangover. What happened was, I went out with fiance and fiance's parents to see the movie, and when we were finished we were having such a good time that they invited us to a bar for some drinks (haven't discussed my problem with them yet, more about this later) so I suggested going to their house instead. In hindsight I probably should have just gone to the bar.
Anyway, we get there and I accepted a beer, drank two over three hours and by the time we left the obsession was in full swing. We stopped for a six pack and some cigs (so gross, a drinking habit) and as usual I bullied him into submission and got my way with the booze. There went the night. I'm certain every time I do this it has got to hurt my fiance a lot. I get into that mode and nothing else matters.
I think I need to tell his family, even though the idea of having "the talk" with them makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. I think spending time with them has become my "out" in the fact that they don't know I have a problem, and my fiance, bless his heart, won't embarrass me in front of them by asking "are you sure" or something similar when I say yes to a drink. I think if I had gone to a bar it would have been harder for me to drink because by looking at all those drunk people I would have been confronted with why I stopped in the first place.
I've been thinking a lot about this weekend, and I am seeing a pattern with drinking and hanging out with his folks. It's my out, and I just have to tell them and make myself accountable. When we're with them, it's like some parallel universe where it's okay to have one or two. Except when we leave, it's a stop by the liquor store for 6 or 12 more.
Something else I realized, to my amusement, is that when I slip up now I never, ever drink wine - just beer. Wine was what I drank when I was binging every night so I think some part of me says it doesn't count as a drink if it's beer. How f****** ridiculous. I hate how booze can take an otherwise somewhat intelligent person and turn them into a complete robot whose most impassioned energies are directed towards self-destruction. I will do ANYTHING for a drink once I've had one. I will say anything I have to, hurt whoever I have to, lie, steal. I've done it ALL. I've sold my body for alcohol, and sometimes I feel like I've sold my soul too. This isn't the life I had ever imagined for myself.
When I was growing up, my first boyfriend's mother was a raging alcoholic. She would drink massive amounts (so I thought) of vodka every day, a liter or so. She was such a rageful, irrational person and thoroughly disgusted me every time I saw her. When I was over, she would make fun of me, and she was genuinely cruel to her children. Then something changed. I started drinking with her and things didn't seem so bad anymore.
She was always the person I compared myself to when I thought about my drinking. "At least I'm not..." I told myself I would never puke from booze, I would never s*** or p*** myself, and that I would never embarrass myself and others the way she did. She just drank so much, and to me it wasn't even possible that I might ever end up like her. In hindsight, I realize how awfully stupid this idea is. I was making sure I was only second worst.
One by one, all the things I never said would happen happened. Puked? You betcha. Crapped myself? Yes. Peed the bed? Yes. Embarrassed myself and others? I honestly don't know what could embarrass me at this point, after throwing up on people, passing out in vomit, falling off toilets, getting in fights, saying crazy things, as well as all the little personal hits I took to the ego that nobody ever knew about. I am beyond embarrassment. And guess what? The last time I slipped, before this weekend, I drank a liter of whiskey, just like Connie used to do.
She died a few years ago when she was in her early fifties. When I look in the mirror today, all I see is Connie. Was she like me once? Did she realize she had a choice, and did she keep going anyway?