This has been a TEST
Thank you EVERYONE for your words of support, encouragement, and wisdom. It brought a tear to my eye to read the shared experiences of those of you who also had alcoholic parents. It's great to know there are people out there who totally understand where I'm coming from. Perhaps "great" is not the best choice of words, but you get what I mean!
Holy cow I picked quite the day to quit.
Just got back from visiting my mom for her birthday. On the way to dinner we stopped at the cemetery to visit my father's grave. It came up in conversation that he had heart troubles that led to complications when he had a simple infection, which led to an untimely, unexpected death. Part of me was thinking- I know he had heart troubles that were directly related to his heavy drinking, but I did not want to bring it up and put my mom through that. Not on her birthday.
We went to her dinner and of course there were all kinds of exotic wines and beers to be had. As aware as I was of the alcohol at the table, I can honestly say I had no desire to have any.
Then I came home. Normally I would be moving in haste to break open a bottle of wine. All that lost time being out in public and socializing! But instead I returned a phone call of a very close friend, and we talked for a couple of hours. Somehow the conversation led to my ex that I had mentioned in my first post, and my friend wanted to know the details of what had happened in the relationship and why things had gone wrong, etc. Not pleasant stuff to be discussing on a Saturday night. On any other day, today's experiences would be rife with reason to drown out these thoughts with some wine. I still have some lovely Pinots at rest in the cabinet. But somehow tonight I just know that that is a false promise of comfort and I am not going to give in. I'd like to imagine my dad pulled some strings upstairs to engineer today's proceedings.
Now I have to figure out... how am I going fall asleep tonight?