Zufrieden

Hi
I somehow erased a really long post which is probably a blessing .
I'm ill at ease these days after drinking last weekend.
I don't have the energy to re type on my tiny phone so I'll paraphrase.
I have what so many folks don't.
Wonderful solid and sober wife
Healthy loving teens
A business that sustains my family and many employees
Solid circle of sober friends. ( I always drank alone so don't have the find new friend challenge. I'm the odd duck in our group)
I don't have....,. Internal satisfaction or strong hope that my personal dialogue will improve. I was this way before I ever took a drink. Outwardly cheerful pillar of the community but torn up inside.
I won't, God forbid, return to alcohol but I feel so empty and disassociated with so much that should be good. I'm hoping that will change to a manageable degree?
I took some time to come to our extended family vacation home above the ocean north of San Francisco. I've hiked, read, journaled... To little avail. I think that I'm just saturated with regret and unsure of what to do with it. I've never cheated, hit my kids, ripped anyone off, etc.... It is more of an existential regret of a personal relationship with myself that I've lost and it is crushing.
I can't seem to forgive myself; it is my chief issue.
How did I take a body blessed by generations of hard working, long lived ancestors and just lay waste to it. Where was the gratitude for all I was given. How have I taken the family I was blessed with and given them such short shrift for the sake of drowning myself in booze? I don't know what to do with this.
I need to focus on the future and will share a poem I read today. The guy sums it up in terms of my thinking:

I Remember Everything:
And I recall it just like a list
A convict memorized every day
Of everyone who had him put away
And every time he met up with a fist
And all the pretty girls he never kissed
And every lie he ever heard a lawyer say
And every day he never saw the day
And all the opportunities he missed

But I forget the epic poet's song
That tells the tales of old heroic acts
Recounting generations of the Gods
And when I try, I get the order wrong
And I get lost remembering the facts
And weary of a melody that plods.

No need for comment guys... I'm just trying to make sense of this.
Good night
Jonathan

least

Who's the poet? I'd like to know.

Zufrieden

David Rosenthal
I just found his book at the house today and read most of the poems. I felt like I was reading a recovering alcoholic's writing in many of them ....right book at the right time!
Book is called "the wild geography of misplaced things"
J

Dee74

I just wanted to say I felt uneasy for a long time, drunk or sober.
I was also a world's champion over thinker (with a black belt in analysis paralysis )

It took me a while to change from drinking me to real me, and it took a while to work out who sober me was ...much less what sober me wanted.

I decided to go with the prevailing opinion here which was - keep working on your recovery and everything will be ok, in time...

and it was

D

Zufrieden

Thanks Dee
Maybe I should retire the black belt and let time sort it out ...

PurpleKnight

For me there was definitely an adjustment period from drinking, to an uncomfortable limbo period, to a more brighter outlook.

Learning to live life again without alcohol, learning to like myself, appreciate things, forgiving myself, putting the past in the past, this all can take time and won't happen over night.

Hang in there!!

Marcher13

Zufrieden burying ourselves in the past and asking why wastes the present. Burying ourselves in the present with an eye to the future reaps contentment.

CaseyW

How are you doing today, Zufrieden?

Zufrieden

Hello all,
Thanks for the supporting words.
I know it won't happen overnight and will learn to respect the trudge. Last night was just a difficult night for some odd reason. Thanks for humoring my whining.
CaseyW....I am well today. I had planned on staying on the coast for the weekend but woke up about three this morning and realized that it didn't feel like a good time to isolate myself. I packed up and drove two hours home just in time for breakfast... I did not drink however and that is huge.
Thanks for asking.
Jonathan

nyala

Zufrieden,

Thank you for sharing those thoughts.

For me the journey towards permanent sobriety is a psychological adventure for which I am utterly unprepared.

I have a truckload of regrets when I look in my rear view mirror, and your post sums up neatly how I see things at times.

But, right now - especially if I unplug my natural disposition to forming hypotheses abut why things may be they way they appear; or analysing/reanalysing why things that have happened, did happen - I'm finding it is possible to stare with child-like wonder at the 'now', free of the need to make sense of it, content to just 'be'.

Moments like that when they occur remind me that I am now sober, a free man at last, and that a genuine new exciting life is only just beginning.

I hope you are feeling better now and well done for not picking up a drink.

Keep well.

Fradley

Zufrieden

Here's to the now. (Raised glass of mineral water to you! )
Jonathan

Dee74

I definitely found that things tended to fall into place a few months in Zufrieden.

It wasn't that I was doing nothing, but I was focused on today and not yesterday

D