brickthrowing

Epic !

Way to master that battle and think it through.

JanieJ

Well done ! Exhausting ! Hope you are proud, Briar !

I know how hard that is-did it about a week and half ago with a glass of wine.

Rachinator

Good job. I know it is so tough to be tempted. I'm glad you were able to quiet the av. I know it is tough my hubby still drinks beer. I tell him the root beer is my beer, he can have the other stuff. Good luck

EndGameNYC

On my way home from work I run into an ex-lover. I immediately sense that I'm in a trance-like state. She looks great, and her appearance hypnotizes me. And I like it. I ask her to have coffee with me. We laugh loud and often. We go over our "relationship mistakes," most of which have faded in their intensity over time. We wonder out loud how we could have been so foolish, intimating that, were we to have a chance to do it all again, it would be much different the next time. ("Is this really happening?")

An awkward silence ensues and then dominates, its only competition being nervous glances at my smartphone, the server and my finger nails. We fill the empty space with anxious chatter, until she suggests going back to her place. I walk in and suddenly feel like a stranger in a place that I used to know very well. Everything seems different, disguised as a once-close friend who's come to collect a debt. But then as I take in my once-intimate surroundings, I see she still has a picture of me on the fridge, crashing down a hill in a sled in Central Park. I think, "God, that was such a great time!" I'm home again.

Our love-making is intense, though we're both left at its completion with a sense that something is missing. Like, on my way home, I'd gotten off at the wrong station, desperate as I was to get home following a difficult day at work. Perhaps it's the tenderness that's gone? Or maybe some residual embarrassment for doing it for the first time all over again? I know the woman I just slept with, but why do I feel so far away?

Darkness invades my sunny day. Though I present a calm and self-assured exterior, I'm trembling on the inside. I make a lame excuse about having to be somewhere, and we exchange a perfunctory kiss as I leave, due more to obligation than the tenderness I was missing. We agree to "stay in touch" with the same enthusiasm as we would have had with a creditor who reminds us of a long-forgotten debt.

I hit the street, my walking companion transforming into forgotten but now powerful open wound. I'm going crazy, my sanity gushing out from my pores with the greediness and urgency of a lake or a river whose dam has burst...and my only solace is my hope that I never run into her again...and a wish, a profound truth, really, that she feels the same way. I hate the temporary lover that screwed things up just moments ago, and I start again, seemingly from scratch, with a newly broken heart and too many reasons to cry. I don't even notice that I left behind my beautiful, newly-purchased jacket. But now, having again become used to losing things that are important to me, I only hope I never see that jacket again.

Briar

I'ts so true, EndGameNYC, it's exactly that. We only see what we want to see until the whole picture comes smashing down on us. Eternal optimists, we are. I like that the picture on the fridge is of you crashing down a hill. How appropriate.

Verte

Whoa! Briar, your post is like reading a scene from a horror film where the protagonist hears a noise, opens the door to the pitch black, darkened basement, the light switch is broken, and using your better judgment, you do not proceed down the stairwell to where the boogeyman is hiding. Oh thank you for this! Awesome job!

EndG - Reading your post gave me a sense similar to that throughout reading Coetzee's Disgrace. Such talent you all.

Now I have to shake it off.

Briar

You're right, appropriate for the holiday, no?

Notmyrealname

I found a couple fingers of gin one day in a room I probably ought to tidy up, it was shoved into an old cardboard box. I dumped it, but coming from left field as it were, I definitely gave it a brief moment of contemplation.

Just goes to show that alcohol is hiding behind a bush waiting to jump out at you!

(metaphorically speaking)

Verte

The closest experience I had in sobriety was a day this past summer when my husband handed me an ice cold, half-full beer can while jumping into the car. He asked if I would bring it inside the house. And then giggled and said "I can do it if you do not want to."

I was standing stock-still in the grass clutching and staring at the can as my brain clicked through trying to match up a similar past experience with an action. There were none as it was unprecedented and truly the weirdest feeling.

Just goes to show that alcohol is hiding behind a bush waiting to jump out at you! NMRN, this is such a funny visual. "Boo!", yells the bottle as it jumps out from hiding.

Yes Briar! Excellent thread and posts for Halloween Thanks for sharing this.

LBrain

Well done Briar. Hopefully next time you don't tease yourself and dispatch that poison post haste.