So, I've spent the last week feeling like something is missing. And I've been trying to place what it is. I've been feeling nostalgic for the Golden Age (see Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen), I've been reading history books, watching history documentaries. Pining for something I can't place...
I know this makes no sense, why would I be looking in the past where I've never even been to find this missing thing.
When I was out walking yesterday (incredible autumn day with added fun of a power cut!) I realised that the sparkle is missing. That anticipation of the first glass of wine, the excitement of it. It's not just the actual drinking of the wine and how it makes me feel but it's the ceremony and the specialness of it too. With my first alcohol free Christmas looming, I keep thinking 'how can I make it special if not with wine'..Am I making any sense to people?
I know this isn't true, I know wine made me feel crap and cut me off from the real world and wasn't in anyway good for me. But I miss the build up to the weekend, to the adultness of that glass of wine, the specialness, the reward...
Hmm, I hope that this is just another process I have to get through in the long road of sobriety and not drinking.
I keep thinking 'how come people who don't drink much or not at all don't feel like this?' For people who have an unhealthy relationship with booze it's not just a case of not drinking and it's all fine. Like any unhealthy relationship things don't just get better if you call it off.
Anyway my darlings, love to you all (especially sober mummy)
xxxMtts. xx
I am with you. It i hard for us because alcohol is/was such a huge part of our lives. I am struggling with it. You will get your sparkle back. It is just a wave and it shall pass.
ReplyDeleteThanks mtts xxx
ReplyDeleteYes!! I totally agree, and find this too...it's the whole package, which includes the anticipation, the 'glamour' (aye, right!) the rosy glow the very idea of that glass of wine casts over an evening, an event... I'm only 5 months sober and haven't found a way to generate my own rosy glow yet, but I'm keeping reminding myself that the wine-induced one wasn't real - a trick of the light - and desperately hoping that my brain will rewrite itself to find a new, different and authentic sparkle. X
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping that running will be my new mind altreing substance...
DeleteNever really had the pink cloud and know exactly what you mean. Can't even think of Christmas without alcohol but am hoping will stay strong. For me it is just something I have to do. I want to be there for my kids. They range in age from 3 - 11 and I really don't want the older ones to see me as a drunken lush. And for my baby I want to be fit and healthy and love as long as I can. But it's bloody depressing at times. Not quite what the Jason vale book promised ;-) Hang on in there xxxx
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on that one EH. Completely.
DeleteLive as long as I can!
ReplyDeleteYes. Sometimes I notice that lack of anticipation for the weekend, and feel a bit flat.
ReplyDeleteBut I remember too well the regret that followed at the end of the weekend. When I accomplished little and felt like shit.
I had many years of fun drinking, and those are what come to mind. There not much nostalgia in crying in my wine glass on the couch, which is where is found ourself all too often.
Anne
So true! For some reason it's harder to remember the bad times than the good ones! Suppose that's sober mummy's famous wine witch!
DeleteDear MTTS,
ReplyDeleteI know, letting that romance of wine and drinking go was super hard for me.
It still can at times.
Christmas wasn't so bad last year. That was my first sober Christmas.
Weekends are different, but as I don't work anymore, it's much different than when I was working.
I had some very fun times drinking, but as my drinking progressed, the fun times were less and less.
I think it is VERY hard to stop drinking in a drinking world.
At least it was for me!
Now I still have fun, and I let everyone know I'm not drinking and order my AF beer.
Hugs!!!
xo
Wendy
You're great for getting out and still doing stuff in the evening! Ugh, I just can't face that! Suppose having two small kids changes that dynamic too anyway!
DeleteI know what you mean - the first glass kind of punctuated the time between work and play.....but I echo Anne, I remember only too well, the lost Sundays on the couch, and the write -off that was Monday. Now I don't look forward to Friday night, i look forward to Saturday mornings, and I love the fact that Sunday is always a lovely day, even if I'm only house cleaning. I am full of anticipation for the week ahead, and I wouldn't...COULDN'T trade all those positives for a one artificial buzz.
ReplyDeleteI have yoga at 9am on a saturday morning now! Still a bit early for me but I love it!
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ReplyDeleteThis is all very normal and I still feel it when special events are looming, but what gets me through is knowing that I still have special events and they still sparkle even brighter in their own right, they're just different. Your missing one type of sparkle, one facet, but now you have the opportunity to take in all of the beauty that life is every day, all day long. Take that beautiful autumn day yesterday, would it have sparkled as much if you'd been drinking. What about this morning, how would drinking have dulled it?
ReplyDeleteYou're never going to find that exact sparkly feeling again, but you'll find other things that sparkle and glow and last. I know you know that already. As for the melancholy for another age, I suffer that too. Lately, I have really pined for my childhood. Not my childhood really but the way that the world was back then, the world today is so scary. Maybe that's what happens when we get older, we wish for simpler times. We all know that drinking does not make for simpler times.
Howdy. You hanging in there??
ReplyDeleteI'm here EH!! Thanks!
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