Day 3
There’s something about day three, psychologically, that means it’s the day you give up. I can’t remember where I read it but I think it’s basically to do with the fact that you are feeling better and you start to say ‘damn, what was I being so dramatic about?’ You’re no longer caught in the shame spiral from whatever event or revelation caused you to stop drinking and you’re not yet feeling any of the real benefits so you feel like maybe you’re just punishing yourself for nothing and next time will be better.
Do I even need to say it? Next time won’t be better. I could make a long, long list of all the times that it hasn’t been better. I don’t want to sit here shaming myself into being better though, that doesn’t work, I just want to draw a line under it all and say, that’s it, I’m done! I want to be the kind of person who treasures my own body rather than punishes it. I want to make the kind of choices that a healthy person makes. And for now that’s what I’ve got — a little bit of aspiration.
This morning, as I lay in bed waking up, I felt myself doing the mental gymnastics. I could just forget about it, I could just leave it and be a normal person and stop trying so fucking hard…I’ve decided to give up coffee at the same time as booze (because in my head these two things are linked but I’d be hard pressed to tell you why) and there was this little BOB in my head telling me to just stop being such a drama queen and drink the coffee. It doesn’t make me feel good though. It trips me out and leaves me spiralling for the rest of the day while I try to drink more to catch up with myself. Then, at the end of the night, when I’m crashing, all I want is a beer. I know that people say you shouldn’t give up more than one thing, that I’m setting myself up for failure, but it feels like it’s so clearly the same pattern that I don’t want to give up one without the other. Every time I have a green tea instead of a coffee it’s like a vote for happy, sober me.
Today I voted for me, already, and it’s not even 6am. So that’s something to be proud of.
