Fridays and Living With Loss

Well, here it is Friday and this used to be the night that my husband and I would get our tiny man off to sleep, settle in on the couch with our little dog, watch Vikings and Project Runway Allstars, eat a fun dinner (usually Mexican..), and get our drink on. This will be the fifth Friday in our recent time that will include all of those things except the booze.  And you know what?  It is all good.  I am starting to feel like it's just another night of not drinking.  Not special because it's the weekend and yay let's drink (didn't we drink pretty much every night?), special because I get to hang with my love and enjoy the first night of the weekend.  It really is starting to feel like a comforting new normal.  I don't know if it's a pink cloud moving through or what.  I have had some tiny whispers of "Forever..? Really?.." here and there, but honestly, they have been super-brief and surprisingly rare.  I just feel so much better not drinking.  I really do.

The grief is my huge trigger.  I am so thankful for the support of my husband.  He is my best friend.  What would I do without him?  I think about that and it is so hard.  Those are the times when I wonder, is there a breaking point for my sobriety?  What is the worst thing that could happen and would I drink in that situation?  What if I lost my son?  How does one deal with that unimaginable loss without drinking?  How does one cope at all?  God, I just don't even know where to begin in thinking about that.  I am so sorry if anyone reading this has experienced that.  In the women's AA meeting, this exact scenario was brought up, as the speaker shared a very personal loss she'd experienced, the loss of her child.  She lived through it sober.  She said that life will happen.  You are going to lose people.  It is going to happen.  Not even losing people, bad things in general are going to happen.  And drinking does not help these things at all.  Not at all.  In fact, it makes things worse.  Before and after losing my dad, I don't think I understood that or really "got" it at all.  In thinking about this, I am realizing it has been experienced in several ways:

1)  Sober Not By Choice: I was pregnant when my dad died, and obviously I couldn't drink.  If I hadn't been pregnant, I probably would have been drinking pretty heavily at times.  It is likely a huge blessing that I couldn't drink because I was solely responsible for literally everything prior to and after his death.  I know I wouldn't have been as effective at tending to all of those things if I was drinking though them.  I also can't imagine having hangovers through all of that.  I think this early time was full of denial.  It helped me to cope I guess.  I still have a lot of denial, but the reality is beginning to be true to me.  It is almost a year.  I miss him so much.

2)  Not Sober/Drinking Frequently: After some time passed following the birth of my son (he was born about two months after my dad died), I began drinking rarely.  A beer, maybe once a week.  Then a bit more frequently.  Then a little more.  Then almost daily.  Not getting drunk each night by any stretch, but having alcohol almost every night.  I am beginning to realize that drinking did nothing to help my grief except stuff it down deeper into my soul.

3)  Sober By Choice: More time has passed since his death and I am now sober by choice.  If I do the math, it was just a few weeks shy of 10 months since his death that I stopped drinking.  It has only been a month since I stopped.  I am still so new to this, but I am hopeful that removing the alcohol will help me deal with my dad's death and the events leading up to it in a more effective way.  I am still very haunted by a lot of things.  I just feel a little bit more clean in dealing with stuff.  Again, still very new to it all.

Well, in thinking about all of this, I'm having a hard time right now but when I think about drinking, it is feeling negative and unnecessary.  So that's awesome.  Must focus on that.  My dad would be so proud of me not drinking.  He would get it.  He was never a drinker.  He would respect me.  He would also want me to enjoy this Friday.  It feels beautiful outside even though it looks like rain.  I could handle some rain.

Hope all are well who may be reading this.  Please feel free to comment or email me if you feel like sharing anything.