Twist on my sobriety…or Fragility of One’s Mental Health

The shootings
senseless killing of children, black grocery shoppers, a man riding on the subway for brunch in the city, all takes a toll. Why are automatic rifles necessary? Why are guns sold to eighteen year old boys?  

Covid
the naysayers, anti-maskers, hyper-vigilante mask wearers with the sanitizers. One day no mask requirements next day masks and six feet apart. What happens if I only maintain five? What happens if I lower my mask to drink from my water bottle? COVID!!!

I want to rise
rise above, step out the door, have hope and see the beauty in a horribly negative world filled with horribly negative people.  

My thoughts
are jumbled at times, racing up and down, sometimes round, wanting to settle but not able to sometimes, refusing to move or not motivated to do so. Sitting still, sitting terribly still.

My body
wants gratification found only in food of the lowest kind. The more, junkier, processed and artificially flavoured, the more my body craves. Each day brings a time for change and each day brings a time for more indulgence. 

Sobriety
is hard to retain when the world makes you want to space out for a while. Or rather you are not capable of dealing with the world so you choose to space out, be numb, inactive, inaccessible. 

Gentrification
not a word I use anymore as obliteration is more fitting. Luxury high rises are multiplying like fungi while the old buildings such as my elementary Catholic school are torn down or revamped into something new and trendy for the new neighbourhood, no longer my ‘hood. 

Neighbours
who have known me from a baby are now old with health issues and passing on. I am now that neighbour watching the new neighbors kids grow up.

Reckoning…

***avogado6-drawing

From me…or Hang on

August 3, 2019 -5:23AM 

“I think we all struggle with that unreasonable guilt, E***a, and it is unreasonable, isn’t it? Certainly, my Dad who loved me so well my entire life would want me to live whole and free, right? Of course, he would. It’s just all part of this gut-wrenching process we all have to suffer through. Be thankful for those sparks. Fan them into flame. Live that life to honor your loved one but more so for yourself and the world who needs your particular gifts.”

-Response to a post I wrote on a grief board

Grief amidst a worldwide pandemic mixed in with addiction is not pretty in any colour. 

But the body and mind can longer accept alcoholic as self-medication to make the world seem right. Grief chased down with bourbon needs to rise up and be dealt with. 

So, I …

Hang on for a day
The past is acknowledged, the future not ruminated on. The present? Front, Center and Back.  Because that is all that matters.

Hang on for another day
“An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature”-Big Book
Finished the twelfth steps, now what? 

Hang on
The desire to run, do a gym work out, bang on the piano or even write has faded for Anger and Hangovers no longer fuel, mi alma (soul). 

Hang on for yet another day
Sobriety dulled my creativity or rather my creativity refuses to emerge through a clear thinking alma (soul).

Photo by EMC

Hang on for a day
I have yet to print out those medical records, afraid of what may be revealed, afraid I’ll gain more truths into my inadequacies fueled by alcohol into how I was not there for you-figuratively.

Still hanging on
Have not attempted to finish my piece on “One year without you” for one year has now turned into three years without you.

August 30, 2019 -12:10PM 

Hang tight-you will fly once your wings unfold. You will find a place either in this realm or another where you are loved & appreciated for being just you with all your quirky talents, flowing forth like glitter. Be Strong!”

                                                                         -Note from me to me

Intertwined…or No Drink

Isolated and the deaths of my felines, a brother and sister, two days apart was the ‘woke’ to my consumption of alcohol. What went from drinking after 5pm morphed into drinking at 10am. Half bottle of vino to full bottle. Full bottle thrown in as a chaser for bourbon. 

Bourbon and wine intertwined.

Sobriety literally began as one day at a time. One day drinking, one day not drinking, repeat for two weeks. Get the wine from around the corner, then go four blocks over for the bourbon. Next day wine from two blocks up to bourbon two down and four over. Then repeat every day, seven days a week.  “Silly rabbit…!” Buying one day reserves instead of a grate and handle make me a control drinker.

Bourbon and wine intertwined.

July 1st, 2020 arrived and no drink that day. Or the next, or the next. Reached out for help on week three of no drink. Completed a ninety day program of no drink. Met others who no drink and others who gave up and drank falling off the continuum of no drink.

Bourbon and wine no longer intertwined.

Three months, six months and now 9 months free. A mind not terribly wasted in a hangover pool brings hope to the present.  On occasion I’ll jaunt down memory lane in my mind to remember all the gains with no drink. The future is not for me to see. Hoping no drink will follow me.

Bourbon and wine no longer intertwined.

The glasses made to hold wine sit on the top, top, shelf of the kitchen cabinet. Shapes, colours, pieces of artwork not to be tossed. The bourbon glasses now hold plants swimming in water, toothbrushes and pastes of the human and greyhound kind.

Remnants of what once and is no longer. 

AF…or Can’t Stand Losing You

I LOVE Chardonnay
Lox and cream cheese
Chinese take out
Sashimi
Salt and vinegar potato chips

I LOVE Cabernet
Noodles and meatballs
BBQ take out
Pizza
Pringles sour cream and chives

I LOVE Bourbon
French Fries
Chicken wings
French Fries
Chicken Wings

A cantankerous relationship we had
Through laughter, boredom and tears
Funerals, celebrations, observations and fears
I was there for you
You, here for me

My heart, loved both of you hard
But the spirit of grapes and fermented grain
Had me in regret and perpetual shame
As they never did love
LOVE, me for me

We carried on for many years
Met in the evenings and late afternoons
Then early morn before flowers bloomed IMG_1904.jpg
Love turned to hate
HATE, turned to dust

Said goodbye to you on the 1st of the month
Weeks amounted as days dissolved
And yet I held unto my resolve
No longer together we
WE, are not together

I am alone now as I’ve always been
As I was when I was with you
Though I believed it untrue
IMG_1909 copy.jpgFor how, could I be
Be, lonely, when we were