Day 5

As I've said before, I always want to drink after work. Following retirement, I began working part time as an administrative assistant to critical care nurses. I work four days a week doing work that is completely annoying and, yes, degrading. All day, everyday, I am called upon to do asinine things like decorate bulletin boards, make banners, tape candy onto "People Pleasers," make thousands of photocopies, and do all the crap work that no one else wants to do. Today was no exception.

Making today even more stressful was my annual gynecological exam. During the exam, the doctor thought he detected something unusual, with the result being that I had an immediate ultrasound. Fortunately, after much ado, all was well. It is distressing to want to drink when there is bad news and also when there is good news. The cravings don't last long though, and giving in isn't one bit worth the hangover that ensues and the general prevailing lack of focus that prevents living life to the fullest.

I am pleased that I did not drink today. On to Day 6.

Days 3 and 4

Saturday and Sunday were good, relatively speaking. I began working on cleaning up the disastrous clutter in my bedroom. I am a book and shoe lover, so therein lies a big part of the clutter problem. My dear, sweet husband installed three bookcases, and that has helped tremendously. Being obsessive compulsive, I feel like I should organize the books in accordance with the Dewey Decimal System and put them all online just as precisely as the public library does, but I’ll curb that urge for now, and hopefully forever.

Days three and four were successes. The days that I want to drink are the days that I go to work. I always get the urge at about 3:00 p.m., and I give into the urge as soon as I’m home.

Drinking Solves Nothing

I’m especially mad at myself. I let everything get to me last week–my son’s suicide, the estrangement of my daughters, missing my grandson, my husband’s lung cancer, my pompous, self-important, condescending boss, and my impossibly cluttered-up house. How did I cope? On Wednesday night, I got drunk, very, very drunk. I sat on the front porch for hours downing gin and tonic and talking to my 14-year-old cat about my failed life. She’s old. She’d rather spend the time she has left peacefully lazing on the toile settee rather than listening to my nonsensical ramblings. She was an ideal companion, a captive audience because of her arthritis, which made it painful for her to walk away. Additionally, I tempted her to stay with a package of Surf and Turf.

Thursday was horrible. I felt so ill at work, dizzy, nauseated, exhausted, depressed, jumpy, and unable to concentrate. At one point, I even nodded off while typing. I felt too god-awful to go to my dental appointment, so I canceled it. I was extremely relieved when the work day finally dragged to its conclusion. Getting drunk, of course, solved nothing. It made everything even more depressing and far worse.

Yesterday was a beautiful April Friday in Louisiana. It was my day off, a day in which I still felt sick, exhausted, and, yes, still a bit hungover from Wednesday night’s excess.

Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I went on what to me was an embarrassing mission. We took almost $300 worth of coins to the credit union where I work to be deposited. I had accumulated the coins over a period of about three years by saving my daily change. I won’t be doing that again. It took forever for the coin machine to count it, and I sensed that the teller was particularly perturbed, not that I blame her. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Once home, I slept the afternoon and evening away. Instead, I should have done some much-needed housework and prepared homework for an online course I’m taking.

I don’t want to drink again, which is a common vow after a killer hangover. In my case, drinking has become a problem, not a temporary, sometimes problem. Lately, it’s something I want to do everyday, so it’s something I must stop and leave behind forever. I’m writing about this here to make myself accountable and to remind myself why exactly I need to quit.

Grace Under Pressure

I once had four beloved children, children I knew I would be close to forever, but I was wrong. At the end of August, my son, Claiborne, found his father, my former husband, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Clay had Asperger's Syndrome, and even though he was "high functioning," he wasn't able to overcome such shock and horror. Two months later, on Saturday evening, October 27, 2007, Clay took his own life by plunging to his death from a 13-story building in downtown Houston. When my two adult daughters and I gathered together for Clay's final arrangements, they united against me, and we became permanently estranged.

In January, my husband of 25 years was diagnosed with lung cancer. So this is a journal about surviving, something which I'm trying to figure out one day at a time.

Courage is grace under pressure. Ernest Hemingway

Elle