Day Twenty-One - three weeks! Sober bitchiness, and a new PUPPY pic

On being THAT person

If there's one good thing about the general aura of shittiness I'm exuding at the moment, it's that my family can't blame all my past grumping on grog.  I'm short-tempered and a bit fed up with not having wine in the past couple of days. 

We've had some lovely dinners at home and yes wine would have been a nice and natural addition, but I was also able to throw a big fat reality check at myself: I'm not a 'glass of wine with dinner' person, and if I was I wouldn't be intentionally sober now, or writing about it to stay strong!

I'm a glass of wine before dinner person ... AND topped up twice while preparing dinner, grudgingly shared with partner over dinner, topped up again (possibly from a new bottle) after dinner, and maybe another time or two - or three, if there was something good on tv, or four, if it was a Friday night - just to make sure I could sleep. 

And sometimes that would definitely make me a cranky person, a mean spirited person, a laugh too loud person, an impatient person, an intolerant person, a lazy person, a slow person, and an isolated and unhappy person too.

Replay

So it would be very reasonable for the family to feel that alcohol was the reason every time I had the cranks up after dinner, and judging by comments made in the past year or two they certainly noticed the difference in me mentally and physically when I was inhaling runny grapes.

It hurts to write some of these comments down but I am going to, because I deliberately didn't want to acknowledge them at the time and they remain horrifying to me now. I need to replay these moments in my head, with my totally three-week sober brain, and own it.

Sample comments

• I hate it when you get like this (teen child with meaningful glance at my wine glass after I'd snapped at her or her father)
• Maybe if you hadn't drunk so much already (teen child, with contempt, as I refused to help with something or other that yes, he was probably capable of doing but, well, it wouldn't have hurt me to get up and assist)
• Have you ever thought it might be easier to just stop drinking so much? (teen child, helpfully and hopefully, when I was talking about the latest attempt at diet and exercise)
• Go and pour yourself another one (husband, with contempt, pissed off that I was snarking at him about something)
• Maybe don't have another one? (teen child, helpfully, after me breaking one glass of wine by knocking it over and, after cleaning up, heading to the kitchen to replace it)

Ouch. Yes, just a sample.  And not occurring every night or even every week - but maybe once or so a fortnight  in the last year?

So then... choices

I'm not perfect. I'm going to get cranky sometimes sober or not. But I'm going to remember at least one big difference is that when I am sober, I am so aware of how I feel that there's a level of choice in my mood.

I can choose to walk away if I am irritated.

I can choose to use kinder words.

I can choose to see a situation from someone else's point of view.

I can choose to rise above pettiness.

I can choose to set an example of adulting that I'm almost too late to share with my younger children.

And I do. I choose this. I choose to be sober and to be responsible for myself.

PUPPY!!

Your reward for scrolling this far down the page is a sleeping puppy.  Pic taken earlier this week but as I type she is in almost the same position. Lying over my left toes, under the desk, enjoying her third most important nap of the day.