Well I did it! Went to my Mum’s surprise birthday party last night and did it sober style. Woke up this morning clear headed and sober ready to tackle day 20 🙂 Wasn’t without its difficulties though…. had a massively busy day which was stressful. Reminder to myself…..never be the organiser of a surprise party again! Now I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I had any major cravings to drink yesterday. I mean, it was always in the back of my mind how natural and nice it would be to enjoy a glass of wine, but it didn’t affect me like it did a few days ago, when my whole body craved a drink. It was more a sort of fleeting feeling and then it went away. Which is good…..I can handle that better. I think the more sober days I have under my belt the more there is to lose for me. I don’t have the “maybe I will drink tonight” feeling anymore. In the early days, and in an early post I talked about actually planning on drinking one evening…..leaving the choice down to fate. Whether my sister came home with a bottle or not. Luckily for me she didn’t and the choice was out of my hands. I feel that now, I don’t have the internal battle of whether or not I want to continue on the sober journey. I have kind of come to terms with the fact that this is my life for the foreseeable future. Now I just deal with the day to day practicalities of actually BEING sober. And believe it or not, I think that is slightly easier.
The actual meal part of the evening last night wasn’t bad at all. Everyone was drinking around me, but I didn’t stand out at all as there were so many distractions that no body even noticed I was sipping a soft drink. When I was asked I just responded that I was driving and making sure everyone got home ok. After the meal I had arranged for everyone to come back to my Mum’s house for drinks and music…..general birthday merriment! This is where is became a little awkward for me.
My sister who has known for a while that I’ve laid off the booze knew I wasn’t drinking last night. But as soon as she had a few drinks in her she kind of turned a little bitter and nasty even, towards me. I was upset to be honest, and it made me feel really self conscious. Now, I am aware that she was pretty drunk herself as her, my friend from London we bought down with us and my aunt had been drinking A LOT of wine at the meal. And I would like to think that she didn’t mean to hurt my feelings or make me feel bad, but that is exactly what she did. It was just little comments like “oh you’re such a boring bitch without a drink!”. I used the fact that I was the only sober adult present to look out for everyone and make sure nobody did anything too wild. So when I politely suggested at gone midnight that it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to vandalise the “for sale” sign outside our neighbours house, I was greeted by a chorus of “Ohhhhhhh god! Loosen up….just because your SOBER!!!” The word sober was spat as if it was something atrocious. It would have sounded just as horrible of they had shouted “Ohhhhhhh god! Loosen up….just because you’re a MURDERER!” It was spoken like being sober was something disgusting and socially unacceptable. Â I honestly didn’t expect to get that reaction. And it only got worse the drunker people got. And I thought it would be the other way around. I assumed that as people slid into wine induced joviality nobody would give me a second thought.
I don’t really know what to do with how I feel about people’s reaction. As I have said before, I’m pretty well known in my family for being a massive drinker, so maybe it was just a surprise to see me sober at a party. My auntie actually said “gosh…..it just doesn’t seem right you not drinking with us”. I’m going to have to just hope that it becomes normality for the people around me too, so I don’t have to deal with the negativity. I have enough of that for myself.
Now this next little thought process is going to seem so self righteous…..but I noticed last night that drunk people are idiots! This will seem a little “you can bloody talk!” coming from me but it’s true. I know I only have 20 days sobriety, and I am in no place to pass judgement on people after my behaviour a lot of times, but I felt so annoyed with people last night! You literally can’t make a logical point to a Pissed person. It’s like sense and reason goes out of the window. They were playing fun drinking games, but some of the things that were being said and laughed at were so outrageous. I kept thinking I was so glad I wasn’t the one humiliating myself for a change. I had the luxury of ferrying people home, checking into the hotel I booked for my friend, my sister and myself and finally relaxing. While everyone else passed out for a restless and drunken sleep, I put my pj’s on, had a hot shower, made a cup of tea and watched a film. I woke up this morning and felt great. Physically great anyway. I still felt a little upset about the stick I got last night but I’m kind of over that now. Everyone else on the other hand………look and feel joke crap ha ha! I shouldn’t laugh, but I feel that this is karma for being mean to me last night 😉
Well I just read this back and it’s quite rambling so sorry about that. I’m going to go make myself lunch now as everyone else is having a hungover nap…..! I’ll leave you with a picture of the birthday cake…..and if they sleep much longer this bad boy is getting cut by ME mwaahaaahaaaa! (that was my evil laugh by the way)
Happy Saturday xxx
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