You have introduced a really intriguing topic. Really has forced me to become introspective. I think you and I are very similar in our frustrating struggle with alcohol and I can relate to your angst. I would have to admit at this point that my new normal is perpetual rehearsal. No matter how hard I've tried or even how confident I am that “this time” it will be different, that “this time” I will succeed, the fact is, I don’t. I hate, hate, hate this battle I’m in. I hate thinking how nice it would be to have a drink or ten. I hate that alcohol is detrimental to health, I even hate so called “normal” drinkers. Logically I know that abstaining is my only option and I hate that.
So here I am sober and feeling better than I have in ages yet at the same time hating the fact that I can’t have what made me feel and smell like garbage most of the time in days/years past. How convoluted is that? Certainly isn’t normal in the most literal sense of the word.
However, my current new normal isn’t working so the only option is creating a “new, new” normal and is the only way out of this dysfunctional relationship with alcohol. Time is the ally in that each day that we fight to stay AF and succeed, puts us further away from the beginning. The beginning is always so darn hard so we need to create distance. Distance will help to dim our cravings, readjust our thinking, time to take back control and reinvent who we are. Sure we’re going to feel disjointed, frustrated and wonder when that magical new normal will be ours. It will be ND, we just have to earn it.
Maybe “this time” our new normal will be, well, “normal.”
TS
