One single mom’s attempt at Dry January…
Day Three…
Oh Day Three, you suck. After a night with very little sleep (again. please come back to me sleep!), I really didn’t want to get up and go to work, but I did anyway. And not only did I feel sick upon waking, but I also had a damn headache all day long! From what?! Not alcohol! Oh, wait. That IS what. From not having alcohol for two days?! Ughhhhh. I hate my life.
Ok, that’s a bit dramatic, but for real I did not feel good today and just wanted to have one little drink when I got home. So far, I meditated, made dinner, made tea, now I’m writing about my shitty day to myself and maybe a few random strangers. That’s weird. But I haven’t had that drink!
I told a few people at work about my attempt to do Dry January and my attempt to write about it every day. I told them for accountability. See, I don’t have any other adults in my house to hold me accountable, to tell me, “Hey, don’t do it!”. I only have kids who don’t seem to care if mom has a glass of wine and a dog who never tells me anything I want to hear and the kids are gone this week, so I told my co-workers. Seems kinda silly now that I’m home and they aren’t here to hold me accountable.
So about my drinking “problem”… I feel like it’s not really a problem because I don’t drink to get drunk (anymore). I’m too busy for that, what with 3 kids, a dog, and a full-time job. I totally used to drink to get drunk in my 20’s, but that was a long time ago. And a little bit in my 30’s, too, but not so much in my 40’s. Except for maybe 2020, I drank more than normal that year, but didn’t everybody? I mean I definitely had mimosas in my coffee mug some (most) days and didn’t think anything of it. Surely I wasn’t the only one, right? It was a global pandemic for god’s sake and I had 3 kids doing online school in my house every single day! I had to move my home office into my bedroom to get anything done, and then, of course, I could tell people I did my best work in the bedroom, haha! That always cracked me up! But really, ever since quarantine and the subsequent year of online school and work, I started drinking more than I wanted to and I struggled to reign it in.
Which brought me to January 2021, life was going to be better in 2021! I just knew it! I started the year off right with Dry January and two weeks in, I was out. It sucked! I wasn’t enjoying it at all! And holy Capitol Insurrection batman, I had to have a fucking drink that day! I figured it didn’t count because, you know, all hell was breaking loose at the White House and that’s just not supposed to happen in the “civilized” world we live in now. I tried to get back on track after that, but it was too much. 2021 hit hard, right from the start, and I decided having a drink or two every day was A-Okay for me.
Therefore, my problem isn’t really a problem, right? I don’t get shitfaced every night or ever for that matter. I do sometimes stay up too late and drink too much wine while reading a good book, and I might wake up with a big ol’ headache the next day, but that sounds so damn innocent! So why do I feel this incessant need to quit drinking? Year after year I want to shake it and year after year I give up trying. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’ll find the answer if I can make it a whole month without alcohol. Maybe. We shall see.
