About those commitments...

Yeah. Those.

I could explain where I've been all week, but it'd probably sound defensive. Instead I'll say a bit about where I was not:

1. drinking
2. eating bon-bons (though there has been more ice cream than usual)
3. lazing about watching season 3 of Dexter on DVD (well, that's a lie. but not one episode, since Saturday, until tonight!)
4. missing deadlines
5. self-medicating to avoid unpleasant emotions (other than with ice cream)

Quite a lot has been afoot, more than I can properly account for in one measly catch-up entry. I've been record-breakingly (for me, I mean) assertive this week with my mom, my employer, and a touchy-feely old guy at AA (along with the rest of the meeting). I've grieved, in a constructive way, over losses pertaining to my family. I've gotten stuck in hypochondria (still there). I've taken the cat AND the dog for their annual vet appointments. I've paid bills, some prior to their due dates. I've used too many parentheses.

It's been good. I haven't always been at my best, but I've met life on life's terms (mostly) and (mostly) taken good care of myself along the way. I feel like a valid excuse for a human being, a sensation that has eluded me for most of the current millenium.

Sometimes, especially off and on the past couple of weeks, I've missed drinking so intensely that I feel as if a part of myself has been amputated, that I'm navigating the world without a necessary appendage. Not a crutch; a limb. Something necessary to the functioning of the whole. And that, I guess, is one definition of addiction.

Hence I think it's good for me to experience such intensity of longing for the after-work glass of wine (or three) or the evening cocktail on the porch. If it didn't mean so much, it would be far too easy to pretend I've got it licked. I haven't; I never will, and only by remembering that fact permanently will I be able to have more weeks like this one, in which I fail to keep all of my commitments perfectly yet still respect myself at the end of it.