My First Birthday

So, what’s new? It’s my birthday! Like, my sobriety birthday. On 26th April 2017 I drank the last bottle of wine ever! Or rather, 3/4 of one, because I spilt the last glass of wine I intended to drink in my hair. I’m not even sure how I managed that. Super-classy! I took it as a sign that quitting was the right decision.

I hoped the Big Quit would be ‘for good’ …. but purposefully chose not to examine how much I believed this was possible, because I had very little self-belief at that point.

To mark 365 days since then I wanted to post a lovely eloquent blog post about what “recovery” from addiction means to me, what I’ve gained, learned, blah blah blah. But my efforts just gave birth incoherent ramblings about gratitude and addiction. Watch this space, though.

So I’m just going to say this- yesterday my therapist told me that the scores from my obligatory weekly anxiety/depression questionnaires put me, for the first time in the many months since we started, on the cusp of “recovery” from anxiety and depression. I don’t think that’s coincidental.

I’m feeling quite emotional today about my achievement. 365 days of choosing not to check out of my life! 365 days of figuring out how to JUST BE, even when I don’t feel like it. 365 days of swinging back and forth between feeling like an awkward adolescent and a buttoned up grandmother. 365 days of liking myself more and more despite feeling like a total moose in social situations! Yay!