365 Days of sobriety

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It’s been over a year since Flea Market Guy and I have had a drink. After a year of ups and downs because of alcohol, FMG decided he was going to quit drinking. A thing that he had been doing since he was a teenager.

I’ve always had a way of “picking” men. The more damaged the better, it seemed. So I wasn’t sure that this was even going to work. But we made it. 365 days and counting.

I stopped drinking when he stopped drinking. He didn’t think it was fair because I can just turn it off, but my alcohol abuse looks different than his. I’ve always been able to turn mine off. I used to drink in excess on Friday and Saturday nights when my kids were little because they’d be gone. But when they weren’t gone, I just wouldn’t drink. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t want to drink around them.

I was already a young mom and felt like a failure so I didn’t need to screw up too much for the whole world to know I was a failure…or at least that’s what I thought. So I rarely, if ever drank around them when they were young. I didn’t keep alcohol in the house. And, even as they got older, I just didn’t want to expose them to “drunk” me. Plus, I feel like when you love someone, whether it is a kid or, in this case, a man, you do what you have to do for the well being of that person or people even if it’s hard or at the very least undesirable, especially if it is good for you and not hurting anyone. And so, long story short, I quit drinking when he quit drinking. Because when I do drink, I really drink.

Over the last year, I would say that our relationship has flourished. We have done a lot of talking to one another about our pasts and about our future together. A year ago, I wasn’t sure we even had a future together, and now, I’m pretty sure we have a long, long future ahead of us.

One thing we’ve noticed is how much money we’ve saved by not drinking. Aside from the general feeling of wellness, we have saved hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars by not drinking. Because usually drinking leads to other things. Even if we decided to drink at home, it would inevitably lead to either an abundance of scratch off lottery tickets that were rarely winners or, in my case, a karaoke bar because I’m the world’s worst singer until I get drunk and then look out Miranda Lambert. And drinking at a bar or restaurant would end up costing double or triple what drinking at home would. Not to mention the crappy next day feeling.

So, after a year, it seems that we are on the sober train. We make jokes about drinking in international waters if we go on a vacation, but with the current state of the world, I doubt there will be international waters in our near future anyway. And if there is, I don’t think he will drink because he’s very aware of the damage he caused in his life by doing so. And I probably won’t drink because I don’t want to drink if he is choosing not to. It seems selfish.

Now, we just sit around talking about how normalized alcohol use and abuse is. Every country song. Every TV show. Every commercial about friends. All very casual drinking involved. It doesn’t bother us to see it, it is just interesting that we never noticed before.

Anyway, with that being said, now that we are healthier mentally, it’s time to get physically healthier.

I’ll tell you how that’s going tomorrow.