Old Journal Entries

I am not the girl I was 2 years ago. That poor thing!

I thought i was just muddling through, but now I recognize severe addiction.

Reading old journal entries is heartbreaking. I was not strong enough to get sober. I really wasn’t. (Okay yeah – obviously I was! but you know what I mean.)

But … I was starting to search for a way out. It is VERY cool to look back and watch myself recover

The transition of my entries is compelling.

1. Internal dialogue. Mostly complaining and wailing. Discovering that I was having a love affair with wine. And wine was an abusive lover.
2. Self-help books. Lots of entries as I made notes chapter by chapter. I started tracking  – days sober, blood pressure, weight, vivid dreams at night, to do lists, hopes & timelines. I started creating a vision of a future me, even stick pictures!
3. External Input. Belle, The Bubble Hour, therapy. My focus really shifted from fixing everything to just not drinking. My journal entry from a Bubble Hour binge listening day ” None of these women talked about – I couldn’t have done it without _____ . All of them said  – I did this. All of them said they had a support system, but for the hard work it was very clear they just bumbled through alone.”
4. External Output. Ta da !!  I haven’t journaled on paper at all since I started blogging. Getting and sharing feedback.

Greatest thing about reading old journal entries? Everything – yes everything! – that I wrote as a ‘reach for the stars’ dream came true.

I wrote on someone’s blog very early on, “What happens if you create this new sober life with all of its new stuff & then you go back to drinking and you have even MORE things to deal with?”

Now I can answer my own question. There is LESS to do being sober. Yes, there are new experiences and new hobbies, but getting sober is not adding. It is subtracting things that aren’t efficient. There is more time to get less done.

Getting sober is a sigh of relief.