Day #209

Sometimes I think I want normal hair.  There is something so versatile about a color palette that is not.. um… orange.  Although I love these shots, I think I am gonna stick with neon for now :-)  Here is another set I am working on here at Pillar Box Studios.  It’s not finished but I am so in love with it already!

On another note, I thought today was my 200th day without the alcohol, but I guess it was yesterday!  I don’t talk about my journey that much because it tends to make people uncomfortable…. My friends think I am judging them and my family doesn’t like to think I was hiding it from them (for all that time previous to my announcement of lifetime abstinence from the booze fairy).  However I just looked back at the images from the beginning of this blog, and I see the puffiness in my face, and although it may not be apparent to others I see reflected in my eyes the struggle I was going through.  When I became sober I decided not to count the days, but this blog makes it impossible not to take note, as we count one day after another (after another and another and another).  

Before I decided on permanent sobriety from alcohol I spent a little more than a year going back and forth between long bouts of sobriety and long bouts of binge drinking.  I tended to drink because I was sad. If I was happy, alcohol didn’t really enhance the experience.  Or I drank because I though it would help me sleep, when in reality it made me harbor feelings of anger and resentment instead of experiencing the torturous emotions associated with whatever crap-ass memories I was trying to stifle, and working through them, and moving on.  Perhaps on my 365th day of sobriety I will share with you all the list of emotions that I would have when drinking, which are all in the dismal category.

In no way do I want to preach to others the choices I expect them to make, which is a criticism I have received from some loved ones.  I truly believe if alcohol made you feel the way it made me feel towards the last couple years of my drinking, you wouldn’t do it either.  And there were many years before that in which it was a perfectly wonderful experience, and fun, and reckless in a punk rock way, and I don’t regret indulging myself during that time.  I also believe if alcohol made me feel the way it makes happy drunks feel, I would keep on doing it!  So when I share my experience here, it is only my personal reflection, not a reflection on others.

That being said, thank fucking GOD I am sober!!!!  Hell yes!  It is like I get to re-create my existence, procure new hobbies, embrace a whole new side of life that I haven’t had since I was a young teenager.  And I quite enjoy it. I quite enjoy doing reckless things now and again, with a clear head and presence of mind.  I love that my memories aren’t muddled or cloudy, that my mood is steady and predictable, that my energy levels are high, that my mouth tastes better in the morning, that intimacy is vastly more intimate, and that love is more pure.  I am so happy to have committed to this choice, and so happy to feel the world revealed to me in an all new and beautiful way. 

Happy fucking Saturday!  LIVE IT UP!!!!  Take a shot for me, yo!

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