I know it's been awhile but I'm writing today because I reached a point of happiness I hadn't felt in over a decade. Seriously, it's been that long. Sure, I would pretend I was happy a lot but on the inside not so much. Sobriety is awesome, first and foremost. I'm up at 8am every day, work or no work, and between the time I wake up and the time my head hits the pillow around 1-2am I constantly keep myself busy. Can you believe on my days off, those 18 hours I'm awake, don't feel like enough time to do everything I want to do? Weird huh?
One major change I've made was finally going to the gym. With my back pain reaching its breaking point, and my job consisting of tons of manual labor, I knew I had to do something. I needed more money and I wasn't going to let the pain stop me. Why? Because my "dark thoughts" were returning with a vengeance. The half a year leading to my departure to rehab consisted of making it through a shift at work and going home and literally drinking the pain away. It was cheap and effective. Why spend money on a doctor when drinking myself stupid would numb the pain?
Drunk logic, clearly. In my defense, I was already way past the point of no return so that was just one of 100 different excuses to not stop drinking.
Which brings us to today. Working out at the gym and eating healthy has brought on results I hadn't seen in ages. I'm down about 23 lbs since September and while I still have a long way to go, I'm loving how I look and feel these days but it was after a few customer comments the past week that made me realize exactly how bad my alcoholism was effecting me.
It's hazy, but I do remember 2 years ago customers commenting on my weight loss and how much thinner I was becoming. Fuck, I even remember blogging about it, proud of my "dieting" and that the results were showing. But the means in which I got to that weight was disgusting and terrifying. Do you know how you drop 30 lbs in a few months? You don't eat food. Like seriously, nothing. You only consume alcohol. That's how. Because nothing you eat will stay down and the only thing that make you feel "normal" is booze. This wasn't my intention, mind you. The alcohol was already in control. I was powerless.
So a customer had some nice words to say to me yesterday about how healthy and skinnier I looked. She was very sweet and when I took her bottles out to her car she got very serious. She mentioned my weight loss from 2 years ago and how hard it was for her to watch me slowly deteriorate. She knew I was ill, but didn't know with what or why. It was eye-opening/heartbreaking to hear because what Drunk Sean back then wasn't thinking of was that these customers would see him every single day. And every day they watched him get worse and worse. When I started looking like Skeletor, they knew something was wrong. Drunk Sean wasn't fooling anyone, but what was anyone going to say? These are things I don't talk about often, especially the darker moments of my alcoholism because, simply, it's disgusting and depressing. But the more I speak of the dark times, the bigger impact it has on when people see what I look and act like now, especially after the past few months. Because I came back from rock bottom. I came back from rock bottom, like, tenfold.
2 years ago I could barely lift my arm out of bed to hit my alarm clock, let alone lift my own head off the pillow, without a couple shots of vodka to steady my nerves. I had no motivation to to do anything physical because, well, I couldn't. Nowadays, I'm up bright and early every morning. I get pissed when I wake up at 9am instead of 8am because that's one less hour I have of my day. Seriously, it bums me out. And since joining the gym back in mid December I have only missed 3 days so far and the results have truly paid off.
For the first time, in a very long time, I'm actually happy with where I am in my life...
Plus, they are making new Star Wars movies so how in the fucking hell could I not be happy?
*End Communication*
