Leggings, with kneepads - for the busy gal on the go.

I joined livejournal years ago because I wanted to check out some guy's blog.

I never wanted to post a blog because I figured it was too late in life to start (i.e. all the interesting stuff already hapened) or because I kinda felt blogs were mostly boring and self indulgent. It's one thing to stare at your own bellybutton all day, it's quite another thing to ask someone else to watch you stare at your bellybutton.

But, I think it'd probably be in my best interest to start documenting stuff now. I may even have something interesting to say, but mostly, it'd be a good exercise for me to not drink again, and starting trying to fix my life.

In the past I often moved or shaved my facial hair when I wanted to start new, so let me try this, I'll probably shave my facial hair soon too.

Anyway, I'm 3 days away from it being 100 days since my last drink, I wonder if there's a chip for that? I wouldn't know because I haven't attended any meetings. What's the different between and alcoholic and a drunk? Drunks don't attend meetings, besides I don't smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and I'd probably start that if I was around people who did those things non stop.

The past few days I've been thinking about not going to bars anymore. Sadly, I still do most of my socializing at bars. Since coming out, 15 years ago, most of my socializing has been in gay bars. On vacations I always pick a gay bar and a museum or two to visit and rarely a weekend would go by without me going out once or twice to pick up a trick or meet friends. All my friends still drink and I feel self conscious ordering sodas or soda waters while with them.

Over the past few months I've found that going to gay bars and not drinking is pretty damned boring. Bars are pretty boring when you don't drink. I should have remembered that from my youth when I worked in them, but years of getting laid by strangers I met in bars or laughing with friends at bars made me forget that.

I really feel I need to stop hanging out with my friends, even though I haven't been tempted to drink, I'm slightly worried I will since I spend so much time with them at gay bars, including gay bars from my youth, where there are many fuzzy alcohol laced and induced stories of merriment.

I feel pretty lonely as it is. I've never been good at making friends and it makes me sad to think that I may lose the friends I have because I have less control over alcohol than they do. It's unfair, too.

I'm a good person, I never started a fight or hurt anyone else while drunk, like many others. I just had fun and got to laugh without feeling self conscious or out of place. And even when I felt out of place at a bar, I didn't care because I was drunk and at the very least it was interesting to watch people interact. I often felt like Jane Goodall among the chimpanzees.

...

This past Wednesday, in my mom's weekly email she told me my dad had been in the hospital for pains in his chest and left arm. It turns out he was all right, and that the pains had probably been do to over exertion from yard work or because, as my mom put it, "He's getting old."

I had similar pains two days after I stopped drinking and ended up in the hospital for a couple of days. I ended up having focal neuropathy. It's a nerve disease associated with diabetes which can cause sharp pain and burning sensations in your chest and can lead to Bell's palsy. (fun!)

I don't have the excuse of being old, like my dad did, but we both have the diabetes and the alcohol problems. Although he stopped drinking after slipping into a coma a few years back. He was mixing booze with insulin. But he is the first man in the past three generations of my family (both maternal and paternal), not to die from alcohol related issues.

It really sucked to end up in the hospital after I stopped drinking, almost as much as it feels to have to decide to not hang out with my only friends because I'm not drinking.

It's like being punished for doing something good.