They never tell you cos you might not quit drinking if they did
They never tell you that you’ll be the same
You can quit drinking, you can replace booze with water and tater tots with … I dunno leafy green vegetables
You can eat well, you can cut down on the caffeine
You can exercise, you can get your ten thousand steps in every day
You can live right, you can live clean, you can live healthy
You can be positive in your daily interactions and interpersonal dealings
You can list the gratitudes, you can be mindful, you can appreciate
Appreciate things both small and not-small
You can tell people what they mean to you, how much you care, how much you love, how much you everything them
You can be honest and open with your therapist in a way that’s far closer to complete and not that half-assed sharing you were doing
You can procrastinate as little as possible (not procrastinating at all is so unrealistic as to be unattainable and so you don’t wanna set yourself up for that particular inevitable disappointment)
You can fuck around with spoon theory cos you got this guy who’s helped by it
You can count your spoons every day, you can dole ‘em out, you can figure out how many spoons for each task
You can pay your bills, you can manage your money, you can watch your spending
You can do everything they tell you
You can walk your dog and as you do, smile and wave at neighbors in a way and to an extent that makes you feel glad you chose this community in which to raise your kid
You can call your mom and check in on her
You can call your brother and remind him he’s still an asshole
You can call your best friend and just say “Hey, man”
You can do your morning pages
You can handwrite your nighttime pages
You can imagine an encounter between you and The Ghost Of New Years Eve Past and how funny that would be, and you can even jot down a few lines of what that might entail
You can do all of this and more
All of it and more
Yet still there’ll be days when you just wanna fucking die
Days when you wake up, lie on your back, stare at the ceiling and the next thing you know, he’s off to school and she’s at work which means it’s almost nine and you woke up just after six so where’d the time go, what the hell, you didn’t think anything, you just laid there, staring, what the hell
Days when it takes half your spoons just to throw on a robe and sit on the porch
Days when you don’t move on that porch for so long, your neighbor comes into their back yard just to make sure you’re still alive
Days when all you think about is how long it’ll be before you can just go to sleep
And then when you finally can go to sleep, the last thing you think as you drift off is: Please let me not wake up, please let me stay asleep forever
Days when you just wanna fucking yell at everyone
Days (and nights, oh yeah, nights too) when you wanna grab all the booze on the shelves and buy all the booze on the shelves and all the beer on the shelves and you wanna buy it you wanna charge it cos you haven’t charged anything in almost a month and it feels good to charge shit it feels good to just be stupid and charge shit and then drive home that cart of beer and booze and sit somewhere (the basement, yeah, the basement’s good, the basement’ll do) and drink it all or as much as you can before you pass out (or die)
(Or die, yeah, dying’s good, dying’s acceptable)
Days when they ask you what’s wrong and for the life of you, you have no decent answer
Nothing specific, nothing in particular, nothing at all
You just have this hole at the center of who you are and you thought it was gone, or it was at least smaller but it turns out the hole is still there and still the same size and oh well
Oh well
Oh well
Days when you snap at your boss and they remind you they’re your boss, it’s not the other way around haha
Days when the funk is all-consuming and seemingly permanent
“You will be like this forever”
Days when you’re outta spoons before lunch and you still have so much shit to do and you can’t borrow spoons from tomorrow because you don’t think it works like that but also you’re about two weeks behind on the spoons, you been borrowing spoons like a fiend for a bit
When all you want is a do over, you would kill for a do over, you would straight up murder for a do over
Which wouldn’t matter, it wouldn’t help even if you got one, because you’d still be you and you’d still wind up the same, and still with the same mistakes and regrets and all that
You’re glad you’re doing it, though, you’re glad you quit drinking, there’s no mistaking that quitting the booze was and is the smartest thing you’ve done in a fucking while, because if you were still drinking, man oh man, hoo boy
What a mess you’d be
An absolute mess
You’d be dead, kinda likely
And as much as you say you don’t care either way, the truth is you do
You care
And so you pull yourself through
You look at the clock
You figure out how many hours are left
There’s not many hours left and that’s nice
That’s good
You’ll be asleep soon enough and odds are you’ll wake up in the morning and things’ll be better
Or they won’t
Either way
I have a brother who’s an asshole. The other one, who wasn’t, died. That’s how fair life is.
WTH are spoons?