Early this week we had one day of spring before the rain clouds rolled in and I was so pleased to find that after over a year alcohol free, tipping my face to the hot sun felt simply lovely without triggering the desire for a cold glass of white wine. Freedom is bliss!

Good Sunday morning all!!

We are having some beautiful spring weather this week! When the days get sunny in the spring and the temps start to climb to the seventyish mark, I start thinking how nice it would be for hubbie and I go find a patio and have a drink or two. Sure would be nice. For me, that is a dangerous path to embark upon.

I am at eighty one days sober now. I am getting close to completing my first three months. I am at a point where I am feeling pretty strong and healthy. A point where I can easily begin to think that maybe I am strong enough to control my drinking. Then as I think harder about this, I have to ask, why bother? What is so unpleasant about life that I would want to dull my senses?

Also, as I approach ninety days, I am becoming more aware of other things and caring more about things I cared about before. That has taken this long, that didn’t happen as soon as that last hangover was gone. I can see why inpatient rehab is often ninety days. I always wondered why they needed to be in so long alcohol free!

When I look back over my life, my times where my self esteem was best and I took the best care of myself – in every way – was when alcohol had a very small role in my life. The times when I was drinking regularly look dark as I look back and those are the periods where I lacked confidence, was lazy, ate too much, the list goes on.

I didn’t realize this until now because the change in me didn’t happen the day I put down a drink and then change back the day I picked up a drink. It is much more gradual and takes more time than that. I guess it took a lifetime pattern of that for me to see the correlation. It is pretty clear to me now.

Springtime, so symbolic of new life in the Western Hemisphere, will carry that same meaning to me this year.

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