Day 5

Earlier this week, I was drinking. Yes, back to drinking. When I say drinking, I mean starting around nine or ten with a double vodka in cranberry juice and proceeding likewise throughout the day. Of course, when the woman returned from work around 6PM, nothing had changed from my previous runs with drinking. I was still a resentful, insecure child to her. So, instead of quitting, I thought I’d experiment. If I quit around 1PM, I’ll be alone until the woman comes home around 6, so I’ll have plenty of time to sober up, and nobody will be the wiser.

You may be wondering where I get the booze, being unemployed and without a car and not within walking distance of the liquor store, Credit cards and Doordash.

I started that experiment, but I can’t quite remember if I quit or not. I think I counted the hour between 13 and 14 as OK to drink, then maybe it kept creeping. In any case, I was not sloshed and slurring. I was just buzzed enough for her to ask, “Did you drink today?”

I’m not supposed to drink unless I ask her, but she started to seem annoyed when I did, so I figured she wouldn’t mind if I drank in the morning and didn’t know. I’d be sober and a nice guy.

So I truthfully answered, “I had some vodka this morning.” She seemed disappointed, but not in a way that would stick. Me, though–I was incommensurately offended at the insinuating question. She always asks me if I’ve been drinking if I make some verbal or physical slip. as if that can’t happen when I’m sober. Although, to be honest, I usually have been drinking when she asks.

And so, taking umbrage at her proper and correct accusation, I reverted to a little teenage boy again and pouted all night. Not just naturally somber, but actively avoiding pleasures and pleasantries of any sort. Mind you, I’m also taking my regularly scheduled and rightly prescribed Klonopin, and as it acts as a mind eraser when mixed with alcohol, I don’t remember much detail. Apparently I was over at my computer at the dining room table, then rage quit and went upstairs without logging our or, more importantly, muting its notifications.

I use Windows Phone, so it was going off with every Discord message and Quora post summary and fake LinkedIn recruiter message, driving her crazy in the living room. She naturally wanted to shut it off, so she went to do so, and noticed all my notifications, including some ellipses pings to my ex and Tinder and Ourtime notifications.

Now I’ve lost you. I’m cheating on her, right? No. Her brother died and she was out of town for a week, leaving me and Howard alone. Howard, not being much of a conversationalist outside of the piercing barking medium, was not sufficient company, as I literally have no friends with which to chat. And, of course, since she was out of town, I was heavily drinking. I was looking for someone to talk at, not someone to fuck. And maybe some validation that I’m still desirable. There’s an wonderful thrill to dating apps when you get a match. Someone likes me!

The next day, I don’t remember in what context, but she mentioned she’d seen the notifications when trying to silence my noisy \\NECRONOMICON. I want to stress that she just mentioned this, as if it were nothing. A few years ago, she would have blown up at first sight of such a thing, then immediately come upstairs to scream and throw things at me. This is significant. She was perfectly calm when she revealed it. She did not even click through to the notification bodies. I had to check myself hard, because this was unbelievable. I know she’d gotten better, but I don’t think we would have ever recovered from this before, let alone have it just be a passing remark.

Accordingly, I felt incredibly ashamed. I muttered something like, “Yeah, I created an account but quit when they asked for a credit card.” She was so calm. She didn’t seem to feel betrayed. Maybe she finally believes I love her and her alone and only want her.

In any case, I was ashamed, and decided to stop drinking again, and there’s your back story for a post entitled “Day 5”. I wanted to do a “Day 3”, because I was in a pit of despair that morning, existential panic, trapped in my life. However, distracting oneself long enough really does work. You just have to find something you can get started doing that isn’t poisoning yourself. I decided to vape some weed and play Fallout 76, and soon enough, I was OK for the moment. There’s not much else to tell about that day except that I didn’t drink, and now it’s Day 5 and I’m still dry.

The best thing about day 5 was that I’m starting to dream again. I hadn’t remembered any of my dreams for months after tumbling off the wagon. I’m not even sure I entered REM sleep, because I distinctly recall waking up almost every hour. My father-in-common-law made me a watch and I’ve been wearing it because it’s awesome, so I wasn’t tracking my sleep regularly.

Anyway, the buried lede is that, on the fourth night of sobriety, I began dreaming again. Not in a hopeful, aspirational, metaphorical way, but literal REM sleep. Maybe that’s because I’ve fewer apneas now, although the forever person said I snored pretty loudly.

Also, it’s not so much a buried lede as it was a mistitled post. Maybe “Not Drunk Again” would have been better.