Day Forty-Seven: ??

I don't know how I feel today.  I don't have a focus, can't even come up with a title for today-??.  I felt a bit down and sensitive at work today for no good reason.  How boring.  I'm bored with my own downer feelings and if I wasn't going to bed right now I would eat ice cream and try not to think of the smoky smell of whisky and the sound of crackling ice.  

Day 47.  Can't even be rounded up to anything significant, like 6 months!  1 year!  What is 47 days in life of 14,000+ days?  Hardly worth anything in the whole scope of things.  I was so excited about my accomplishments yesterday, what is this about?  

Look for the positive, right?  A little thing that just made me feel better, my archives on this blog spans 3 months: January, February and March.  That's something.  Really, I mean that: that is something.

Yesterday, I shared this blog with EA and she actually read it, all of it with enough attention to quote parts back that she thought were insightful or which she could relate.  We talked about in the car on the way to have tea.  I remember really enjoying the conversation and feeling warm and proud and connected.  Then Shelly popped in my head and said, "this conversation is great but would be so much better with a drink."  She wanted to take an enjoyable conversation with a budding girlfriend and bring it to the next level: make it easier to pour out the thoughts and feeling, heighten the connection.  Oh Shelly, you are so naive, go away.  It doesn't work that way.  This is the real way to make a connection with a friend.

EA wasn't the only one in which I shared this blog yesterday.  I decided to let the five friends that I've told about my new status in a little closer and for me to have a little more accountability.  

Open, vulnerable, honest.  As best I can, as I am able.  

I always imagined Day-One hungover ladies in sweatpants on a couch reading my blog. Not people who know me.  Yep vulnerable.  This is me too, the parts that "don't come up."

This morning I emailed the 4 contacts on the AA Egypt webpage to ask for a recommendation for counseling here in the neighborhood and to express lukewarm interest in attending a meeting.  Two people wrote back, one with a great link to a psychology center with many professionals as options within walking distance from my place, and the other with encouragement to go to the Thursday meetings on the Corniche.  I don't know if I can do it, it's just too weird. 

I'm not so open on that AA front yet.  And I was all secretive, using my iwillstartwithwater email account and signing my initials instead of my name. In this small expat community I'm not feeling safe enough to be publicly known as "in recovery" or labeled an alcoholic. Too big, too much out of my control.  But it is all here on my blog-ironic? Nope.  Not to me.

With all these positive reach outs, why am I down?  It is the exposure and feeling vulnerable? Is is the ho-humness of the less glorious work ahead of me to stay dry on day 48, 49, 50, 51, 52.....to infinity?  Is it because tomorrow is the last day of the work week and I'm just rundown and drinking usually was my pep up?  Could be any of these things, but tonight if I wake up in the middle of the night I won't desperately need to rehydrate, and in the morning I won't be regrettably hungover scanning over the broken memories of the night before.  One day at a time.