34 Weeks of Sobriety
Reborn- How sobriety has given me a fresh start and why it scares the shit out of me.
Today I have been sober for 34 weeks. 238 days.
Sobriety
I’ve had another good week with my sobriety. I don’t know if it’s due to my increased emphasis on tracking my daily habits, being distracted by the end-of-year push at work, finally starting to feel settled here at the coast and in the new house, my son becoming more interactive each day, or maybe a combination of everything mentioned. At the moment I don’t think there would be much benefit to establishing exactly why I’m feeling good about my sobriety, because I could waste a lot of energy in doing so and still come up with nothing. Instead, I think I’m better suited to just channel my energy into sticking to the process that has worked to date.
I navigated another family Christmas party on the weekend. Same sort of thing as the last one. Lots of drinking happening around me. Of the two Christmas parties I’ve been to this year, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how few questions I’ve fielded about why I’m not drinking. Some of my family know I’m sober, and some don’t. It reinforced something I have been trying to remind myself a lot over the last seven or more months. “No one gives a shit”.
I have been trying to remind myself of it whenever I get paranoid or self-conscious because it’s true. All humans are subconsciously selfish. The only person who would take issue with me not drinking would be someone who has an issue with their drinking. Anyway, it’s been nice to be able to attend such events and not be questioned about my choices. Each time it happens makes the next time that little bit easier. It removes another small layer of anxiety and makes me feel more confident to head along to these events feeling a little bit more confident in being myself.
Nonie
I don’t have any living grandparents, but I do have a Nonie. Nonie is my grandmother’s sister. She has been as or more prevalent in my life than any of my other grandparents. Nonie has lived in a nursing home for a few years now. She fukcin’ hates it. She just wants to spend the rest of her life in her family home but has accepted that it isn’t possible. Nonie’s ambition was starting to outweigh her capability and she kept falling over and hurting herself. In short, she’s stubborn.
Since Nonie has been in the nursing home visitation has been difficult due to COVID lockdowns. Coupled with inconvenient visiting hours and having the most insane year of my life, it’s been almost impossible to organise a suitable time to visit. Nonie has been desperate to meet my son, so when I was told she would get “day release” to be at the party I went to on the weekend, it was non-negotiable.
Nonie had a health scare only a few weeks ago and for a moment there was legitimate concern she wouldn’t make it to the party on the weekend. I’m so fucking happy she was able to make it and finally meet sonny. Given the recent health scare and knowing how desperate she had been to meet him, I would have felt horrible if this moment had never happened.
It’s only when I reflect on moments such as these that I am truly grateful for my sobriety. I’m grateful for all the hard work I have put into this point. I’m grateful that I have found that little skerrick of confidence that helps me head along to things like this without wanting to get shitfaced. I’m grateful for the work I’ve done recently on being actively present. Without all of the above, this moment either doesn’t happen or at the very least I get less out of it because of my lack of presence or inebriation.
Love ya, Nonie.
Reborn and Terrified
I had an appointment with my psychologist yesterday. We spoke a lot about my childhood, sobriety, and my ADHD.
It got me thinking about ADHD symptoms that I’ve never looked into in great depth. Sometimes, when there is something I know I should look into further, I know will benefit me, I just can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t feel “ready”.
I’ve been aware of masking for some time, but the intricacies of it seemed a little deep for me at the time given all the other things I have been trying to work on recently. I didn’t feel I had the energy to dive into something as confronting as masking at the time.
See below the definition, link, and video on masking if you’re interested.
When you have undiagnosed ADHD as I did for 28 years, chances are you are masking without even realising it. I’ve always considered myself a really good chameleon. I can blend into whatever environment I find myself in. I can be on a job site with the crew being the most feral bloke of the lot, and I can sit in a meeting at work where I am the most junior of the group and handle myself appropriately.
There are some clear benefits to masking. I certainly wouldn’t have worked my way up a few positions at work if not for my ability to mask.
The problem with masking is when you become accustomed to doing it in almost any social circumstance, it becomes your subconscious fallback. It works, so you do it automatically. It’s easier to mask than it is to be yourself. But it’s fucking stressful. It can be exhausting. It’s like you are performing, all the time. There is (exclusively internal) pressure to perform, not slip up, and not let anyone see any holes in your armor because you have this irrational fear that you’re going to get found out and look like an impostor.
I have been masking all my life, I know this now on reflection. All I’ve ever tried to do is fit in and be accepted. I always felt a little different from everyone else, and I just wanted to be the same as everyone else. I now know that I can’t be the same as everyone else. Physiologically, I am different from most people.
Studies have found that ADHD is associated with weaker function and structure of prefrontal cortex (PFC) circuits, especially in the right hemisphere.
Only recently through my sobriety and work with psychologists have I been able to accept that I will never be able to be like everyone else. I’m wasting valuable time and energy trying to be like anyone else. I’ve had to change my outlook from wanting to adapt to accepting who I am and making the most of what I do have, rather than whinging about what I don’t have.
The problem I have though, is I don’t know who the fuck I am? I spent my childhood masking. Too obsessed with what others thought about me. Obsessed with wanting to fit in with the crowd. I was in a permanent state of paranoia, I didn’t want attention, and I didn’t want to stand out, because I cared way too much about what others thought of me. Having ADHD made me feel like I was unimportant. Like my problems didn’t matter. So I’ve always just done what the majority have done to fit in as best I could. Neglecting to establish who I am at my core along the way.
There were things I enjoyed along the way. Sports in particular. Footy all winter, cricket all summer. Some real middle-class Australiana shit. But I never really found anything I was deeply passionate about because I was too afraid to go out on a limb and give something a crack out of fear of persecution. I so badly wish I knew then what I know now. That you can have a go at anything that piques your interest and that it doesn’t even matter if you’re bad at it, as long as you enjoy it. I’m annoyed at myself for allowing the fear of what others thought of me to limit what I was willing to have a crack at. There’s been a lot of times when I’ve thought, “man, I’d like to try that, but I couldn’t possibly do it”, with no real justification as to why I couldn’t.
It was this mindset that led me to have no fucking clue what I wanted to do when I became an adult. I wasn’t overly passionate about anything due to my fear of failure. Easier to not try than it is to try and fail, right?
I started an electrical apprenticeship because other people said it was a good idea. It didn’t work out. I only do what I do now because 14 years ago I was looking for a meantime job whilst looking for another apprenticeship and just kind of stayed here.
I started partying as a teenager because everyone else did. Again, just trying to fit in. We all know how that ended up.
Fast-forward to yesterday. I’m sitting in this comfy ass chair at the psychologist’s office. I said to her, “I don’t know who the fuck I am”. The masking in my childhood, the drinking, and drug use combined with the masking in my adulthood, the ADHD-driven low self-worth, and the late diagnosis, all these factors were the perfect shit storm that led to my meltdown at Easter and ultimately the position I found myself in yesterday.
I don’t know who I am, because I’ve never had the confidence to be myself.
It’s fuckin’ sad, and it’s a little terrifying. I’m 34 years old. It’s pretty safe to say that a third of my life is over and I feel like I’m starting from scratch. It’s difficult not to dwell on the past and be annoyed at how much time I have wasted, but that won’t serve me well. Instead, I need to try to be grateful that I was diagnosed at all. Grateful that I hit rock bottom and used that opportunity to get sober. Grateful that I went to the psychologist yesterday and had the realisation that I had because now, albeit about 20 fucking years late, I can start living the life I want, hopefully.
But what is that? What is the life I want? What do I want it to look like and how do I get there?
It’s one of those things where I don’t think the first answer that pops into my head is going to be the correct answer. Like my good mate,
always says, it's a case of firing hundreds of lead bullets and not trying to find a silver one. There is no one simple fix and I feel like I'm on the right path. But those ingrained traits of my childhood and adult life while I was drinking still linger. Even though I'm trying to improve myself incrementally each day, I'm constantly second-guessing and doubting myself.I just need to keep backing myself to have a go at the things I want to try. But I have this irrational fear of the unknown. It’s just in my nature to be scared of what I don’t know. I think it’s human nature to a degree. What if I don’t like my new self? What if I don’t like who I am? Fucking ridiculous, I know. But these are the thoughts that cross my mind.
What if the people who matter to me don’t like who I become as I grow through my sobriety? What if my colleagues don’t like who I become? In theory, only positives should come from my working on improving myself, but the road isn’t guaranteed to be smooth. I have to fuck up to learn. That’s difficult. No one wants to fuck up. No one tried to fuck up. Accepting that you need to fuck up can be difficult.
In the same breath, there is a sense of opportunity. I am somewhat in control of where I go from here. I feel like in a lot of ways I am starting with a clean slate. Being sober and doing the psychological work I have been doing and continue to do, maybe I have more control of my destiny than ever before and that is as exciting as it is scary. I guess I’m just scared because I’ve fucked up so many times in the past. But we have to be willing to fuck up to grow. That’s how we learn. It’s about changing our perceptions of a fuck up from demonising ourselves for them to understanding they are a necessary part of the growth process.
I was inspired by a blog I read recently by
where she said "if something scares you, do it." It's a mindset I want to be more conscious of moving forward. I want to force myself to do things I'm scared of doing so that they're not so scary anymore. When we face our fears, we rid them of their power, and that free's us from their control.It’s a work in progress, it always will be. I’ll never be finished because the moment you think you are finished you stop growing.
Bit of a brain dump today. Just trying to process and understand how I’m feeling. Hope you got something out of it.
Cheers Wankers.
X.
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"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary". - Steve Jobs.
Love it.
Knowing who you are and being comfortable with who you are is the dream right? I think we have to be content with constantly finding out more about ourselves and being comfortable with how we pursue that goal.
There will always be unknowns and we have to be comfortable with that, and the process/journey is more important than the outcome/destination in my opinion. What do you think?
As a side note, I remember watching an interview with Lance Armstrong and I was amazed at how comfortable he was with 'cheating' and 'lying' throughout his career. I almost admired how content he was within himself... I didn't necessarily admire him, but I could sense the comfort he had in talking about his motivations.
I've seen it many times but in more noble situations. When amidst a group of people ragging on someone for doing a certain activity, somebody pipes up and says they do the same thing. They are comfortable with who they are and what they do, and it eviscerates the power the group had in their mocking.
I've felt it with my journey through R4R and as the mental health landscape has changed. Being comfortable with my struggles has allowed me to be proud of overcoming them, and in return, it's actually reduced the weight those struggles hold.