Thursday, April 12: Are we waiting for some sort of magical sign or something?

I sent the following email to Charlie yesterday afternoon:

Dear honey,
Is it too soon for me to pick up some lovely Harp for my place?

Charlie thought that we should forge ahead, that not enough time had passed yet. The whole thing was feeling fairly arbitrary to me, and so I asked him how on earth we were supposed to know once enough time had finally passed. Are we waiting for some sort of magical sign or something? Charlie suggested we have a conversation about the where's and when's of 're-entry', though of course being a grown adult I could choose to take his recommendation or not. Well, I chose to stick with it simply because he's the one who offered to do it with me when I thought it seemed like the thing to do.

I said all right, then I'm going to get my hair chopped, which I did. One haircut later, I was down four inches and driving home feeling the call of the Harp. I managed to keep my car from driving to the store and instead went home to worry about asbestos and whatever bugs seem to be biting me there. But I tell you, a beautiful Harp sounded lovely yesterday. Then, as I was cleaning out the kitty litter I got to thinking...what's the point of going through life making oneself suffer needlessly? If a wee Harp would taste good, calm my nerves and relieve my stress, why not? I can see not drinking it each and every single day, but come one. My mom usually has a drink or two a day, in general. I think that's normal.

Ten days seems pretty good to me. Do I have something more to prove? I think this may go back to the Buddhist differential between Charlie and me. Now I've actually begun to think that he might have a problem -- Charlie might be addicted to going without.

Monday, April 9 Part II: The Asbestos situation is really getting to me.

The catastrophizing goes something like this:

• I'm worried about my cats, what if they actually ate some crumbled bit of asbestos?
• And what of my bedroom upstairs...I had carpeting installed over some other 'possibly' asbestos tiles. What if the little tack strips they use for carpeting went through the tiles and are now acting as an upwards dry asbestos conduit sprinkling system, filling both the cats and my lungs with tiny hazardous bits of asbestos while we sleep?
• And the attic storage area, right next to my bedroom is filled with insulation which some squirrels ripped and tore apart when they got in through a hole in my roof before I had it fixed. I need to clean that area up, but what if that old insulation is asbestos as well?  It probably is -- I certainly can't go in and vacuum up a bunch of torn apart asbestos fibers, I may as well find a pile of asbestos and roll around in it.
• And what if that insulation was asbestos -- what about those poor little squirrels -- what will happen to them?  Are they okay?
• When I was originally mopping that floor in the basement and the tile went skidding across the floor, I also mopped up a bunch of peeling paint from the wall, noting that with my luck it would probably wind up being lead based paint. What if it IS toxic lead based paint? My Jimmy cat eats everything. What if Jimmy has eaten some bit of lead based paint!
• I have been sniffling and sneezing A LOT, and my eyes and throat burn. Is it allergy season or is it the asbestos? Maybe when I was in that attic storage area after it was all stirred up and torn apart by the squirrels I got such a heavy concentrated dose of it that it's taking its lethal hold on me already.
• Or maybe the itching and burning in my eyes and throat is due to mold that exists somewhere in the house and I don't even know about it.
• My co-worker is currently testing for radon in her house - is that another thing that I need to be worried about?

They say April is historically a very horrible and tragic month.

Monday, April 9 Part I: Asbestos hell.

Things have been much better. I got through Friday's panic and managed to go to the happy hour event and make it through in one piece. I drank a non-alcoholic beer which was interesting enough, then a diet coke with gigantic plate of Irish fries for good measure. Had another good talk with Chris Saturday morning. He and his fiance both offered up some interesting insights, including the concept of a gaping hole that exists within me that I am constantly trying to fill. Makes sense, I think they're right. The other thing I realized is that I think my great discomfort with all of this was stemming from the alarming nature of having to sit there with all of my thoughts and feelings, with nothing to soothe or temper them. Progressing through Saturday I became comfortable enough with the dark nature of my non medicated psyche to just sit with it. I didn't love it but I did it. Saturday afternoon Charlie and I went to see The Hunger Games, which, I'm sure you can imagine totally helped to get rid of all the dark thoughts.

Sitting with the darkness - okay I can do it, but it's certainly not going to make me happy. I think that's the thing with the alcohol - it makes unbearable things at least tolerable. But now, what to do about the panic?

Speaking of panic, last Tuesday while mopping off the laundry room floor in my new home, I sent one of the floor tiles scuttling off across the room. Upon further inspection, I realized a number of these floor tiles were actually quite loose and so I carefully removed them which was pretty easy as they were barely adhering anymore. Now, I knew there was a chance that these tiles contained asbestos as it's an older house that was built in the 50's. It was really stupid of me to sit there and remove the tiles like that, practically inhaling their contents, and I spent a great deal of my time the remainder of the week panicking about me and my cats and our possible asbestos exposure. I called Charlie to notify him of the situation, informing him that if I do become diagnosed with lung cancer it will most likely be due to those evil asbestos floor tiles and not the ciggies I gave up over a year ago. Upon doing a bit of internet research on the matter, I became really panicked. Turns out, smokers also exposed to asbestos fare even worse, a sort of deadly double whammy situation.

After a couple days spent obsessing about it, I decided to get the damn laundry room tiles tested. I got the results back today and of course they're 7% asbestos. Great.

Well, the laundry room is just one room in a huge basement filled with 'possibly' asbestos tiles. Now what? Encapsulation or removal of an entire basement full of these awful things, how fun and affordable I'm sure. The whole thing is incredibly overwhelming and not something I feel equipped to deal with. If I'm going to die of asbestos exposure anyways, maybe I should enjoy the rest of my days. Not yet.

Friday, April 6: This ridiculous experiment.

Chris is obsessed with defining the exact number of days that this ridiculous experiment is going to last.  Originally he seemed to think we should try it out for a brief period.  Then, he thought it should go into the summer for goodness sakes.  Now he seems dead set on 90 days.  Try it for 90 days, he says.  He said he could tell I was already caving and guesses I might give up as early as tonight.

Well, I didn’t think that was a bad idea either, so after lunch I called Charlie when I took my afternoon walk.  I asked him if he didn’t think that that these nearly five full days were a good enough break and maybe we ought to have a beer or two when we get together with his friends after work for happy hour tonight.  He didn’t think it was a good idea or that enough time had gone by and suggested we proceed as planned.

I agreed to proceed with the plan but it’s really hard.  I’m having a hard time with it.  I’m depressed and anxious and have nothing to look forward to.  Every little thing is stressing me out.  It’s going to be really hard to go there and sit and watch these people have their beautiful drinking times tonight while I will undoubtedly sulk and be miserable.  I’ve briefly considered taking up the ciggies again, since I have nothing now that I’m not drinking.  Charlie pointed out that I have my nicotine gum which I thoroughly enjoy.  He even surmised that I might get more nicotine in my system now with all this gum than I did when I was just smoking the beautiful ciggies.  I explained, quite simply, no.  Besides, I’m only chewing the 2 mg gum, not the 4.

Thursday, April 5: Their beautiful drinks and their beautiful lives.

Things were very bleak yesterday but seem much more hopeful today.  Charlie and I even went out for dinner.  I enjoyed a lovely virgin strawberry daiquiri which would have been a lot lovelier with a little bit of rum.  At first I didn’t think I could go and watch with jealousy as all those other patrons enjoyed their beautiful drinks and their beautiful lives.  How long were we going to try out this non-drinking lifestyle?  I keep getting confused between it being a forever thing and it being just a temporary thing.  Even temporary feels like forever.  Clearly, I’m very depressed and anxious and have been self medicating with the alcohol.  Obviously.

Wednesday, April 4: Buddha drinks water.

Had a doctor appointment today for some stomach troubles I’ve been having.  Evidently my heart hate was a bit high though my blood pressure was a bit low.  After unnecessarily reproaching me for the amount of nicotine gum I consume (which of course I only told her about the first box each week, not the second), the doc asked me about how much water I drink.  I must have responded with some sort of a deer in the headlight look.  How much water did I drink today?  I didn’t really know how to answer that.  Well, I said, I brushed my teeth this morning so I’m sure I had some water after that.  She then asked what I’ve had to drink all day.  I told her I had a Diet Pepsi and she said that didn’t count because of the caffeine.  Then it occurred to me that I did in fact have a glass of water the night before, which I proudly told her, but she commented that I said that as if it were an unusual occurrence.  Would someone choose to drink water?  I choose to drink Pepsi One.  I then found myself suddenly annoyed by Charlie and all his water drinking ways.  He doesn’t even drink it cold, he drinks it room temperature straight out of the tap.  How very Buddhist of him.

Tuesday, April 3: The Buddhist mentality.

I don't have such a good feeling about this anymore.  Woke up with terrible sense of foreboding, gloom and doom.

Chris called me at work to see if day two was off to a good start.  We had a really good conversation about the whole thing and it did make me feel better.  Chris is really good with this stuff and he himself has been good and sober (and happy) since 2007.

Tried to rally myself at work by pulling up a quick article or two on Ryan Adams and his clean and sober life.  Ryan did it and he appears to not wish he was dead.  It's not like I drank half as much as him, probably not even a tenth.  In fact, my drinking was generally quite reasonable, down to just a couple drinks in the evenings, generally speaking, except for Sunday.

Charlie sent me an email at work today explaining how happy he was about the prospect of our new wholesome lifestyle.  He proceeded to use the word wholesome throughout our correspondence the rest of the day which really began to bug me.  Later that evening I finally vocalized my protest to general overuse of the word wholesome, explaining that for me the word draws up unpleasant images of perhaps overtly religious Quaker types who don't drink caffeine or soda and sit around eating hard boiled eggs and raw veggies handpicked from their back yard sanctuaries.

I explained to Charlie that I was having a really hard time dealing with the prospect of having nothing to look forward to anymore.  I already gave up the hard stuff in 2005.  I gave up the ciggies over a year ago, and have been meagerly subsisting on two little 100 piece boxes of the nicotine chewing gum per week.  And now alcohol, the last little coping mechanism I had to cling to, is gone.

He seemed a bit taken aback by the extent of my misery and despair and suggested I embrace the Buddhist mentality by not clinging to things so much.  I got a bit bristly with that, explaining I hate Buddhists because they don’t need anyone or anything and I find that level of detachment impersonal and unsettling.  I want someone to care if I die, and I want to care if somebody else dies.  I made some point about a Buddhist not caring if their dog dies as they merely watch their feelings float off like big, billowy clouds.  He said he thought a Buddhist would care if their dog died.