Inhale the goodshit. Exhale the bullshit. 

Finding peace. Finding inspiration and grace. Learning to love myself.  

I've been sober for 17 days today. 

This transformation is multi-faceted.  I am seeking sobreity- sobreity of the mind and body.  I want to get rid of the shit inside me.  All the bad stuff.

I'm in a treatment program for the first time in my life and I have to say that it is hard as hell to let some of the bad energy given off by some of the people in there blow past me.  There seem to be a few there that have some motivation to stay sober, but most are there to find other addicts to party with or fuck. 

I am there because I sought help for my addiction to alcohol. When I go on binges, I am careless. I don't care what I put in my body, who I end up in bed with, how I get home, or what the next morning will be like.  

That is not me. I want to live an authentic life and feel good about myself and my life again. 

Part of sobreity, for me, is to focus not only on my "thinking problem", but also to take care of my body and push myself to my limits.  

I have been the "fat girl" most of my life.  It started in about 4th grade and middle school was pure hell. I wore anywhere from a 14-18 in high school.  When I started college, I was probably around 215-220 pounds.  My sophomore year of college is when I started losing a lot of weight, but I was also partying and working at a restaurant a lot.  In less than a year, I lost 50 poundsd and weighed about 145 pounds at age 21.  After I quit that job and moved out west, the weight slowly started coming back on again. 

Then I got pregnant. And I wasn't even sure who the dad was, really.  I had a guess, but I couldn't be sure.  But I was able to stay sober through that pregnancy.  When I went into labor, I weighed about 230 pounds. I still hate looking at the pictures the days after my daughter was born. 

6 weeks later, I had only lost about 13 pounds, and 8 pounds of that was the baby. 

I stayed fat for a few months, until I started working at another restaurant as a server at a fancy restaurant and wine bar. I started drinking a lot after my shifts with coworkers and people at the bars across the street I had come to know.  It wasn't long before I was putting my daughter second to my addiction. This makes me sad. 

I went back to school a few months later in another city and finished by BFA in 2012. My daughter was 2. I had lost some weight and was probably sitting around 185/190, but I didn't own a scale and my pants fit, so that was fine with me. 

Enter in professional life: I moved to the biggest city in my state after graduation as a single young mom with my first salaried position. Met some people, went to the bars when my kiddo went to visit grandma. It was fun at first. Men noticed me. Nothing too terrible happened. Sure, lots of regrets, but nothing dangerous. Many hangovers. 

The night I turned 26, I went out with a few friends for cocktails. After we parted, I went to a bar by myself (an old habit that never leads to anything good). I barely remember signing my name on the credit card slip before I blacked out. I have one flash of a memory of being in a red car with a few guys I've never met before.  We ended up at an apartment in the south side of town.  I don't really know what happened there, but I was awake for a few hours.  I remember I played the guitar and hummed a song. The next morning, I woke up in a futon, naked, next to a guy I've never seen before. He was probably 5 years younger than me, and at least 6 inches shorter than me.  I lost my shoes. My phone was dead; I was 3 hours late for work and I missed a telephone interview at Target corp. for a position I was interested in. When I walked out of that apartment buiding, I didn't know where I was and hadn't been in that part of the city much before.  I flagged a cab and got a ride back to bar where my car was parked. 

I sent a sad email to my boss and said I needed the day off. The next day, I opened up to him on a walk to the coffee shop near our office.  I told him I am an alcoholic and that I was going to stop drinking.  And I did. For eleven months. I also started exercising for the first time in my life.  It took a few months for me to "get it"-- I really had to change my eating my habits.  MyFitnessPal and FitBit helped a ton. I quickly lost 15 pounds in just 3 months.  I felt wonderful. I had a great group of people in AA I was started to get closer to. I was such a great mom, too. Our weekends were packed with adventure, new activities. I had a ton of energy. That summer was one for the books. Farmers market every weekend, playgrounds, waterparks, walks in the woods. 

In that time period, I changed jobs and didn't have anyone holding me accountable. I was quick to relapse. 

A 2 month relapse, a bad relationship, barely functioning. Kicked out the boyfriend, got back into AA, and stayed sober again. 

In that two months of sobreity, I applied for a job in the city where my kid's dad lives. He had recently come back into the picture and things were looking very positive. I got the job instantly. I grew a huge ego. 

Ego is my downfall. Maybe because it's because I was teased incessantly as a kid for being overweight, and now, as an adult, I've been somewhat successful.  I've done great work, worked with great clients, great employers.  As soon as I start believing that I'm the fucking shit, my life goes to shit. 

Maybe I was just setting myself up for relapse.  I quit exercising shortly before I relapsed after my long period of sobreity due to a lower back injury. I was still being cautious of what I was eating and I didn't gain any weight until the fall. 

But it came on FAST. After I moved and started the new gig, I relapsed.  I was so ungodly hungover on my second day at the new gig. The third day, I went out to my old hangout and continuously drank until the bar closed.  I had hoped the bartender, whom I have had a crush on and some history with, would take me home that night.  I am so disgusting!  He denied me; I felt bad about msyelf. I felt fat and ugly and undesirable.

So I got in my car and drove down the highway to the old city where my apartment still was, 2 hours away.  I was to move into my new house in the city in a few weeks, but had to start the new job before that.  I made it more than halfway before I kept falling asleep, and waking up to my car barreling through the ditch dividing the highway.  I couldn't stay awake; I was so drunk and so tired. I just wanted to go home. I finally gave up and let myself just fall asleep. I woke up to a voice telling me to get out before I died.  I took off my seatbelt, and plunked down.  It was then I realized I was upside down in my car and that I had been in an accident. My body tingled everywhere. My teeth felt like they were by my eyeballs. 

I crawled out through the smashed window and saw my car upside down in the left driving lane. I walked over toward the semi truck as the semi truck driver called the accident in. As soon as I got to the shoulder, another vehicle slammed into my car.  My knees gave out as I witness this and I honestly thought I had killed somebody. Miraculously, the guy got out of his car like he was going to the grocery store.  After he was off to the side, another crashed slowly into his car.  That driver was also fine and his car had little damage. 

I got arrested, went to the hospital.  I called my grandma and said I was ready to go to treatment for my addiction. 

I wasn't ready though. Even after all of that. It took a few more nights of misery and self-hatred for me to really be ready.  

Exercise and healthy eating helps me in so many ways to stay sober. I have to get healthier so that I can stay completely, wholefully healthy-- which means sobreity. I don't want to put alchohol into a body that I am working hard to maintain. It's counterproductive.  I also need to lose weight fast because none of my pants fit me anymore. It is so sad that I wasted all of that work last year just to be back right to where I was, even worse. It's not going to happen again.