Moving away and moving on from the thought of having a broken, dysfunctional relationship in my life, I’ve noticed something different in the past couple of weeks. Not the obvious things – I was succumbing to an illness by proxy, my life was becoming unraveled by the association, my self-esteem dropped down to floor level, etc., but a weird distinction that I would have never seen coming.
In the past few weeks, I’ve had bouts of nausea, but it was not until last night that I pinpointed it. I can’t take a sip of alcohol without feeling sick.
Stress and association, of course, plays a large part in this. I kinda shrugged off the nausea as being a condition of the break up. But then I started to think about that last month of the relationship, and my health in general. I wasn’t feeling great, period, but I couldn’t really figure out what it was. Watching my ex take a downward spiral into stepping up his drinking, then finding out the addiction problems my niece has certainly played a number on my stress.
In fact, about a month ago when I saw that he was stumbling hard, I had a panic attack at his house. He was there for me, comforted me, and calmed me down. Then he had concern. What would cause it? Do I get them often? I talked a little about it – yes, I’ve had panic attacks before in overwhelming situations. We didn’t really have a long conversation about it, though, and I didn’t specifically correlate it with his drinking at the time.
The other 4 or 5 weekends I spent with him that month, I generally did not feel well. I felt anxious, nervous, and usually had an upset stomach. The feeling would start during the day Saturday, and would eventually dissipate mid-Monday. Perhaps it was the drinking, as I had stepped up my own drinking when around him, but it was obviously a combination of that and the feeling that I was stuck.
In the past 2 weeks, I haven’t had that feeling. I’ve been down, depressed, anxious, angry, and sad. No anxiety attacks, no panic attacks, no general sick feeling – except if I’d had any drinks. It could be that I’ve been overdoing it lately. Maybe my body has been trained to reject alcohol in stressful situations. Or maybe it’s psychosomatic, and the negative association just makes my mind reject it.
It’s probably a good thing. My own history with indulging to excess has been noted. I’ve used alcohol to cope with major events in my life, such as breaking off my engagement, the death of my brother, and the death of my father. I guess that is the main difference between the problem drinker and the alcoholic. I saw that it was becoming a negative factor in my life, and turned it around. Or maybe I saw that dulling the pain dulled all of my other senses, and I really wanted those other senses.
Where I’m at right now is that I’m okay with losing the person I was dating the last month. Looking back at it, it felt like I had broken up with the man I fell in love with and started dating this lousy alcoholic that I really couldn’t stand. The anger that I let out a couple of nights ago was directed at that person, because I didn’t know where the other person went to. I know he’s there somewhere, but he’s not allowed a lot of time out anymore. I’m still feeling good about letting that out, too.
So, I guess I’ll be sober myself for a while. If only I could associate that with smoking, too.
startingoverpastmyprime 