🥃 Sobriety Diary # 2: What do I want my life to look like?

Some days I find my self asking "why did I actually quit drinking?" - I think I was sincere in my decision, but every so often it feels like I was just trying to "be different" or feel morally superior, and that I didn't actually mean it.

I hate it when imposter syndrome creeps into my personal life - stay in the workplace where you belong!

Getting a little navel-gazey for a second, I think I just wasn't happy with who I was.

Let me be clear - I was and still am incredibly happy with so many parts of my life. Em and Theo are the greatest two people on the face of the earth, and I'm so damn lucky to get to spend so much time with them! We've got a beautiful home, I've got a steady job that I enjoy and that (I think) I'm good at, I'm generally pretty healthy and I've got a great support network of family and friends around me.

And maybe that's all part of it. I have all these amazing things in my life, and so much of my brain power was focused on drinking, on numbing, on not feeling my feelings. I was missing out on all of those incredible things.

And I think I just didn't wanna miss out any more.

It ties into the same mindset that led me to throw my Instagram out the window - I wasn't living in the moment. I don't think I was stuck in the past, or waiting for the future, but was rather off in some theoretical parallel timeline.

"God, I'd love a drink right now."

"This would be great with a beer."

"I feel like a cocktail would just let me relax."

It felt like the same sort of escapism that comes with scrolling facebook - seeing ads and content that has little-to-nothing to do with you, but since you're told it's curated for you, you try to make associations and see how focusing on it would "improve" your life.

I don't know if any of this is accurate. But hey, this is my blog, I can be inaccurate if I want to. And, to be honest, it's just for me to try and work out what I'm feeling and why.

I'm happy I quit drinking, even if I can't quite put my finger on why. Obviously, there are physical and mental health benefits. But I think it just falls back onto a hope that I'll like myself a little bit more.

And that seems like a good enough reason.