One year

My sobriety date is January 9th 2015, which makes today my one year AA birthday. It is very hard to believe it has been a year.. in part because I am still baffled by the fact that I am sober. I wonder if other people are too.

Last year I stopped drinking the weekend before the Spring semester started because at that point I couldn't hide it anymore. My hands would shake constantly.. and not just my hands, my legs, and even my face would twitch. I had almost zero short term memory.. I constantly repeated stories to people because I honestly couldn't remember telling them. I kept losing words and switching them out when I spoke.. it was a mess. Over the past month or so I have been remembering all these things. I remember drinking in my car at my parent's house before going in.. hoping it would help the shakes. I remember drinking in my car in the church parking lot because I didn't think I could drive sober (I couldn't.. I would get disoriented). I should have probably been in the hospital again because my blood pressure was crazy high when I stopped drinking.. but I didn't have any time left, and I had gone so many times before.

I got my chip today at the women's meeting.. it's nice that it fell on the same day. My sponsor gave it to me.. and they did the usual "Tell us how you did it" thing and I didn't have much to say.. just that I remember learning about "yets" before coming to AA. I think I learned it in reference to eating disorders.. but you never say "I never did... " because really it is I haven't YET. There's always that possibility.. and I had started doing all those yets.. the day drinking, the driving after drinking, the hiding alcohol.. so many things.. and honestly I feel like by the time I stopped it was very much a life or death decision. Other people said things.. and I cried.. a lot. I put some people in that room through a great deal of pain by relapsing over and over. One woman even said that someone had told her that I wasn't going to get it.. not going to get the program. Apparently, I did, and that person didn't.. not sure who she was talking about. I remember going to a meeting last week and having someone tell my sponsor I was a walking miracle.. he had been around a lot when I was still going to 1-2 meetings a day and then drinking every night.

I spent the day with my sponsor.. in part because I had a little breakdown after the meeting (not going into that now), so she had me come home with her. Also because at some point she and my other good friend in the program had talked about (not sure who came up with the idea) getting tattoos when i was a year sober. I remember her saying something around the time I got my 6 month chip. I didn't know if that would happen.. but she texted me a couple days ago that I had better have the day off because they had the appointment at the tattoo parlor for today. They wanted to know if I would get one too (their treat), and I settled on this.. my sponsor got a quote, and my friend got a semi colon (if you look up semi colon project that will make sense).. I spent the afternoon deciding and this was something I had seen a while ago. I considered various quotes, but I didn't really want words. I have wanted a phoenix for a while.. I like the idea of rebirth and starting over.

So excuse my fat back and the weirdly posed picture (it's hard to take a photo of your own back).It didn't hurt very badly. I had been nervous because I was a bit nauseous because of anxiety over going and the fact that my sponsor insisted I eat beforehand.. and that was honestly as big a source of anxiety as the tattoo. I hadn't eaten anything since 4am, so she was probably right to make me.. Anyway.. it's late and I have typed this all out twice because blogger on my phone froze and I lost the whole thing, so I'm going to bed.