Or in my case TWO!

Two days off of work due to snow!

(Can you tell I’m excited?)

I don’t usually appreciate getting texts at 4:49 AM, but in the case of MoCo telling me I don’t have to get out of bed, I’m totally okay with it.  I’m a little sad that the library is holding my next Percy Jackson book hostage, but really, if the library was open, then the schools would be open, and I would be at work, and I wouldn’t have the book anyway, so, it’s not like I’m really loosing out.

In certain cases, perspective really does matter.

Yesterday I trudged (yes, trudged, my sock had fallen in my boot and was rubbing the hell out of my heal) through the melting ice to the grocery store, because I wanted to make soup.

There are only 2 months when it would even be possible for me to know what the inside of a grocery store looks like on a Monday at 11:00 AM, and December isn’t one of those months.  What I saw was this: many senior citizens, and a lot of moms with school-aged children.  The senior citizens ignored me, but every few minutes one of the moms would give me the stink eye.  I guess my relaxed and unshowered demeanor gave away the fact that I had less work for the very same reason that they had more.  Had any of the moms asked me to explain why I felt so justified in being happy, I would have simply replied: “Ma’am, I’m sorry you have an interruption to your routine, I can sympathize, but I won’t apologize for being overjoyed that I can stay home today and make soup and drink cinnamon tea and work on my knitting.”

But it isn’t just randos at the store.  When I don’t work it is harder for my roommate to work.  She works from our living room.  I usually leave in the morning before she wakes up and I don’t come home in the evening until she’s done.  But when I have a weekday off, then I’m here: making noise, competing for bandwidth, using the toilet paper.  (Seriously, over the summer when I didn’t work we went through so much more toilet paper it was crazy!)   I don’t try to be in her way, but people being what they are and space being what it is, my presence is a significant change to her daily routine.  (Plus, I practice my scream therapy in my room.  Maybe that is a bit distracting for her?)

Some things are yes or no, black or white, right or wrong.  And other things just happen, and what they are depends on who you are.  I hate the moral relativism that directly results from purely emotional anecdotal argument; everyone has a friend, or an uncle, or a loose connection to whatever misfortune/poor choice you want to advocate for.  When someone starts a sentence “As a parent…” or “As a teacher…” or “As a wombat…” I immediately stop listening to them.  I want to reply “As Andrea, I don’t care.” no matter what they happen to be saying.  It’s a struggle for me to remember that they way people see things based on their experience actually matters in their understanding.

A few weeks ago I ended up telling two teachers and a parent at school that I’m a recovering alcoholic in what was probably the worst way possible.  In other circumstances I wouldn’t have told them at all, and the way it happened left me feeling vulnerable and horrified the next day.  I was so distracted that I walked to the mile and half to the grocery store in 30 degree weather without my debit card and ended up having to have the checker cancel the whole thing and running out of the store in tears.  (Am I the only one concerned by how many of my stories have to do with the grocery store?)  As time went on I kept thinking about what was making me so upset?  I wasn’t worried that these people were going to tell everyone and suddenly I would be the subject of gossip and scandal.  I wasn’t worried that it would put my job in danger; my Assistant Headmaster knows and doesn’t seem to think it affects my work.  I wasn’t even worried that these 3 people might think poorly of me.

What I came to was this: information enlarges experience, and experience deepens understanding.  The more information about myself that I give to others, the greater our experience is between one another.  And the greater that mutual experience, the more then will I understand them and in turn be understood by them.  I will become more real to them and they will become more real to me.

When another person is real you can’t ignore the snow day scenario.

When I was first sober Fridays were my worst days at work. 

At my old job, which I hated, and by Friday I was so worn out by all the stupid shit I had to do and put up with that I had no energy left.  The only way I would make it through Friday was knowing that I could start drinking before the sun went down and there would be no immediate consequences, as Saturday was reserved for sleeping, and then more drinking.  Yup, alco-logic is stunning.  So the first few months of sobriety were rough all around, but Fridays were just brutal.  I was miserable all day and then basically went home to white-knuckle it until Saturday morning, when everything looked a lot brighter.  Friday, the great reward to everyone else, was to me the great chasm of misery.

Things got better when I started teaching, because when I got home from work on Fridays I would cry for about 17 minutes and then fall asleep until Sunday afternoon.  I was too tired to be depressed, or think about drinking.   

I was sitting in adoration this evening and that feeling started to creep up on me again.  Not the “I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to make it through this day without a drink” but rather the “well, shit, there is silence waiting for me at home, and this week has kind of sucked” feeling.  It made me think of those other Fridays, those nights that seemed so empty that I would just get lost in them and fear I would never find my way out.

Friday is the day I feel my single-ness most acutely.  The weekend is fine, I’ve got more than enough shit to do.  Work nights are fine, as there is always more work to do.  I feel most single on Friday not because I want to go out, not because of some cliche of youth that demands I be compiling stories and perpetuating my sleep-deprived state.  No, it’s because on Friday night I just want someone to take care of me.  I want someone else to make me dinner.  I want someone to choose which episode of Doctor Who to watch.  I want someone there to hug me, refill my coffee cup, and help me make a grocery list.  It’s the time when I am honest enough to admit that I would like another human being to love me enough to care for me and that I wished I loved another human being enough to let him do that.  I make decisions for other people all day all week long; I direct everything and that’s exhausting.  But between the end of work and bedtime on Fridays, that exhaustion takes on a more emotional life than it does any other time.

But it’s a fantasy.  Like always, an image I’ve built in my head makes me unhappy about something that I don’t have.  I don’t have a perfect man who attends my every need without any sacrifice on my part, because no one has that.  It isn’t real.  When I am married it will be to someone who also worked all week, who also has concerns and difficulties, who may at times need my support more than I need his.  

I must constantly ask myself if what is making me unhappy is a real misfortune, or just a projected desire to be the only thing that matters.

(2 Years, 2 Months and 16 Days Sober)