Last Wednesday was one of those days that slowly but surely grated on my nerves by the end of the day. It was subtle, but by nearly 10 pm when I was driving home from choir practice, I felt as if my emotions had been rubbed raw. I felt really “crabbyassed” as my friend calls her 9 year old when she's having a bad day. As I passed the 7-11 on the corner I felt the old temptation to grab a very large bag of chips and do some serious eating with the molars that were clenched in a rigor mortis-like grimace. Invariably I have this craving driving home from choir. It’s something about the stress of a choir director who is talented and trying in equal measure and the other (I kid you not) 120 people in the room! Instead, I kept my hands tight on the wheel (do I have a car that magically wants to turn into the 7-11?) and when I got home five minutes later grumped about my day to Fuzz, but not too much to because he was still doing work on his laptop. He works so hard I don’t feel like I can lay too much on his plate. So I started brewing some chai for us. It's still consuming something, but I substitute the urge to eat into a more benign track.
I like it done chai-wallah style, where the tea is boiled with the milk, making a strong, spicy, sweet brew where the milk mysteriously never seems to curdle despite if I forget it and let it boil too hard. Stick to the bottom of the pot, maybe, but doesn’t curdle. I wonder if there’s something in the tea, like the tannins, that does it?
Then I started folding the laundry Fuzz had started,while I called my friend M just to talk about the new policeman on Law & Order. I caught the chai before it had boiled down too much, added more water, fetched us our usual two small bars of dark chocolate, and watched the rest of the show with Fuzz. By the time I hauled my very tired butt to bed, I felt better, likely due to a combination of being able to vent a bit to Fuzz and M, make the chai, watch one of my favorite shows, and make up a basket of well folded laundry. Self comforting, my shrink calls it. In ways other than consuming that party sized bag of chips.
Another thing that got to me was a meeting earlier in the day with my OA sponsee. I’m very worried about her. She’s white knuckling it through a week of abstinence, but boy, it’s a tough slog. Her health is really bad and she has to lose a significant amount of weight for it to improve. But she’s not making it any easier on herself, isolating big time and while she can make it to the minimum amount of work necessary and to church, she isn’t going to meetings. Her recovery is tenuous. But then, it may have to be this. She’s lonely and unhappy. Maybe it's a good thing that she’s freaking miserable. That makes a good bottom, and maybe this is the one that is going to make the recovery start to stick. She’s talking a lot of rubbish, but I don't try to interject with advice. I’m not one of those sponsors who “save” their sponsees from their self made prisons just to live in one of my construction. I’ve seen sponsors do this and frankly, while it may work temporarily, I don’t think it usually has a lasting benefit. They may seem like our children, but they are not. They are thinking adults who have a streak of self-destructive insanity. Despite my best co-dependent adult child of alcoholic intentions, I have to let her follow her own path. That's not easy. It's wearing, frankly.
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