So…we meet again! I knew it’d happen. How is everyone doing!? Hopefully well, happy, and healthy! I can’t believe we are in the home stretch… Q3! Baseball playoffs, football, and halloween, I AM IN! Literally the best time of the year. If you are a summer person, enjoy Florida. Just kidding, I like Florida, I just like seasons better.
Since I last posted we have gotten the pleasure of traveling south, aka the great Flint Hills road to Wichita, not once but twice. I absolutely love that drive. Finally got to meet baby Journey, the newest addition to two of my very good friends, I could not be happier for you guys! She is absolutely precious. Helped throw my cousin and boyfriend a gender reveal party. We did a “Motorcycles or MakeUp” theme, utilizing the soon to be dad’s new bike for the big reveal. Blue won the race that day but damn. Trying to shove blue-dyed, cornstarch into a circular exhaust that is parallel to the ground, without getting blue powder all over the newly poured white concrete was challenging, to say the least. We had blue EVERYWHERE. Luckily, thanks to some helpers, the soon to be parents, and hopefully most everyone in attendance was still surprised!! Congrats to my cousin and boyfriend, I am so happy for the two of you! Lastly, I made it to my 20 year class reunion, yes…20. How did that even happen?! One minute I am grounded from going to Friday night football games because I broke curfew, yet again, and am laying in a lawn chair in my parent’s drive-way, listening to the football game from a block away. To driving to my 20 year class reunion and ending the evening off by texting my mom that I would be home late because we were out past midnight. Wow, younger me did not see that coming.
This time, last October 2021, I had actually started feeling more and more like my old self. I was also seeing my body making progress to heal itself. Which was amazing if you saw me while I was in them trenches! For example, my belly button went back in! Some of you may be confused, or wondering what the hell I am talking about; let me elaborate. With cirrhosis sometimes comes ascites, which is fluid build up from your liver not removing the toxins like it should, your belly button sometimes extends out from said fluid, which causes your button to pop out like a damn turkey plug. Speaking of turkey, Thanksgiving is literally next month! Holy shit. Slight side bar but back to it. My MELD-ometer back then was down to like 17 or so, HUGE improvement from 32 in May of 2021. I was feeling so much better and I needed something to occupy all my spare time outside of my 9-5. Which was more like 9-8 because I was slinging health insurance over the phone from my dining room. I did not love that job but it was a job and I needed one. After a lot of hesitation I also started Uber driving as a “side hustle”. Like inflation on literally everything, medical bills are a real bitch, let me tell you. I needed a new routine, an outlet and extra income. I needed somewhere and something to do after work, that didn’t involve me sitting in my recliner, or going to the movies. Uber driving was something I had to do sober, it took a tank of gas, and I could be social. Uber-Trifecta for the win! And…I lived for those convo’s. Uber driving played a big part in my recovery, at the time, because it provided an opportunity when I needed it. I got to talk to people, be out and about with a purpose, and no one was asking me what I was drinking, or why.
In comparison as always, here we are, fall of 2022. Still booze-free and alive, yay! Recently I had something happen that I really never thought would ever happen again. I had to pee outside. That’s right, I had to pop a squat. If you are trying to find an answer as to why, and guessed Kansas bonfire, you’d be right! I hadn’t been to a bonfire party, in the country, in probably 20 years. If you’ve never been to a bonfire before there is most certainly never a bathroom, so, you have to pop a squat. You either need your boyfriend to keep watch for you, or you need your girlfriends to all go together. It’s a mission. You have to work in a buddy system like in the 1995 classic, “Heavyweights”, where Lars just yells..BUDDY, to the kids while they are learning to swim. So here I am, trying to pee, holding on to a car door with the window rolled down, listening to my boyfriend playing gentle river streams on his iPhone to try and coax me out of my stage freight. On the third try I finally peed, I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to fall over. Used to be, if we were out to dinner I would order a club soda with lemon because I was self-conscious about requesting non-alcoholic options, by the way, club soda by it’s self is just not sexy, you know what I mean?! It’s like the equivalent of ordering a well vodka shot. No one wants that. Now when I go out, I openly ask the server and/or bartender if they make mocktails, when applicable of course, while the boyfriend still enjoys a draft beer or an old fashioned, once in a while. The BF, is also in advertising, if he drank more I would call him Don Draper. Luckily, he is one of those “normies” that can actually enjoy a drink without the possibility of ruining his entire life, so, Richard it is. Zobi turned 6 last weekend and I totally forgot. I felt awful. I remember every year but this year has just flown by it completely slipped my mind. I legit felt like the mom in “Sixteen Candles”. Zobi did get a field trip to the dog park, new balls and treats, no Jake Ryan with a cake though, tough breaks, her beloved peanut butter will have to do.
These past few months have felt like adulthood, without the training wheels. Experiencing a happier, healthier and alcohol-free life is such a gift I never knew I needed or wanted. That might sound sappy, or lame, or whatever, because it goes against the general norms of a society that encourages and promotes drinking, and in most all scenarios. Because let’s be honest, drinking is fun, if it wasn’t, people wouldn’t do it all the time. What alcohol companies don’t show you as often, or ever, are the consequences of excessive drinking, and it’s the direct opposite of fun. I am still surrounded, drive by, or in contact with alcohol every day. I don’t expect alcohol to ever become illegal or banned, nor do I think it should be. If you want to have a drink , who am I to tell you not to. Or judge you because you choose to. Not everyone deals with the same struggles. I do however, believe that there is a lot more to having fun than just drinking, being drunk and blacked out, most weekends or in my case, the majority of my previous life. I can’t even begin to count the amount of money I have wasted, and memories I have blurred, because of one too many vodka presses, or bottles of wine. I personally had to learn the hard way that alcohol isn’t always good for you or to you, but because I had to learn, I eventually found out that booze-free Brawley is actually the better version of myself, and the person I think I was always meant to be.
Today, love life like Mac loved life, that’s what I’m gonna keep doing anyway! Hasta my friends, take care and stay tuned!