sojourn to sober

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy BIRTHDAY DEAR MEEEEEE, happy birthday to me. Welcome to my first sober birthday. I was up at 5 am, off to the hospital and worked all day. It seemed like every single person who wished me a joyful spin around the sun told me wanted to know what I was going to drink to celebrate. Uhhhh, well, random person, my plan was to start with grapefruit Perrier and then switch to Sleepytime tea and be asleep by 9:30. Woot woot! I really didn't feel like it, but I decided that since I had a rare evening alone in the house tonight (DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!), I probably should go to a meeting. I don't really have a usual Thursday meeting, so I used my app to find one nearby. It turned out to be a women's meeting in a small church basement 15 minutes from my house. There were about 12 women seated around the table and honestly, many of them looked pretty rough. It smelled like rotting trash and stale cigarette smoke and I had forgotten ...

Fast forward through the last week of work, meetings, parenting, adulting, sleeping, eating and reading every alcoholic to sober memoir I can get my hands on. I've been on the "pink cloud", as they call it in AA. I don't want a drink! I am starting to feel better! I feel free! My skin is less puffy! Then, on the way to my favorite meeting tonight, the 13yo and I have to stop for her Spanish class parent-teacher conference. I get the news: she's failing the class. Oh. In her defense, she struggles with learning and this is an advanced class. But as I sit there, listening to her kind teacher show me homework assignment after assignment that she simply has not completed and therefore has thwarted her ability to pass the class, I feel the old twinge rising. Twinge isn't the right word. Rage. Teeth-clenching, chest-tightening, eye-twitching rage. Rage at her for telling me she's been doing her homework. Rage at myself for a. believing her and b. being a shitt...