Feeling Good, Feeling Fine, How are you?

I guess if I keep saying how thrilled and grateful I am to have readers I will become boring and the readers will go away....

I feel I have to update my post on HALT. I said that I had seriously considered smoking cigarettes. I did not smoke any cigarettes. I didn't buy any, I didn't mooch any, I am not planning to. I don't really want to smoke. I was having a bad week and feeling a bit sorry for myself and the lying part of my mind that is out to get me started telling me "what difference would it make? You can't work out anyway. Maybe you would lose some weight. Maybe you would actually take breaks at work.... etc., etc." All pure crap, and I knew it. It was amazing to me that I would even consider such a thing. But I can be grateful for that today because I didn't need to act on it. I could just say "Wow.... this is stupid." And be grateful that I wasn't romancing a drink the way I was romancing a cigarette. But I took it as a warning sign.

In the last 2 years, I have trained for and finished two triathlons. I just can't even believe this is me saying that. I am going to be 54 years old on December 15. I smoked 2 packs a day for 25 years. I drank like a fish until I was 32 years old. I sat in bars and drank and smoked and for a very long time I thought that was the only way to live.

In 1999, at 15 years of sobriety, I had surgery on my neck. In technical terms, an anterior cervical diskectomy and fusion of C3-4 and C4-5. After that, I never thought I would do much of anything athletic again.

In 2003, I had a horrible break up with the man I wanted to marry. He was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous when we met. After a year together, he started to drink again. For almost a year, he would get sober for a while and then drink again. I had hope every time that he would really get sober. When he showed up at my house drunk and I couldn't get him to leave for 2 days, it was truly over. That weekend I started running. I thought if I didn't do something drastic, I would just die. By August 2004, I actually completed a triathlon. It was so wonderful. In July 2005, I completed another triathlon and got my 26 year old daughter to do it with me!

On August 19, 2005 (two years to the day that the man showed up at my house drunk), I had a pretty bad bike accident and broke a rib. That rib has not wanted to heal and I haven't been able to do much of anything. It has been really hard for me to just sit still and not DO something, but I think I had something to learn.

Just in the last week, I have started swimming and running again. I am so grateful for this. In my first 7 years of sobriety, I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes all day long. I think it was important for me to do that. But now I feel it is important for me to do something else. I am so very grateful that I can.

Thanks for listening to this rambling old thing...