Funky day.

I sometimes struggle with how much to share on here for fear of judgement. I am human after all.

I struggled today. Not physically, just inside my head…and let’s be honest, that is really where all my struggles originate from. It was nice out today…like “have-a-cocktail-at-the-grain-bin” nice.

I got home from a long day of working on my computer to the sun shining on my face while I watched the dogs frolic in the yard. It’s basically my own little piece of heaven. And I thought to myself that it would be really nice if we grilled out and had a couple beers on the deck tonight.

And had it stopped there, it would have been fine.

Instead I went in to a three hour freak out session about how I was freaking out about it. It started pretty innocently; just that it crossed my mind that a cocktail would be nice but then escalated in to “I won’t be able to have only one or two and then I wouldn’t go to yoga and then I wouldn’t get anything done tomorrow and I would start this cycle all over again” and wah wah wah wah.

By the time Dale got home from work two hours later, I had worked myself up in to a full-on pity party. I could hardly get myself up to take our “spring stroll” around the gardens to look for signs of life. It’s like I had already had the drink, gotten drunk, went to bed, woke up with a hangover and felt guilty about it.

All I did was think about it for Christ’s sake.

I knew right then I had to make a decision, so I 5-4-3-2-1’d my ass and drove myself to yoga.

Even there I was still consumed by what might happen in 9 days. It’s the strangest thing to feel like there is a deadline and that I’ll be presented with this weird decision making process over a beer on the deck.

It’s exhausting.

And it’s fucking 9 days away.

Jesus H. Christ, get a grip Katy.

But, luckily, yoga did exactly what I needed it to do; cleared my head; a reset if you will.

Here’s the thing, I don’t know what 9 days from now will bring AND I have no reason to think that whatever it is will be bad. It might be totally easy and innocent and different. And if it isn’t, then I have all of these 90 days to look back on and decide if it’s important to me or not.

Duh.

But, here’s the other thing, this could be about ANYTHING. For me, I can get myself in to a frenzy about a lot of things; work, money, relationships, weight, parenting…basically life. And while this journey has allowed me to address my drinking specifically, it isn’t really about that at all.

It’s about the fear.

At the bottom of all of the shit we wade through on a daily basis, any negative feeling we have is ultimately about fear.

The fear of:
loss or the lack of security,
or failure,
or judgement,
or success,
or whatever your little heart desires.

I have found when I get in to these cyclones of despair, two things work: yoga and asking myself, “what’s the worst that could happen?” No decision I make is going to hurt anybody and no one will die if I fail at a task.

It’s been interesting to write about this, but also so therapeutic. There is a certain amount of fear that goes along with being so vulnerable. But it’s only the fear of judgement and while I love all of you, this is not about you. This is about me and my life and my story. And whether I write about it or not, it’s still floating around in my head to deal with.

I have felt so grateful for those of you that have reached out to me with your encouraging words and gestures. And because of you, I have to believe there are a few of you that don’t feel the need to connect but have found something here to relate to.

If you’ve stuck with me all these weeks, thank you.

If it weren’t for you, I’d have been slamming margaritas at the grain bin tonight.

For real.