Day Two, MidMorning

Damn it, Damn it, Damn it! I just got off the telephone with my parents who are trying to decide how many days they will allow me to visit my children at their home. I know I've messed up too many times. I know where they are coming from. I know I can't afford to let anger carry the day. All this I know yet I am still angry. I feel like I have been abandoned. I feel like my mom is getting what she's really wanted all along - my children. And now that papers have been signed (no matter that they are supposed to be temporary) she has less reason to work with me. I might just be paranoid...I don't know. But after I got off the telephone I paced my sister's house then ran into the bathroom and swallowed a capfull of mouthwash. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But I desperately want to have a drink and of course I know where the nearest store to get booze is but not the nearest meeting. It's 10:30 in the friggin' morning and I just want a bit to drink to forget what I am feeling right now, if only for a few hours. Otherwise I fear I will only want to cry and scream all day.

Day Two

There are so many things I have lost to alcohol. Friends, respect of my family, hope for my future. But on August 15, 2009 something happened that I never thought would. That afternoon my sister picked me up from detox where I'd spent five days and took me to my parent's house where I have been living for the past nine months. A Department of Children and Families social worker met me there and gave me two options: say goodbye to my children as they were packed up to foster care or sign over temporary guardianship of them to my mother. I signed. And while she listed all the conditions such as my not being allowed to me alone with my own children, I tapped my foot impatiently because I knew I just needed one more binge. My parents had thrown me out, I was not allowed to stay there. But when they heard I would join my brother and sister early the next morning to go to Atlanta for a few weeks, my mom said in that case just spend the night here. A mom is always a mom, after all. But I didn't. I couldn't. The need for a drink was overwhelming and I had already decided in detox that I was going to drink. Alcohol was threatening to take my children away and there I was the very day I signed the papers, holed up in a hotel room with a twelve-pack of Heiniken. Baffling, no? I sometimes force myself to create a picture in my mind: A bottle of beer on one side, my children on the other....which do I want more? I always say my children but so far that hasn't stopped me from drinking.

Day One

I almost drank today. I tried to distract myself first by playing some computer games. That only lasted a few minutes and I was grabbing the keys off the table and heading out the door. I made it all the way to the store. Made it into the store when I noticed something odd about the cases with the beer and wine and wine coolers. The cases were not lit up from inside like the other non-alcohol containing cases. I walked over and took a closer look. Through the handles of all the coolers with alcohol in them was a long wooden rod. I had forgotten that here in the suburbs of Atlanta you can not buy alcohol on Sundays. I got back into my car and pumped my fist in the air. Yes! I was saved. For today.