On Thursday I leave for my cruise with my husband. I am going to be starting a new abstinence program when I get back, and as part of that abstinence program I am going to have a new OA birthday. So essentially I am going to be starting over again.
Which is wonderful, because it is a fresh start. But it also is awful because I worked hard these past months staying abstinent. After a discussion with my husband I decided to say "screw it" and just eat that french fry. Except I couldn't do it. I thought about trying to drink soda, but I couldn't do that either.
The thought of how painful the withdrawal from those items was stopped me. No amount of enjoyment is going to be worth adding that pain onto the pain I'm going to be feeling when wheat and sugar is taken out of my diet.
Previously I thought it was the chip that kept me honest. For years I used to lie to myself and say I ate healthy. I took great care of myself. I exercised all the time and almost never ate junk food. Any time I ate junk food or didn't go to the gym, I told myself it was an aberration. That wasn't the normal - it was just that one day.
The thing about abstinence is that "just that one day" means you are now in the zero to twenty-nine days abstinent category. Whenever I really wanted to break abstinence, I thought about that and stopped - because it meant starting over again. It meant that all my prior hard work and good behavior meant nothing.
But even though I'm starting over, I still couldn't do it. Because even though my life is a mess and what I'm doing now isn't working - it's still better than what my life was before. I just couldn't do it.
