vanity (# 19)

One reason I reached the tipping point with drinking is that I am vain. I am used to looking a certain way–young for my age–but face it, I am almost 46 years old, and I am, gasp, surprise, no shit, aging. Drinking alcohol in any amount does not do me any favors. Dull puffy eyes, more often than not. Dry blotchy skin, Dead hair. It sucks! Especially because I am a woman who truly looks better at 40+ than I did at basically any other age except maybe 4 or 23. I am not, NOT, ready to go gentle into my inevitable decrepitude.

In due course, you lucky readers, you, we will get to all the other reasons why I reached this tipping point (even though the blogosphere likely needs the raisons d’etre of another sober blogger like a waterfront picnic needs more mosquitos). For now, I will provide this much about my drinking life for context.

• I have always been the girl who could not stop once started. Last girl awake at the sleepover, so to speak. I have been decent at simply not starting for big chunks of my life. It’s also true that there have been multiple chunks where I was having sub rosa conversations with myself about whether, maybe, just maybe, I was drinking a little too much, a little too frequently, with a little too much gusto. Watching the bottle a little too closely. (Translation: Like a freaking hawk about to wrest the bottle from you, never mind that my freaking beak is a significant impediment to consumption.)
• I am a high-functioning person with lots of energy. Drinking has not (yet) stopped me from meeting my goals, though it has been dawning on me how much drinking has held me back in various subtle yet serious ways.
• I have not rock-bottomed in the cinematic sense of the term. Not a single soul has ever so much as suggested that I stop drinking, except me (Midwesterners are so polite; I am not from here). I have always been my own harshest critic. Which brings me to . . .
• I have historically been kind of judge-y. Yes, yes, patience, we will talk more about that. What I mean is, there have been times I thought various people in my life were drinking too much. But I have been hypocritical because I also thought that what with me being such a control freak, I could possibly not let such a thing happen to me. Unfortunately, it’s no secret that control freaks are absolutely thrilled to hand over the reins on a temporary basis in exchange for not being such a control freak all the damn time. However, even the freakiest control freak is powerless to transform alcohol from a progressively addictive substance into a harmless holiday weekend of a beverage.
• I am a mother, a professional, and, as of a year ago, a delighted second wife with a delighted second husband.
• I digress. And alliterate abundantly. But I can’t blame alcohol for that.

Back to vanity. About 10 years ago, before I got pregnant with my second child, I started working out consistently for the first time in my life. Like a good little control freak, I have kept that up ever since. I am still in very good shape, but over the past 2 years I have gained about 10-15 pounds. I still look basically ok (to the nonjudgmental eyes of anyone but me) but it has baffled me to see this weight appear out of thin air. Or, well, out of bottles of wine, pints of craft beer, and wee nips of whiskey . . what else you got?

I’m pretty smart and I eat pretty healthy, but for two years, I could not quite work out this very simple equation: All other things being equal, when you drink more over time, you gain weight over time. Then your belly starts sticking out, so that all your pretty skinny-girl clothes fit a bit tighter. Presto change-o, now you are uncomfortable in your own skin and low-level grumpy all day, every day.

Yep, just like everyone else’s mother, I would like to feel less puffy and bloat-gutted. I would like to restore to myself to the place I have lived for most of the last decade, where I felt light and strong all the time. Some people would surely tell me “sorry, but this just is what happens when you get old and perimenopausal.”

Whether that’s true or not, something else is making me disgruntled.  It is realizing deep down that no matter what else I am doing, I am failing my body in one crucial respect by continuing to drink. Drinking may make me feel less grumpy, uncomfortable, and dissatisfied for few hours, but it does not produce the desired effect all the time. In fact it makes everything worse most of the time. If I want to live with myself, and look good doing it, I have to choose the way that works all the time. Drinking won’t get me there.