Cleaning house, slightly damp

Tonight's therapy was a breakthrough of sorts. For the first time since coming in (4 months or so now), I felt like I am really coming into my own; all the frustration, resentment and plain fear of the past giving way to a "new me". I generally feel less anxious and more optimistic about what lies ahead.

I have made some necessary adjustments in my life, some big and others not so much. I remain sober with no desire to pick up a drink as I know full well the consequences of what that would entail. I know one beer would never be enough and I would risk losing everything important to me in my life. While I do not regret for a minute my time in the program, I am starting to see how truly pejorative the term "dry drunk" really is:

Definition: A colloquial term generally used to describe someone who has stopped drinking, but who still demonstrates the same alcoholic behaviors and attitudes.
Also Known As: Dry, Not Sober

I've been accused by some of being a dry drunk because of my choice not to attend meetings and because they choose to believe the highly inflated stories my ex is telling them. Plain and simple-I made my mistakes, I've owned up to them and I've moved on. I am not an asshole. I stayed in a relationship that was destined to fail by sheer ideological differences alone. The fact that this past August I tried to pick up where things had left off in June only proved that I was an insecure man who wanted the comfort of a relationship, no matter how frustrated I was (when you start lying about family dinner because you wanted to eat meat, you know things are fucked).

I know that AA is there for me, should I choose to enter the rooms again. I will forever be grateful for the guidance given to me and while I can probably count the number of true friends I met in there on one hand, I am grateful for each and every person I came into contact with.

With that said, a benefit of this new phone and number is that I am able to weed out the people I do not interact with anymore. I will say there is a certain amount of shame in deleting people from my Myspace account as well, but let's face it-without the program I'm not how much-if any-I have in common with them.

I am glad I was able to share these thoughts with M. over coffee tonight and look forward to dinner with her on Friday. I am anxious about meeting up with V. tomorrow; he is a great friend, one of my closest, and I fear that my distancing from AA will drive us apart. I can only hope that we can meet as friends and not worry about the other baggage.