writers block

No one would initially guess that there are moments of peace, happiness, and occasions of raucous laughter mixed in with the tears and grief of sobriety.  You never, ever believe that at the beginning.  What they also don't tell you is that the grief feels so much deeper when you're sober, because you're not just grieving the people and things you lost; you're grieving the time you lost.  I've lost most of three years.  If I lost another three, could I wrench myself out of a muddy ditch and toss away the bottle again?  Would I even want to?
I used to be obsessed with keeping track of my memories.  In my mind, everything had to fit into a timeline.  Unfortunately, alcohol makes you forget, once there's enough of it in your system, and especially when it's always in your system.  So, now I have to make lists.  Lists and lists and lists.  I can't put things into order by time, but I can put them together that way.  And I'm constantly counting things now.  I suppose that's pointless, but if you woke up one morning with memories of dreams, believing they really happened, you'd keep lists and time lines too.
Okay, even more disturbing than those bits and pieces is how little I've changed in appearance.  I was looking through pictures on Facebook (urgh), and I look exactly the same as I did five, six years ago.  The only major differences is that I now have a few wrinkles, gray hair, and my weight has visibly fluctuated up and down over the years.  I can't really tell how fat I look now, because when I think of myself, I feel small, even if I'm not.  Thank God.  If I worried about how fat I am on top of everything else, I'd really lose it.
I shouldn't read books with sex in them.  I know this is going out into the internet, and maybe there are still a few stragglers that read it, but honestly, I don't give a shit.  I shouldn't read books with sex in them, because it makes me wish I was having sex.  Even worse than that is that I only know a couple of eligible guys, meaning ones that I could have sex with without causing anyone to cheat on anyone else.  And even if I think about them, and having sex with them, I'm pretty sure that I could never enjoy it as much as those stupid girls in those stupid books.  So, I'm stuck here wondering if there's a solution to being sexually frustrated and simultaneously sex-phobic.  I know there's an obvious solution out there that I'm not going to name because that's gross to talk about, but that's not good enough.  And as I sit here, typing this very ridiculous post, I remember being told that sex wouldn't be as big of a deal once I'd gone and finally done it.  And I laughed at this, because I wanted it to be a big deal.  I wanted it to matter when I actually went and had sex.  But it didn't matter, and I didn't love any of the guys I slept with, and the one guy I have loved I didn't sleep with.  Explain that one...actually, don't, because I already know the psychological explanation.  Knowing it doesn't fix anything, just so you know.
I read these stupid teen books, and I catch myself wishing that my life was like that, with all the drama and craziness.  What's sort of funny about that is people think my life has been ridiculously dramatic, and it has been, but it didn't seem like it at the time.  When I reminisce, I realize that it was crazy, some of the stuff that happened.  But now I sit at my computer for two days straight, living here, doing nothing else.  And I don't mind until I read these stupid books, wish I could go out and get trashed, spend money recklessly, and live a life.  Then I remember that I can't live like that, because I tried and failed.
Can you tell that this blog has been my sounding board and my wailing wall for the last ten years?  Because it has been ten years; well, nearly ten years.  A decade's worth of bits and pieces of my life, sitting out here on the internet and read by, probably 20 people at the most.  Interesting.

P.S. I didn't realize that the blog stops at 2008.  I started this back in 2002 when I lived in Sweden, when blogs were new and all the rage, before myspace, before facebook, definitely before twitter (and, so you know, I hate twitter.  I think it's the most pointless thing that ever existed).