Will I lose the music?

Yesterday was a good day. I had tons more energy, I even took the children to a local beauty spot for a roam about in the fresh air, and felt really alive. At 5.30pm, the bad hour loomed so I raced off to garage to do 20 minutes on the x-trainer. Not one to do things by halves, I threw myself into the first exercise I’ve done in months full-pelt, motivational music blasting. After nearly doing myself a mischief whilst trying to match the beat to The National’s “Mr November”, I was forced to bring things down a notch.. and the next track  (“Regret” by Everything Everything) got me to thinking. I’m pretty sure there’ll be plenty of ripping plasters off old wounds in the coming days and months, during the process of discovering who I am without alcohol.

And the next fear that I need to break through is that I will lose the music. Specifically, that high that I always got from an evening with my OH, candles blazing, wine flowing, listening to our favourite music, honing and cherry-picking amazing tracks from our youth, and the sheer joy of discovering some incredible new sound we both love (Wintersleep, anyone??) and talking, talking, talking for hours about anything and everything.

These are always our favourite times together, what makes us feel like best friends. However I fear I am romanticising. I need to turn the cold light of day on those nights, otherwise they might be what causes me to fold. So here goes:

They would start well, the first few hours would be so much fun. But they would inevitably end with us barely able to speak coherently, empty wine and beer bottles littering the dining table, or the garden table in summer. In the wee small hours, OH would have to talk me out of dragging out some age-old rank bottle of spirits or a liqueur from under the stairs to drink (as we’d usually run out of booze by this point). We’d stumble upstairs, passing out cold, only to be woken at 7am by the kids wanting to start a new day, at which point we’d be in the hideous stage between still being pissed and starting a raging hangover. It wouldn’t be unheard of for me to throw up on and off for the rest of the day and end up in bed, leaving OH to wrangle three disappointed children who wanted to play with their parents. I have also occasionally ended up drinking something in the morning, as hair of the dog, to get me through the hangover.

Dear God – on reading this back, I am horrified. That kind of behaviour might have been acceptable in my wasted, rock-chick youth, but in my 40’s? With children? The words which spring to mind are “pathetic”, “irresponsible”, and downright “dangerous”. Urgh.

Thats it. I’m definitely done with that kind of behaviour; I’d like to attempt to find some self respect in the New Year. So I’m back on my sofa, stuffing down the booze cravings with chocolate. And readying myself for the novelty of a sober NYE!