When It's Time ...

I thought it rather interesting that my 99th post would come on my 20th anniversary. No, not the Big Lug and me (we're almost to 30) but me and myself. You see, 20 years ago today I woke with one of the worst hangovers I'd ever had (and that's saying something). My best friend from high school had come down the night before to keep my company while the Big Lug was stationed overseas. I (more or less) cooked dinner as I drank quite a bit of this very sweet wine she'd brought (hence the more or less), and we laughed and laughed and laughed (or was that just me?). And then ... then I induced a hearty power-ralph before she left so I wouldn't vomit while alone.

So 20 years ago today I woke up, squinted at my convulsive bed-head in the mirror, sucked on my swollen and (frankly) foul-tasting tongue, and quit drinking forever.

Funny thing, that - the just quit part. I don't know how I knew, but I really did know at that moment that I'd never touch another drop of alcohol. Chocolate, yes. Junk food galore. Even a few longing looks at the cooking sherry. But other than one accident involving a good long slug of a Bud (which I swore was a Sharp's), March 18th, 1989, was good for the last drop.

My mother told me once that not many people have my strength of will. She points to that day as proof. But it wasn't will power - it was simply time. And so while I celebrate this day (quietly, with much gratitude) I don't usually celebrate. At least I haven't in the past, not really. This year, however, when I was looking at my crazy-this-week calendar, frowning over all the things I have scheduled (taxes, two days of electrical work, cat's blood work) I realized it wasn't because I knew I'd have no students but because I needed to prove somehow that I'd changed, too.

Is that strange? 20 years have gone by, but I still felt the need to show myself ... myself.

So today, no fanfare, no dinner out, and (horrors!) no jewelry. Instead, I commemorated the day by breaking ground on the 20th Anniversary Sober-Bunny Memorial Entryway. Yep, I spent most of the day yanking and scraping up the vinyl flooring that the last owners had glued right on top of the solid oak flooring. (Sorry about the italics - but do you blame me?)

Oddly enough, a glance in the mirror tells me I look more like the old me right now than any Straight-Arrow Bunny - okay no skunk-coated tongue of the old days, but definitely a familiar set of bruised and abraded knuckles (from hitting the floor not other people, though) and the wild hair-and-eyes-behind-the-glasses (sprinkled with little paper-and-glue bits) look hauntingly familiar.

Not a bad thing, either. It reminds me that one of the reasons I drank was because I feel things so much more than most people seem to, maybe even think more than most people seem to ... moralize more than most people seem to (at myself, more than anyone else). "Fast forward" and "dead stop" might be my only two speeds, but nowadays I don't try to slow down who I am because I have seen who I am ... I let myself see who I am ... and y'know what? I like who I am, who I've become, if for no other reason than I like what liking me comes to - including everything that Mama Angel, my Inner Diva, and even my little devils bring into my life.

After all, in only a few short months I've found it time for "$5 mil by '21" and "house-to-home on a shoestring," time for a loss of nearly 80 pounds and an exercise routine that would make Bob Greene proud (along with that Bunny smile!), and time for a return of risk-taking and treasure hunting (in all its myriad and miraculous forms). I like myself now because I love the life I've allowed myself to have.

And I truly can't wait to see what the next 20 years - and the next 100 posts - will bring into it.