If a cow ever got the chance...

I quit drinking eight days ago. 184 hours.

It's easier with a glass in my hand: chai tea and coffee and grapefruit soda and cranberry juice mixed with water, 64 ounces a day. Hot water with lemon, in a pint glass. Lemonade in a wine glass. Tap water whenever I just want to swallow something wet, which is all the time.

I want to burn cleaner. I'm sick of calculating how drunk is too drunk for the middle of the day. How much I need to make it okay to be alone. How much more I need to call Mr. NY or JME or anyone else for whom I need a persona, because mine will only work if it's blunted. How much I need to go out. But never without the giant water bottle, because if I don't have half a liter of water for every Manhattan, I'll get sick before I even get buzzed and next morning be throwing up in a garbage can on the fucking El platform on the way to work, while god pounds nails into my forehead. That's how shot my liver is; this has never been officially diagnosed but I know.

There are all these bottles here. I don't know what to do with them. Pouring them out seems a little drastic; right now they don't tempt me. Some of them are sixty-dollar single malt Islay Scotches, because my taste in everything has always been too expensive. C will take them and I'll have another bookshelf. I'm kind of scared.

I don't want to say never again. One day at a time.

How I feel now: Clearheaded, absolutely clear. Grateful. Panicky. A little sad. Not sure how I'll ever be able to socialize again, to go out for dinner, to have people over without offering. My edges are so sharp I could cut myself breathing too deeply. But I feel lighter. Is that what counts?

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