Every morning of my adult life, I have woken up and given myself instructions that I almost never follow. “Today you will only eat leafy greens.” I mandate or “You are going to push your cuticles back in the shower.” I don’t know why I do it. It’s like I set myself up to fail. For the entire ten years of my uber-drinking days, I woke up every morning and told myself something like, “Today you will only have a glass or two of wine with dinner,” or “My God, this has to stop…today I am going to stop drinking…”

Every. Single. Day.

I am wondering what that kind of failure does to a person long term? It’s one thing to justify ragged cuticles (even though my ex-husband said I should make my hands my number 1 priority), but falling short on something so important… And it was with such ennui I poured the first glass of plonk and washed down my broken promises with white wine.

Sometimes I forget to remember that in the grand scheme of things, I am doing just fine. It took ten years, but I did quit drinking. And when you impose some sort of unlikely edict on yourself every morning (I’m probably not going to walk around Reeds Lake after work this evening, for example), it doesn’t matter if you increase the website traffic to Sanford House by 2,000 percent or not. You are thinking, “Yeah that’s all well and good, but I had that bite of turkey and I was supposed to only eat lettuce today….” or “Shit. I’m tired and I promised to walk around the lake!”

You see the kind of self-sabotage I’m dealing with?

Tomorrow I am going to wake up (gather the candy wrappers that are spread all over my bedspread, and throw them in the wastebasket) and think to myself, “Marilyn, you are kind of awesome. Have a nice day today. Whatever happens, happens…”

Not.

And for those of you who are still getting up every morning and telling yourself, “I have to stop drinking,” keep doing it. Keep telling yourself you have to stop until you STOP. It’s kind of like getting your tonsils out. You can eat all the ice cream you want afterwards without feeling guilty.

Unless you are me…