Anniversaries

Facebook kicked up a memory I knew was sometime around now, though I didn’t know the exact date.

It was a friend’s bachelorette party three years ago, though I’m the only one looking at the photo who also knows it’s the day I binged after 123 days of not bingeing, which is the longest I’ve ever managed since I started counting.

I didn’t descend immediately into days of bingeing nonstop. In fact, I don’t think in the past three years I ever got there, though the frequency and intensity of the binges was soul-destroying. But after that binge at the bachelorette party I binged again about three weeks later, I believe, and – as is my pattern – the binges became more frequent from there. Things spiraled downward until I made the decision to get some treatment earlier this year.

I saw my counselor yesterday, and she was trying to convince me that relapse is not the end of the world, and that even if I did, I don’t have to fall as far as I did last time. Which I know. And yet I worry anyway. Now that treatment is over, life is opening up and getting bigger, and events are coming thick and fast.

I know that if I get to Day 124 this time all there is is the possibility of getting to Day 125. This isn’t something I’m ever done with. But I’d like to get there anyway.

Day 117.