Empty soda cans

I had a very strange thing happen to me last night.

I've told you all how peaceful my life is now, I don't have any real stressors at all, I take care of our house/laundry/finances/dogs but there is no schedule, no bells or alarms.  I never take this quiet for granted either.  I am so appreciative..

I'm living in pure PEACE these days, and I have been since we moved here a year ago.

So last night I was lying in bed (watching Big Bang Theory I just love that show) and I got up to get water and realized I was grrr grouchy.  Pissed OFF.  And I stopped walking just STOPPED and said to myself "self, who are we mad at again?" (cos I couldn't remember who had ticked me off THIS time) and the answer?  nobody.  There was NOBODY that I was mad at.

I had this emotion, like an empty shell, just roll through me.  Like an old coke can rolling down a desert street *clank clang clank* with nothing inside.

That isn't the first time either.  I'll get all IRRITATED and have to think, and then *huh*.  Whudya know.  I'd been working on Ebay for the last hour and nothing is irritating me, I'm in my pajamas and things are selling and hmmm...

So, here is a question.  Or a hypothesis.  Hypotenuse.

My brain is so used to cycling through these negative emotions.  FOR YEARS there was more than one candidate for each one.  I mean, ask me 5 years ago 'who are we irritated with again?' and *FLIP* there goes the 2-foot list. 

NOW?  Now it seems as though these emotions, this negative energy, are all just echos of past drama.  Empty soda cans rolling down the streets of my brain.

Can you just be USED to so much crap that your brain sorta goes along as if it was still there?  Like a movie where a building is abandoned, but the machinery keeps on moving, starting itself up and then shutting down, on a schedule somebody forgot to re-program?

It made me laugh, actually.  Like I said, it isn't the first time.  Sometimes Jeff will ask me "what did I do exactly?  WHY are you mad at me?" and then I have to dig my toe into the dirt and say 'oh gee, nothing, sorry, durr Imma DORK sorry'. 

This 'living in peace' stuff - man, it's giving me insight into myself that is so useful.  I live with a LOT of empty echos.  I was running for YEARS from monsters (some real, some my own idiotic creation), *panting* and *huffing* and RUNNING and creating chaos (tossing chairs behind me!  rolling kitchen carts into paths!) and the actual monsters had LONG been gone, most of them vanquished and dead, some of them *poofed* into smoke.  My defenses were up WAY longer than I needed them to be, but I was so used to living defensively, to expecting the next punch (so to speak), the next slight, the next irritation - that I didn't stop when I got to the finish line.  I blew right past it, never saw it.

Quitting drinking, I think, is really finally letting me see that the noise in my head is all just residual echos, and has been for quite some time.  I drank (a lot) back when I 'needed it' to help me survive all of that crap, to help me cope and relax.  Then I drank because I was used to drinking.  I was using it to quiet demons and it worked so well, I didn't hear the door slam when they left.

I don't have those demons chasing me anymore, there isn't ANYTHING about my old life that is still around.  I mean, I've known that intellectually - shit, it even says so on the side of my blog, that nobody is around who worries me anymore.  Nobody who irritates me either!  But muscle memory...  I had never given my under-brain a chance to catch up to my frontal lobe.  It's been years wasted on being a defensive asshole toward NOTHING.  Shadow boxing.

I'm free.