Part 2 of 2: My first sober holiday: Regaining control.

On day four of our gorgeous week-long holiday in Majorca I am absolutely fucked off and hating everything - mainly how I look and how sober I feel.

In Catherine's book she writes about the importance of alone time so I decide to take some. And it seems thrashing it out on a treadmill for half an hour in a grubby non-air conditioned Spanish gym actually works. Just having some space away from Rob and his poolside beers reminds me that I can simply choose another path. And me wanting to be away from people/Rob has absolutely nothing to do with me hating on them in any way - I just simply love being alone and feel it's so important to distance yourself from things that are bothering you as and when you can. I needed to faze my miserable holiday funk out and a hot run in the hotel's dungeon gym was helping.

Just this tiny window of alone time helped me to shake off the negs and reboot 'relaxed and chilled holiday Em'. She's new. Drinking holiday Em would be having a wine-fuelled siesta by now and awake in a pool of her own drool.

After my run I showered and wandered back to the pool and suggested to Rob we find somewhere chill for dinner and hit the hay early to go on a morning hike. I was still very stressed and tense about dining in a hip cool restaurant with gin menus and cocktails so I decided to plant the seed before he stumbled across anything mildy swanky on Trip Adviser. I thought he'd swat my suggestion away as when I said it out loud in the 33 degree heat it couldn't have sounded less fun and appealing. 

'Sounds great, totally up for a cheap dinner and being active babe.' Relief! Exactly what I wanted (and desperately needed) to hear. That night we ate pizza, wondered back to the hotel with a kilo of churros and watched the new Avengers movie in bed before calling it a night at 11.30 p.m....it was actual heaven.  

After a sweaty two-hour morning hike, many swims and a sunset coffee on the balcony I was finally feeling better. Day five had me remembering the importance of staying strong and I could feel the sober glow trickling back into my veins. The storm clouds had passed and I was well and truly back in the sunshine. I actually took a selfie to capture the moment...maybe one day when I'm brave enough, I'll share it.

Everyday of sobriety is different but it's so vital to remember the darkness will eventually pass. I couldn't get Blix out of my head for the first three days of my holiday, chipping away at my vulnerability and desperately urging me to throw in the towel. I felt suffocated, trapped and completely out of my comfort zone. Holiday drinking was the ultimate package, the dream, the familiar reward after a year of solid working! And I knew my first sober trip would be hard, but I genuinely underestimated just how fucking hard it would be. 

I was constantly terrified that I'd ruin Rob's trip as a result of my non-drinking. Constantly comparing myself to other people and their seemingly amazing holiday chat and beers. But when we returned home his report of me, sober holiday Em, was quite glowing. Apparently Rob loved the early nights, active mornings and lazy afternoons. He was even chuffed that as a result of my sobriety he only suffered one hangover throughout the entire trip. Did I hear that right...? Am I starting to become a good influence?

There were moments I genuinely wanted to crawl under a rock and cry/die - mainly when I clocked other couples laughing and playing with the stems of their wine glasses. Meh, dicks. I was so wrapped up in my own warped world - a world where Rob would shout at me for not drinking and tell all his friends that he's married a dud.

Maybe there will come a time where he gets fed up with my sobriety, I'm not sure, but a week in Majorca certainly wasn't a deal breaker (as much as I thought it would be).