Bad Luck

Something I've noticed in regards to not drinking anymore, I don't have the bad luck I used to have.  I'm not talking about the consequences of drinking, like a DWI, a bad hangover or falling out of a chair.  I'm talking about actual bad luck, where bad things happen more often, at least more often than they have since I've stopped.

I believe in fate, karma, kismet.  I've had too many things happen, realities exposed, and crossed paths with too many people, to not feel as if some level of divine intervention exists.  I'm a practicing Catholic.  I know, criticize away, but I do not chalk this stuff up to the dalliances of God.  There just seems to be a negative aura which surrounded me when I was drinking.

Important papers got misplaced, the car breaking down, something that was working fine suddenly stopping, some mishap at work.  These things would be easy to dismiss if I could point to the sauce, but they had nothing to do with my drinking, at least not directly.  It's not like bad things don't happen to me today, but there's far less negativity involved in my life since I sobered up.

I noticed this phenomenon a few weeks back when the garage door busted.  I remember it doing so a few years back and it was a nightmare getting it fixed.  The guy was sick, couldn't find my house, didn't have the right part; all of this lead to a major inconvenience.  This time?  "We can be out there in one hour!"  I remember one time a bill got mailed, on time, correctly stamped and addressed, and it didn't show up in the account as paid for a month, causing me a lot of stress and anxiety.  That never happens.  Last month I mailed bills three days before they were due, and they all got there on time, regardless of where they were headed.

And you couldn't miss the bad luck in regards to the health of my kids.  Before I was hitting the bottle hard, my three rarely got sick.  Once, my middle child was falling down the stairs, I reached up and made the grab of a lifetime, her ankle, saving her from serious injury.  When I was drinking, the kids were getting sick a lot, and they would get injured in the weirdest ways.  We even had a skull fracture.  Since I gave up drinking, I can't remember the last time the kids got sick, or injured.

There are a lot more, but I'm sounding crazy.  Just an observation...