Nov
18
I was talking to a friend, a woman who also has several years of sobriety from alcohol, about how I feel about drinking these days — how, even though it feels a little jinxy to say it out loud, I feel more resolve than ever. Even though I am living in precarious times, wading through a lot of murk with no one around to hide the booze breath from.
There’s this part in Anne Lammot’s Operating Instructions where she talks about imagining relapsing, going to the liquor store, but playing out the scene by putting her new baby boy on the counter where you pay, because that’s what it would take from her. I have thought about that so many times over the years and that’s exactly how it feels now, except it would be my life, my future, everything I might hope for in this new season. If I picked up one drink, it would all be taken from me.
But not immediately, and that’s the most chilling part. There’s a recovery saying about your addiction doing pushups in the parking lot, like it’s always just getting stronger regardless of what you’re doing to stay sober. I have never really identified with the higher power part of 12 step programs but I do know I am no match for drinking. I will never be stronger than that motherfucker in the sense of being able to control it, the only way to win is not to play.
If I had a drink now, it would bring on a world of shit that would ruin everything I care about before it brought me to some bitter end — death, jail, or institituion as they say. Now that I live alone? It would be so dark. It would be a ruinous path of terrible choices. It would turn me into someone else. It would drag my character into the dirt, it would destroy my relationships, it would scar my children, it would make me so sick and sad and trapped. I would not be able to take a single free breath, it would erode my soul.
And I imagine it would happen pretty fast but not fast enough. It would take me down hard, all those pushups, but not so quickly as to be merciful. I would undo everything I have worked on to feel okay and capable and hopeful with every swallow and the worst part is that I would probably think, at least for a while, that I was having a pretty good time.
I don’t count days but I have not had a drink since May of 2013. That’s long enough to feel some real separation from it, in a careful sort of way that does not live in cockiness. I’m never like, I BEAT YOU HAHA NEENER NEENER. I will never be anything other than grateful that I was able to put a stop to it and that the time keeps adding up.
My past sobriety journey has been rocky as some of you know and I am not fully what the 12 steppers would call living life on life’s terms. In full transparency THC is part of my life, the expensive legal bougie-branded kind, and I’m OK with people knowing that. I stick to night time edibles, it’s not full sobriety but it is for me a very different beast than alcohol. I’ll probably never be completely zen about avoiding not-the-most-healthy escapism whether that’s a gummy or an entire pint of salted caramel core ice cream or doomscrolling or The Golden Bachelor.
But I don’t drink any more and that is something. That is a gift and I am so thankful for it. I am so thankful that I don’t have to be scared of myself right now. I am so thankful my kids don’t have to worry about me. I am so thankful for those 12 years and counting, for the fact that I get to really live in these new hard/beautiful days, for everything the future brings that I don’t have to hand over along with everything I love.
Nov
15
I think/hope it is not too revealing to say I am not having the divorce experience I had expected. I thought it would be friendlier, that things would of course be very different but that we would still communicate as parents and do things as a differently-shaped family. That is simply not at all how things are or have been and therefore I am having a different parenting experience than I had hoped for, and that is really difficult. This last year of Dylan being home before college isn’t looking like I’d wanted and that is so hard, full stop.
I do think everyone else is pretty okay, though. You know? Which is good. And this is life, it unfolds the way it does against our wishes sometimes. I can’t change what is so I have to work with it. There are a lot of wonderful things going on and I have to lean into gratitude while still feeling the grief. Resentment is the poison in my own cup.
It seems normal to have a lot of Big Feelings these days as time goes on and I adjust more to this new life. It seems okay to feel bad that it’s not how I’d hoped it would be. My default programming is to blame myself for every bit of pain but I’m working to sit with it, let pain come to the table and just be. Yeah, this is painful, and it doesn’t mean I fucked up or that I’m a bad person — it’s just fucking painful.
The holidays are not going to be easy this year, but I am telling myself this is the hardest year. This is the worst most difficult year and it will not be this freshly-uprooted next year, I will be more stable and grounded and it will get better. And that’s okay. It’s okay to feel bad, it’s not something I need to run from or try to numb out. A heart that hurts is a heart that works, as our queen Juliana Hatfield sang.
But oh! The decorations in the stores, the happy-family portrayals in the ads, it’s a lot. One foot after the other, deep breaths. Goddamn.
Sometimes it seems like I was doing better at the beginning of all of this, I felt like I was able to ride out the fast-moving chaos of separation without too many breakdowns and now I’m in my Constantly On the Verge of Tears era. And maybe it’s not the best idea to publicly blog my way through it, I don’t know. I do feel like it helps to write it out and share, I know I’m not alone in my experiences and there has always been something healing about bringing the hurt into the open air. Here it is for you to see, maybe it means something to you to know about it. Maybe knowing that we all carry heavy loads is a way for us to hold each other up. Lighten the weight.
I wish I had a pithy wrapup here but I don’t. If you’re in your own tender season, I see you. We’ll get through this, and it’ll be okay. It’s all okay, even the things that aren’t okay.
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