Day Somethingty-four
I’m back! And kind of awesome. My name is Holly McKee-Clark and it’s been over a year since I last wrote about drinking and/or lack there of. Confession: I felt like a failure this time last year. I’d only truly managed to go 2 months, at the longest, without any cheating. But, although I stopped writing about it, I kept trying until my year was up. I tried, failed, tried harder, succeeded for a bit, failed again, tried anew, and so on.
The funny thing is that, once my year was over, I didn’t go crazy. I didn’t drink myself silly or finally get a rec card and buy LA clean of weed. All that changed was that I stopped feeling guilty. And, looking back, I don’t see any reason I should have ever felt guilty in the first place. Aside from breaking a promise to myself, everything I did was in the hopes of becoming a better person. And of understanding the person I am better.
And I do! I like myself the way I am now, best. My addictions don’t control me. I actually indulge a lot less than I did before, or even during, my year off. I don’t drink alone anymore, and I’m not sure exactly why or how this happened. I wasn’t some lonely drunk before, slurping last night’s wine from the same glass in the morning. But now, drinking seems special again. I want to save that funny feeling to share with other people. This sounds like I’m putting booze on a pedestal, but it’s the only way I can think to describe it. By myself, it’s a little bit like: What’s the point?
I think I’ve come to respect my time better, too. I got SO. MUCH. DONE. in the last year. Because I wasn’t dealing with constant hangovers, even in small degrees. The times that I would cheat and wake up groggy, after only one glass of whiskey the night before, made me realize that I had been living in a state of constant hangover. It’s only when you haven’t been bitten by a dog in a while that a little nip looms apparent.
I like myself better when I’m sober. Which I didn’t know before. Seems like a pretty obvious revelation; that’s just how it should be. I don’t care. I’ve had a vision. My wish came true. Now I’m going to ride off into the sunset, without fear of tumbling from my horse. Yes, I do have a wine skin. But I also have a much larger water canteen. And a lot of hard-working dwarves are waiting for me to bring the party at the end of this long-day’s ride.














