It's been 10 years since I sat in a booth at Goodson's Country Cafe, inebriated for a family dinner and swearing up and down I hadn't had a single drink. I can't remember particulars but I bet I was blaming medication or lack of sleep, anything but the reality that I couldn't stop. Anything but telling the truth that I was terrified to stop. Every morning I would wake up wondering how I would afford the next drink. Every evening I would fall asleep thinking it would be the last drink. It was a cycle that made me into a person I couldn't recognize anymore...which made me want to drink even more. “Wasted potential,” and “broken,” were how I thought of myself.
10 years since I sat in a lobby at PaRC, it felt so clinical and punitive. My family had had enough. They were scared, angry, confused, and lost. In my selfish state I always thought that my drinking only really impacted me but it quickly became apparent that it hurt my entire village. Well, the only village that really mattered. The first year of sobriety taught me that, as I learned how to be present and show up instead of run away from everything.
It is a privilege to be 10 years sober and I am exceedingly fortunate to have the gift of a second life, God knows I tempted that fate too many times when drinking. If I could tell myself circa 2013 what my life would become, I probably would have laughed and had another swig thinking it was impossible so why bother.
This life didn't just happen because I stopped picking up a bottle, it happened because before I could believe in myself, I had people showing me the best of me. My parents, even when they felt like I had disappeared entirely, showed me grace and love every damn day. Having kids of my own now, my heart breaks for what my parents had to go through. I was lucky to have two incredible siblings who made me laugh when I was a caged animal at rehab and who always built me up into the person they knew I could be. For so SO long I had only seen disappointment in their eyes but the year after getting sober, it was the best thing in the world to see trust again.
Friends both new and old showed me what a community looks like without social lubrication of substances. I got to know people in a new, hard, beautiful way and actually feel all of it. I cannot explain how awkward it is to feel like a teenager in an adult body except maybe the uncomfortable feeling after walking back after trying to bowl when everyone is watching you and you don't know the appropriate way to react...x10
That being said, the people in early recovery gave me a safe space to relearn how to cope with the highs and lows of life. Sober living and AA thrust me into a community of devastatingly beautiful humans; creative, funny, genius, kind, misunderstood, yearning people. How lucky I have been in the people that have danced into and out of my life, the memories they have gifted me with and the part of me they have built.
Once you are in a sober community though, you also know significant loss. Friends made in rehab who were met with clear eyes and such magnificent plans for their lives could stripped back into the abyss of addiction in the blink of an eye. It's heartbreak after heartbreak getting to know the addiction free person and then seeing them back in, or far too frequently, even worse.
My dad asked me recently, at a very different kind of fancy lunch in the Lake District, what has helped me keep going and immediately I thought of the relationships I've had these past 10 years. From my friends who were in the trenches with me in rehab and sober living, to my college community and AA group in Kentucky who taught me how fun living sober can be, and finally meeting the love of my life and producing the two most miraculous human beings together. All of these relationships were made possible by the foundation they were built on, the family that fought for me over and over again until I finally fought for myself.
Even now I think how nice a glass of wine sounds but when I "play the tape through," there's so much life I have been given that it will never be worth it. It never was worth it to begin with.
If you are struggling with substance use, there are ways out. They are painful, awkward, joyful, boring, hilarious, and confusing but good god the ups and downs are so worth it. If you don't have believing mirrors around you right now, get into some rooms and you'll quickly find people fighting in your corner, showing you how wonderful you are. It'll take awhile to believe them but one day you will.
