sober

October of last year, 344 days ago, I woke up and did something I had been thinking about for a long time… I quit drinking. I decided 43 would be the best version of me and at the time, I had no idea how that one change would make that statement so much truer than I could have ever imagined.

I wouldn’t say I was a heavy drinker, just a regular drinker. I wasn’t dependent on alcohol but it was a part of my life and it had been for as long as I could remember. In my 20’s, I was single and free and danced on bars and did all the things a crazy, single girl living in the city who didn’t have to work until 1:00pm and only four days a week did. During my 30’s, wine had held my hand through my divorce and dried up my tears while I grieved the end of my marriage. It was my best friend at bars and clubs while I learned to be a single woman again. It comforted me on the nights when Summer was with her dad and I was alone in our little apartment missing her like crazy and wondering how the hell nights without my child would ever feel normal. Me and wine, we were like thisssssssssss and with it available pretty much anywhere that has an open sign and takes money, it was a readily accessible companion.

And then eventually, I wan’t coping with anything anymore and it just kind of became part of my routine. Lots of mommy-wine-time, wine-o’clock, and any other excuse to open a bottle of wine like… Mondays or… breathing. But along with all of that came the not so fun parts – next day anxiety, waking up tired, the 3am wake up call from my bladder, text conversations that I may not have otherwise had, a muted inner voice, numbed emotions, not processing past hurt. You know, all those fabulous benefits of consuming something that helps you slow it all down really quickly in a really unnatural way.  

When I first quit, my main focus was just breaking the routine – not pouring a glass of wine when cooking dinner, not having a glass during my “me time” after Summer went to bed. I discovered the simple pleasure of club soda and orange juice. Within a month, my daily anxiety was completely gone which blew my mind – here I had been thinking that the wine was helping my anxiety when in reality it was causing it. Who. The. Fuck. Knew. That? Not me. And then slowly, magic started happening. 

My emotions started waking up after a long hibernation. One night, I had my head on Rick’s stomach and he said something which made my head bounce which made me laugh which made him laugh which made me bounce higher which made us both laugh more and before I knew it I was laughing until I had tears streaming down my face. Another night, I watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and at the end they had a long scrolling list of real people who had died from Covid and I found myself sobbing in a big puddle of ploppy tears in my living room. Things were waking up inside of me that I hadn’t realized had been so dulled for so long. And for all of the negative feelings that wine had helped me ignore, I realized in those moments that you don’t get to pick and choose what it numbs. It also numbs the happy, but sometimes you’re too numb to realize it and numb becomes the norm. Nom nom.

I read Glennon Doyle’s Love Warrior and it changed my life. I absorbed every talk, special and podcast I could find from Brené Brown and I found the courage to be vulnerable and stepped proudly into my arena. I joined an online community of like-minded alcohol-free people and it was, and still is, awesome. That is, if you erase the day I decided to try out one of their community zoom meetings where they said you could be completely anonymous and just listen if you wanted to. After I joined my one and only zoom, to my horror they went around the room and when they got to my little camera-off black square the host said, “Guest from Chicago (because…you know… I was super anonymous), please introduce yourself and tell us a little about you!” So I reluctantly did. And then they put us all in BREAKOUT ROOMS and the THREE OTHER VERY NON-ANONYMOUS PEOPLE I was with seemed TO KNOW EACH OTHER and EXPECTED ME TO PARTICIPATE and so I did and then I logged off and then I died.

Anonymously listen, my ass.

Sans the zooms, I’m still in the online community and I have made some great fake friends that I’ll never ever meet in real life and that’s totally ok. I read everyone’s posts and I keep a journal in there, so to my devoted readers here – I’m sorry I haven’t been here, but writing in two places at once just proved to be way too much for my now rapidly firing, feeling all the things brain and I chose to be there for a while before I could come back here and tell you all my fun stories again. 

In January, I broke up with Rick. And I cried for two weeks straight and then we got back together and I stopped crying. I started therapy to try to figure out what to do with all of these emotions that I hadn’t felt in so long and my god, that was the greatest thing I’ve done since quitting drinking. My sister and I always say if we could give therapy sessions out as Christmas presents, we would because therapy is fabulous. It’s like having a new friend who is technically a stranger (but doesn’t feel like a stranger) who listens to you whine and complain and talk about things (that exactly zero other people want to hear about) and then she helps you come up with better ways to deal with them (than what you’ve been doing that totally haven’t worked ever) and she’ll tell you she’s proud of you and the only draw back is that you have to pay her. Psht, worth every penny, and thank god for insurance. In the last nine months, I have processed so many things that I had pushed aside over the last 20 years, and the biggest lesson I have learned is:

Speak your thoughts out loud regardless of the outcome.

It was the exact opposite of what my guarded inner voice had been doing while crouching behind walls that I had been building for so long. And people, it has worked wonders for me. I had had my walls up for so long and I didn’t know how to knock them down when I so badly just wanted to connect with people on a deeper level.  Speak your truth regardless of the outcome. That was the key that I had been missing. I found my open, honest, vulnerable, truest voice and I use it. All the time. And I call people out on their bullshit. And I don’t put up with things that don’t feel right. And I tell people how much I love them. And I have zero regrets. And life is so much better now because of it. 

Rick and I ultimately broke up almost 2 months ago and I actually processed it. I cried, I regretted, I mourned, I accepted, I moved on. I still miss him and I may always, and that’s ok. I found a book called It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken and I read it cover to cover in one night. <– game changer. I started going out for hot chocolate after work just so I could say that I talked to more people than just my dogs and yes, my dogs are people and yes, the barista totally counts. I started taking yoga, like real life yoga classes with real life people. During my second class the instructor was talking about our ideas of perfection that we put on ourselves and that we need to let those go. That we are kindness. We are love. We are enough. Just as we are. And then she told us to think about something that we had been holding onto (Rick), to take a deep breath, and to let it go. And with the air coming out of my face, I felt it all just go away and I. CRIED. AT. YOGA. Luckily everyone was on their backs staring at the ceiling so no one saw the insane girl bawling on her mat because seriously who the fuck fucking cries at yoga?!? But when I went home I literally googled “I cried at yoga” and apparently it’s really a thing. Tell. Me. Who. Knew. That? Not me. I’m like enlightened and stuff now. Yeah, enlightened.

So that’s where we’re at – three weeks away from a year of being alcohol-free. Single, again. Feeling ALL the feels. Speaking my truest thoughts out loud. Talking to baristas and crying at yoga. It’s been a crazy year. 

Namaste bitches.