As I write this today, I am one day sober. It’s been a rocky road, this sobriety thing, but I’ve done it before and I know I can do it again.
I was doing so well earlier this year, I had two solid months. Then I started drinking again because of stress, I think. I don’t even know. Maybe it was boredom. Maybe it was a desperate need to numb. It doesn’t even matter. I was drinking again.
It’s then that my body told me to stop.
And I listened. I was scared shitless. I made an appointment with a naturopath to get some help and worked with my health coach.
I knew drinking could kill me. In fact, that’s why I stopped back in the beginning of March, 2025. One night when I had had too much, I could feel my heart pounding. My liver was aching and my kidneys were throbbing. A part of me thought I was going to die that night because my heart just couldn’t seem to take it.
Perhaps it’s the summer triggers of a hot night paired with some white wine, maybe it’s that I’m getting divorced from a twelve year marriage/ twenty one year relationship with someone I grew up with. Maybe it’s knowing I have to move. It could be tied to the uncertainty of my career. It’s also probably from losing a really close friend because things just don’t align right now.
Needless to say, there’s a lot going on in my life. On top of all that, I also triggered a relapse into my eating disorder, which I am much less open about. Well, I suppose until now. Making my physical and mental health a priority is an understatement at best.
Me and alcohol have had quite the relationship.
We’ve been besties for over twenty five years. BESTIES. Wherever I went, Bestie came too. Couldn’t live without them. Life centered around booze and I could never get enough.
There have been deep moments of acknowledgement of my alcoholism.
Mine came in the form of insurmountable shame when dumping a nip or two of Jack in my 9:00 coffee on a Tuesday. Hiding bottles of wine so nobody sees how much I’m actually drinking. Drowning my day in a 40oz cider with two shots of Jack and then a whole bottle of wine, and then another few shots of Jack because the wine’s gone.
These were actual events in my life not too far in the past. Mind you I am only five feet tall and at that time weighed about 130 pounds. So you can see that me drinking this much on a regular basis was sending me straight down a path of destruction.
I started recognizing that I couldn’t keep on doing this if I wanted to stay alive another decade.
The struggle is real.
It’s been a fight lately to not drink. When I am upset, the first thing I want to do is grab the bottle and drown my sorrows. And let me tell you, there is not a day that goes by without a flood of tears. Life is falling apart at the seams for me and it’s a lot to take. I keep drawing Tower cards.
Numbing has been my main coping mechanism for decades.
But what good does numbing actually do? Nothing. No good comes out of it because you just push away the very things you need to feel and acknowledge. It prolongs the pain and suffering, stopping you from doing the work you need to do because you’re scared and don’t want to feel all the feels that accompany healing.
And yet, you have to. You have to be willing to struggle through the break up. Your body became addicted to the feeling of false security. Just like ending a relationship with a lover, your nervous system has to learn to regulate without them. Gotta retrain the body and mind to go on with life in a new manner.
And that’s why relapse is so common and such an easy trap to fall into. We crave the safety of the relationship.
The relationship gave false hope.
Me and Bestie were together a lot, but what did they really give me? A sense of ok-ness at night followed by regret in the morning? A living hell of torment and anger? A deathwish?
My relationship with alcohol was lonely. The bottle made me feel better, seen, maybe, if only in my own mind. It was “Here baby, let me take away your pain” (only to throw it back harder than a pile of bricks).
It was a constant push and pull. A vicious cycle on an emotional rollercoaster that I couldn’t get off of. The more it hurt, the more I drank. The more my soul wanted me to remember, the more I tried to forget. The pain was overwhelming and I just didn’t have it in me to deal with it.
I was unhappy in my marriage, which was a huge reason I had such a deep relationship with alcohol. It gave me the feeling of not being so alone. The feeling of a little fun and spice. Tuned me back into my wild side. (Although today, I’d rather let that side of me out naturally.)
But it was one sided. Alcohol held me back from so many things. It turned me into a person that I’m not. It poisoned me with bitterness, resentment, and anger. It gave me false hope for a day then ripped me to shreds the next. Over and over, relentlessly, like waves of an ocean storm.
My new hope is in the healing.
As I navigate the shifts in my life, riding this new wave of uncertainty, I know my old self is not coming along on the journey. I have to leave her behind, with a bunch of others who are just not aligned. Bestie is one of them, and it’s not easy to let go.
There’s a lot of grief. I am mourning the loss of my old self, the loss of my relationships, and the loss of my home for the last almost twenty years. While I know it’s time to walk away, it doesn’t make it hurt less. And without the alcohol it hurts even more.
I always say “You’ve got to feel it to heal it,” and those words hit deep now. There’s so much I don’t want to feel, so much I am afraid to see about myself because it holds so much shame. Deep, untouched pain from long ago. I know it has to come up and I have to feel it so I can move on to what’s next in my life. These patterns prevent me from so many things.
It’s difficult to look towards a life without booze. I don’t fully know what that looks or feels like, even though I’ve had multiple stints of sobriety over the past two decades. All I know is that I have to go one day at a time. I can’t go any faster than that anyway. Moment by moment, with grace and love.
Moving forward is the journey I am willing to take.
I’m not about to go backwards. I’m no longer available for my old self to try and take the wheel because that’s what feels “safe”. There’s no way I want to be her again.
But I will welcome her in with open arms. All five feet, one hundred fifteen pounds of this hot mess that feels like such a fuck up. The one who hates herself for who she’s been because she didn’t know how to be any better. The one who can’t love herself because she thinks she’s worthless. A girl who has been carrying around too much pain for too long that finally forced her to her knees.
She’s welcome back into my heart and I will love every piece of her because that’s what she needs. She’s not in charge anymore, but she can sit in the backseat as a reminder of how far I’ve come. She can live within me and grow as I grow, so we can both shed the pain of the past.
This version of me can help her heal her shame instead of hiding it. Help build her worth, not tear her down. Be with her through all the tears, rage, overwhelm, and floods of emotion. This version of me can lift her up, can teach her what love is, and help her remember her power.
Somewhere deep inside me I know that I am a powerful alchemist. It’s time to find that power once again and use it like I’ve never used it before.
I know this journey won’t be easy, but I want my dreams more than I want my drama. And I am willing to do whatever it takes to get them. And that includes letting go of everything that doesn’t align, even if it’s hard.