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I’m sat at my desk (home office, it’s not quite that bad) and it’s a quarter past midnight. I’m exhausted, hormonal and emotionally drained. I worked for 15 hours today. I cried in couples counselling. I’m 21 months sober in just under a week. And as I sit here these words have come floating into my head and I need to write them down even though they might be disheartening to someone in the early days (yeah, sorry about that).
I don’t know what I want but I know I don’t want to drink.
To be honest I’m a bit all over the place at the moment. Very secure and happy in my sobriety but now the anaesthetising fog of wine has gone from my life I can see into all the darkest corners and I’m starting to clean out cobwebs that have been there for years, some for decades.
I want to be my most authentic self but I’m still afraid that person isn’t good enough.
I want to stay in my comfortable, flexible, reasonably interesting but not challenging job. I want a new career writing about addiction and sobriety and helping people to get sober.
I want to earn more money. I want to consume less and get better at managing the money I have.
I want to be thinner. I want to accept and love the body I have.
I want to protect my mental health. I want to be aware of social justice issues and do what I can to make the world a better place.
I want to be a good mum to my two girls.
I don’t want to drink. Ever.
I think the biggest difference nearly two years of sobriety has made to me is that now I can see the other side. Each of those couplets, I could only see the first one before, so I didn’t know why I was so often screaming inside and why the numbing and eventual oblivion of alcohol was such a relief. I couldn’t even articulate to myself what was missing from my life.
And now I can, and I’m working towards a better life in lots of ways. Which is so much better than being stuck and blind to what was even wrong. So SO much better. And the two things that keep me going, keep me feeling grounded, are the two things I wrote above where there is no other side. My children and my sobriety. The three centres of my life.
Long term sober life isn’t one continuous pink cloudy dance of euphoria (again, sorry about that). Most of the rest of the western world still drinks and that really can get fucking annoying at times, because the longer I’m sober the less I understand it and the more I wish they didn’t because I would so much rather spend time with their amazing, authentic, sober selves rather than the downgraded, booze dulled version.
There are still moments of pure blissful contentment for sure, I had one this Sunday sitting in my PJs with my girls with a delicious cup of real coffee, a bowl of slow cooker porridge and no trace of a hangover. But for the most part this second year has felt like a journey, an often challenging journey back to my true self, and I can’t see the path ahead for more than a few feet so there’s a lot of groping in the dark and hoping for the best involved.
But I do have trust, because I’m not floating aimlessly any more. I’m moving forward at a faster rate than I ever have in my life and although it’s sometimes hard and exhausting and I often feel like I don’t know what to do next, I so rarely feel any real fear about any of it, because I can sense the anchor that’s always there, the anchor of my sober centre. And I know I can keep on going, because as long as that anchor holds, everything will be ok.
Everything will be ok for you too, I promise, however far you feel you’ve drifted out. If you just cling on tight to your sober anchor, that’s all you have to do to find your way back home.
