I created so many storms. My addiction to alcohol was a lot like what I would imagine surviving a tornado would be. I’ve never even been close to a tornado, but I know I WAS ONE for a very long time. When I would drink while being inside a full-on manic episode in my head, it felt like time stopped. In the way that the movies depict the eye of the storm with such calmness and eerie silence is where I would hunker down and re-live my own devastation. All the terrible circumstances of my life would spin around me, and I would remember. I would remember the hurt, the disappointment, the cruelty and neglect that I felt as a child and as a young woman. As I built the storm from the inside, the strength of the raging wounds would widen and pick up anything and everything in its path, slamming it to the ground, leaving splintered relationships and broken foundations all around me. I could sit outside pounding drinks for a full hour, making up a fight inside my head and then suddenly without warning, I would begin to twist and obliterate everyone in my path simply because they were there. It is the single most disgusting and unforgiveable thing an alcoholic can do to their loved ones; I don’t know a single drunk that isn’t guilty of it in some way.
Once I reached the place where it was either live sober or die, I had to force myself to realize some heavy truths.
Sobriety started out as my goal. It was the gold medal standard for myself. It was all I could focus on at the time. I found myself establishing a rigorous routine. Down time was the enemy, and if I allowed too much of it, I would quickly sink back into the old habit of becoming infatuated with my own devastation. As I began to find my footing within sober living, I began to realize that sobriety was no longer the goal, it was the task that needed to be completed every single day in order to quiet the storm within me. I longed for a life that was calm. I was ready to lay down my sword. I began to wonder what it would be like to control my emotions rather than allow them to become untethered nearly every day.
Sobriety is the discipline that requires you to be truthful about the role you play in your own life. That discipline becomes the tool that you use to navigate the storms, because they never stop coming. You don’t just walk into a fresh, new, uncomplicated life on the day you stop using or drinking. Sobriety becomes the compass, pointing you towards the way out and even more beautifully, towards the way through. If you honor it and trust it, you will find enough clarity to begin seeking healing.
It is painful to heal in this way. It is no different than a fractured bone or a surgery to remove a foreign mass that does not belong. As I’ve experienced it, you have to heal in order to find peace. I found an old journal entry in a notebook today from when I was fourteen days sober. On that day I was having a difficult time finding a reason to be positive and celebrate this milestone. A section of the entry reached out to me from the page that I feel is worth sharing.
FEBRUARY 15, 2023 – 7:22am
“None of this feels like something to celebrate. It feels like I have carved a piece of myself out and left it on the side of the road to burn up and blow away. Part of me wants to mourn that piece and all the fun we had. I want to sit with it, remembering the fun and joy it experienced, the laughter it brought, the celebrations that it looked forward to so that it could come out and play. The rest of me feels like it doesn’t have the right to mourn that piece of myself. That piece was ugly. It was dangerous and hurtful and truthfully never fully remembered it’s time out front and what it was actually doing to other people, but it felt like that piece was there just for me. I will choose to mourn it privately, after all it was mine and mine alone. A person should be able to have feelings of loss even about the ugliest things. Nobody has to understand it but me and that dead piece on the side of the road.”
If any of this resonates with you or sounds familiar, please reach out for help. Alcoholics Anonymous has been around for 90 years. You can trust something that has been working and saving lives for 90 years.
Love yourself enough to click on it. Find a meeting. Nobody has to know but you.