I made it a year without drinking.
No plans to go back to it, either. Almost 14 months sober and going strong.
Tag: addiction
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Three days shy of eight months sober.
The last time I strung together eight months of sobriety was in 2016, over six years ago, & I relapsed shortly after that anniversary. Took me until last summer to get help. I’m scared to be here again. My brain says I’ll fail, & it doesn’t help that I just got taken off one of my meds, a mood stabilizer, so my mental health’s currently curled up in a corner crying somewhere, thirsting for a drink. Or 14.
Going through withdrawal from this med is weird because I’m realizing it numbed me from my anxiety, my rage, my sadness & mania, but also from my happiness. I’ve cried countless times in the last few days, but I’ve also started singing in the car again. Noticing how the sunlight filters through the trees into my room while I’m working. Appreciating my loved ones more, smiling from the love I feel for them.
I’m happy & I’m sad; I’m elated & scared. And I’m okay with feeling all of these things, because I know I can handle them as long as I stay sober.
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3am thoughts
My brain won’t settle down.
It’s been screaming for vodka for days, which I’ve ignored, so now it’s feeding me a romanticized version of my life as a drinker. And it’s starting to get to me.
I’m not going to drink but God this gets so beyond tiresome sometimes. Sometimes I just want a normal brain, not an alcoholic one, not a sober one, not a “one drink away from disaster” brain.
I love my sobriety and am so grateful for it but moments like these where my brain’s just chipping away at my resolve are exhausting and I don’t feel like hunting for the lesson that I’m sure is buried somewhere in all of this.
I am tired.
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Every second is a miracle
Less than a week away from 7 months sober and feeling very grateful today.
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Growing pains
Nobody told me about the growing pains of getting sober.
The ache, the satisfaction, of stretching and settling into myself.
The painful nostalgia revisiting the frantic fever dream that was the before, the sheer relief that I don’t live there anymore.
The pride, the goddamn pride I feel knowing that finally, fucking finally, I meet the standards for decent human being, that actually I’m a pretty good one.
I delight in myself. With me is a nice place to be.
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I’m all jumbled up
So sad and the air feels so heavy. I keep forgetting to breathe. When I remember, I find myself gasping dramatically in a way that’s probably very annoying to anyone around, but nobody says anything because they know I am “going through it.”
I am utterly unable to believe that my best friend is dead. I am completely furious at him for thinking he could use again after being clean for so long. I want to shake him and tell him what an idiot he is, and then I start crying because I’m a horrible person for thinking my dead best friend is an idiot, despite still not really understanding that he is, in fact, dead.
I want to write and write and write about this but I have to force myself to get even this much out. I keep pulling up our text messages so I can see the hearts he sent me the night before he died. I stare at those emojis like I’m deciphering a message he left for me, something that would explain why he had to leave me or just a funny thing that he knows would make me laugh.
I haven’t laughed in a while.
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for her.
I stay sober for the woman who was afraid to die but too scared to live.
For the woman who never thought she’d amount to anything more than drunken wasted potential.
For the woman who clawed her way through hell to ask for help.
For the woman who saved her own life for one more chance.
I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable 