One Step Down

It's been a while. I have an aversion, pointed out to me recently, to writing about things as they're happening. I'd rather experience something -- see, listen, watch, look -- and then, in the safety of some future time, remember it and write the story down then. But I started this whole exercise to avoid that particular fault line of sticking to a creatively remembered narrative, so I hope it isn't so much of a while again. Which reminds me of something I said at a meeting -- that it had been three weeks, that I didn't ever want to go three weeks without a meeting again. It took me a few months to stop having it be three weeks but lately I haven't been going more than three days without one. They temper the days. Make things easier. And, as someone said, I never regret going to a meeting.

First step down yesterday. Fifteen months of sobriety, nine in the program. One step. At first I felt bad about it; like I'd done it wrong, too slow. Friends of mine are a year in and already on their tenth steps. And here I am, slow slow slow, just doing the first. Sponsor asked me yesterday -- are you powerless? had your life become unmanageable? And I said Yes. With no reservations. No little voice in my head that said "Come on... it was a bad time, a tough time, a rough time. It wasn't the drinking, it was you. And you're better, so drink." Alcohol is, like they say, cunning, baffling, powerful. It's tricked me before and it'll try and trick me again. But I feel safe in my powerlessness. 

I remember reading about that - the safety of that admission, the way it removes the burden of strength. This isn't about willpower anymore. This is about letting all the scales and with them shackles fall, and building myself back up. I don't feel like I'm doing this alone. The first year, I really did. 

I've been praying every morning and every night. At first I resisted. I didn't want to pray -- not believing in God makes the whole thing a little awkward -- but my sponsor told me to do it anyway. So I did. I just realize I wrote about it so many months ago, the first time I prayed. Now I do it automatically, catching myself on the subway sometimes with a few awake hours without a prayer, and I'll do it, quietly. This morning I really prayed, stopped in the bathroom, folded my hands together, my head down. I hadn't done that before. 

It's helped. Things that used to set me off, I remember the serenity prayer now. It doesn't always bring serenity -- we're sober, not saints -- but it helped yesterday when mail with my partner's ex-wife's (a subject I'm very excitable about) name on it came. I wanted to be vindictive and lash out but instead I just said the prayer to myself. Things I cannot change. (That fact.) Things I can. (My attitude.) 

I've been reaching out to people after meetings, introducing myself, inviting them to coffee. It's so strange to see people who are where I was such a short time ago, but to feel like I've come far enough to be able to approach them. I still run away sometimes, kick myself after a share I thought was dumb, or too funny, or not funny enough, or too performative, or too quiet. I'm starting to share my experience and my hope. The strength will come in there somewhere. 

So it's silly I haven't written for so long. And I want to do better. I get tired of the progress sometimes. So much responsibility. So much thinking about what I've done and what I want to do and how I can do better. I oscillate between feeling gratitude and oppression. I have moments where I feel so incredibly lucky, so beyond imaginably blessed, first to be sober and second to be an alcoholic so that I have the chance to be sober. And then I have moments where I can't stand the thought of walking to another meeting, of raising my hand and not being called on, or being called on. But those are smaller and the former are larger. 

This is turning into a long after-the-fact story. I'll keep it to this for today. One day at a time, one problem at a time, one post at a time. 

Thank you for keeping me sober today. 

A week in

I started praying, for the first time in my life, two nights ago. I was falling asleep. I had heard something that sort of made me upset in a way I couldn't completely articulate -- I was hurt, then I thought I'd overstepped, then I got into the usual spin-cycle of self-blame -- and I was trying to let it go. I remembered what a friend of mine had said about keeping your side of the street clean: that's all you can do. You can't control how others react; you can only control what you do. And all of a sudden I was like "oh, right... that's what the Serenity Prayer is all about." So I started saying it in my mind. It felt sort of weird, like I was getting away with something, or doing something maybe I shouldn't have, but it also felt really good to say those words in my head. I said them really slowly, and it felt not like I was saying them, but like I was falling into them. As though they were always there and I just had to align myself with them. And I was able to let it go. 

So I did it again the next morning, when I woke up. And then last night, right before I went to bed, I said it again, really quickly in my mind. I haven't said it this morning yet and I'm not sure I will but there was something incredibly comforting about feeling like those words meant something. It wasn't religious; it didn't feel like I was addressing the words to someone. It just felt like I was really understanding them for the first time. 

I started this blog the day before my anniversary. I was freaking out. I didn't know what to expect. A friend of mine texted me and promised that I'd wake up on Saturday, feeling good, in an entirely new way. He was right. I was out of town on the day, so I figured I'd just acknowledge it on my own. And I did. And then a hundred accidents of fate happened and I ended up at an incredibly special meeting two days after the anniversary. It was full of lifers, like serious lifers, like twenty-something years lifers. I think they were the people my parents probably imagine when they think of the program -- really grizzled old dudes who identify themselves as drunks and -- but it was kind of amazing to be there with them. It's not often that you share something so profound with someone so different from you. 

On Wednesday I celebrated my anniversary at a meeting. Totally typical for me, I didn't know I had to sign up and didn't really know how it worked and of course I showed up late and so there wasn't space at the table, and then I started freaking out that I'd done it wrong and wouldn't get to acknowledge it, and I was in the middle of trying to let it go and be cool with it when C came in late, asked me if I'd gone, saw that I hadn't, and put my name down for me. I spoke. Talked about the meeting I'd gone to on Sunday, what had happened before and there and after. Talked about how I couldn't even have imagined the life I have today. Not that I'd imagined it but couldn't figure out how to get there. Couldn't. Have. Imagined. I felt then and feel now so grateful. To what, I'm not sure yet. Generally. I think, for my good luck, that I have my teeth and hair, and that all my fingers and toes still work, and that even though I got sick with this I didn't get sick with anything else. 

My grandmother said recently that she hoped I'd relax enough at some point to have a glass of wine. I told her that wasn't going to happen -- that if I had one I'd try my hardest to have a thousand. She seemed to get that, turned a little supportive. And then I said that, actually, things had been so much better since I'd stopped drinking that, as much as I sometimes feel like I would give anything -- anything -- for a glass of wine, every time I contemplate going out I just think about how good things are. And she turned to me, completely straight-faced, and said "Wait, there are benefits to sobriety???"

That's what I'm thinking about the first week of the second year. All the benefits. The first year was all about what I was losing. 

The late nights. That kind of tipsy feeling you get after a glass or two (or for me, a sip or two since I was the biggest lightweight of all time despite the fact that I was the most enthusiastic of all time) where you're not sure what's going to happen next but you've already decided that tonight's going to be a big night so you might as well order the bottle. I missed the immediate intimacy that comes with sharing a drink, with deciding that you're going to get a little fucked up together. I missed the social ease of being able to offer to buy someone a drink, that easy way you showed someone you wanted to be closer than you were. I missed the tasting ritual, and I missed the taste of a dry gravelly white wine or a red that tasted like leather and old goats. I missed dancing and I missed the furious late-night texts about where we were going to meet up and I missed the groups I used to roll with and I missed those rainy nights when we still went out and I missed that feeling of the first sip and the first line. I missed being drunk. I missed drinking. 

It still hits me sometimes. Like a friend said recently, "we're sober, not saints." I still think about getting massively wasted, completely fucked up. I think about a friend's Lower East Side apartment, about all the nights we passed the plate around and jumped to the fridge for beer, and I still think about going back there for one more time. I still have fantasies in which, ten years from now, my family and I are all kind of sheepishly laughing about the time I thought I was an alcoholic, wasn't that a funny phase. I can still taste wine. I can still remember the different grades of drunk -- first glass, second beer, end-of-the-night whisky -- like they happened yesterday. Sometimes I still forget. I plan for the night like I'm going to get hammered. New Year's Eve I didn't want to take a scarf. When I was drinking, I lost everything that wasn't attached to my body. It took a second to remember that I wouldn't be drinking, that there wouldn't be an end-of-the-night moment where I scrambled around trying to remember what I had to remember. 

So I miss a lot. I'm also grateful for a lot. I wake up every morning without a hangover, and when I wake up, I'm excited about the day. I wake up early. I love waking up early on weekends, going out to get coffee on the empty streets, knowing I can eat without worrying about throwing up. That's a big deal. I used to throw up a lot. Pretty constantly. All the time. Every time I drank, and every day after I drank. For hours. Like, thirty times a day. That doesn't happen anymore. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for my relationship, which I got into sober. We haven't had any of those drunken fights. When I've said things I don't mean, or things that are hurtful, I've thought about it, and apologized. Most of the time. (We're sober, not saints.) I've felt in control of myself and my life, and most of my emotions (hormones are still real.) I know that I'll make my breakfast meetings. I know that I'll make my interviews. I know that when I do, I'll be reasonably sharp and with it. I see a full day's schedule and I know I'll get to everything. 

Between last year and this year, I've learned how to engage with my life. For a long time it felt like my life was ahead and I was just getting through today. I planned for the future, but abstractly. (And those plans always included being better at drinking.) Now I plan for the future and I feel like I can actually make it happen. 

 

I know there's a high that comes with hitting a year. I'm conscious of the fact I might crash. I didn't realize how much of an accomplishment I'd feel I'd made. I got my coin at that Wednesday meeting. I was sort of ambivalent about it. Coin, whatever. Felt like fifth grade at Hogwarts, I get a magic chip? But I got it, and it had just a "1" on it, and I started crying. All of a sudden the last year seemed epic, long, huge. I ran through it all in my mind, and I couldn't believe I'd made it. Part of me still doesn't believe it. I think that I must have had a drink, somewhere in there. Not drinking for a year? A whole YEAR?? Nothing seems more unlikely. But I know it's true. I know I made it. 

It's pretty trippy. 

What this is...

Ten years ago, I started drinking. Three hundred and sixty-four days ago, I had my last drink. 

I didn't really do a lot of the things I should have done -- although, in recovery, there are no shoulds -- in my first year of sobriety. I didn't have a sponsor. For the first six months, I was just dry. I didn't keep a record of how I felt, or of what was going on -- externally, internally, real, imagined. I didn't articulate the day-to-day shifts, the tiny changes that let me know that I'm recovering, the moments that remind me that something is happening. 

For my second year, I want to try something different. I want to write down what happens and how I feel about it. Being able to tell the story as it's unfolding is a way for me to understand what's going on, a way to translate a big mess of events and feelings and thoughts into a recovery. 

We'll see what happens....