Ubuntu

In 10 days I’m going to be 1 year alcohol-free.

If I wasn’t living through it I wouldn’t believe it. I remember in the beginning, oscillating between “DAMN, a year is a long…ass…time. Can I really do that?” And “Damn, one day I’m gonna be able to say I’m one year sober…right?”

I can’t say I made this journey alone. You heard the story of the footprints in the sand? If you haven’t, look it up. I’m not in the business of telling other folks stories.

When I turn around to look back on all these days that have passed I know what got me through the most, community. I remember wanting so badly for someone to really see me, so that they could reach in and pull me out.

It started with one person I told my secret to, just to see how it felt slipping from my mouth a little truth at a time. The more I let it out, the less shameful I felt about the darkness I was hiding in. The more I shed light on it, the less I could hide in it. One person to hold my secret turned into a few more. Now, I think, everybody knows my business. I like it that way.

I feel more myself than I ever have. I don’t feel like I’m walking on eggshells anymore, wondering if anyone will see me spilling out of myself.

Depending on alcohol, yearning for it before I realized I was, had become my toxic personality trait. I didn’t know how I’d exist without it. I didn’t believe I could. Truthfully, I didn’t want to. I wanted to spend as little time as possible with myself, just me, sober. Reality, just the way it was, wasn’t enough. I had an insatiable appetite for some other version of life. Any other version of my experience seemed better in comparison. Even the version that had me living in a cycle of feeling rode hard and hung up wet.

Here and there, I bump into versions of myself out in the world. People that I used to be, things that I used to say, cravings that I thought I was hiding. I recognize the subtle yearning in others, to exist in any other version of reality besides the one they inhabit.

I don’t have a profound way to end this. I just recognize now that it is my job to be part of the community that once saved me, that still does. It’s my job to be someone that can hold the darkness when others wish to share it with me. To shed light where they are willing to let it shine.

It’s my job to be this for myself and others. It’s not easy, it’s not a journey I asked for, but I accept, I accept, I accept.