Constants: Sobriety

It began with sobriety, and hopefully will end there, this sobriety as the ultimate love story of my life. It is no longer a daily or weekly motivation; or really any motivation at all. It just is. It is a cornerstone of my foundation, one of the pillars that holds up my current reality. It was hard won, not done overnight, but in fact, took years. I had many starts, many dry Januarys, many dry Mays, many dry Octobers, and many disappointments of letting myself down when I picked the drink back up each time. Sobriety was not a magic pill, and my life did not change for the better instantly.

It was an invitation, a doorway, a threshold into a new world, a new landscape.

I heard a song recently that I hadn’t heard since early sobriety. I must have listened to this song hundreds of times during 2020 in my walks to forge a new life, a new way of thinking and being in the world. Hearing this song unexpectedly TOOK ME RIGHT BACK THERE: all the hopes, all the tears, all the desperation. The hopeful, desperate taste of freedom that I tried to hold onto long enough. I felt like a baby bird, unprotected, with fluff instead of feathers. I felt. I felt. I felt. Despite all the feelings, maybe because of all the feelings, it was also a beautiful time when I got to meet me for the first time in a very long time.

My friend Emily likes to climb mountains with just her pack and her dog, and I imagine my current world of sobriety looks a bit like the mountains she summits. The air is a bit more fresh, the view is a bit more clear, the sense of accomplishment and well-being settles like a cloak around you. My personal trials and tribulations that I face are no less challenging now than they were then, and I feel them just as deeply. But, because of the steps I have already taken, I know that I will find my way through them, and back to the mountain summit.