My dearest Emily

My Dearest Emily,

Congratulations on passing this three year mark. You say that you don’t feel any different and I hear sadness in that. I felt the same way on each of my soberthdays. Here’s the thing about incremental changes - those small things we change day-by-day until they become a way of life - these changes aren’t big or momentous. The big, the momentous happened the first time we put it all away for good.

For me, I faced that moment multiple times; each time desperately hoping that it would be the last. Desperate enough to get on my knees and pray to a god, an entity, a universe, to anything bigger than me that I didn’t actually hold faith in. I was desperate enough to say I will believe if you will find me here on my knees and save me. I was looking for the big, the momentous, the enough to justify faith. Which, in its own way, did happen, just not how I asked, not how I expected and definitely not how I thought it should be.

I made myself sick with the alcohol. So sick, I ended up in the hospital dying, my body failing to abide the poison I was feeding it. I didn’t pray in that hospital bed, not that I remember anyway. But I did meet an angel - a nurse who showed me compassion, who showed me grace, who showed me forgiveness. She held herself up as an example of how it was entirely possible to do the thing I desperately wanted but didn’t have the faith in myself to accomplish. Because that was the key - faith in myself. I left the hospital and began the incremental small changes of believing in myself. I believed that I could be the person I wanted to be. I believed that I could find the person I wanted to be. I certainly didn’t know then who that person was or would be. But I knew possibility. That possibility was big, it was monumentous. The very feeling of possibility and change vibrated within me. At times it was tenuous and hopeful. Other times it was deep and saddening. Others, it was grasping and confusing. I still feel the possibilities surrounding me, but they are quieter, softer and very rarely demand my attention.

When I got through that first year, I felt the momentous gratitude of accomplishment. But I also felt small and ordinary. It is so very confusing and hard to hold both of those things at once. What is really hard is to stop and pause and try to really hear you and see you, Emily. The more time I accrue, as I too stare down three years, the small and ordinary holds a much larger space. The momentous gratitude feels more like something I should feel rather than a reality of what I am feeling. I don’t know how to not feel sad about that. I feel sad that I have to let go of the story that defines who I have become and step into the story of who I am becoming. I can’t wait to meet her.

Emily, I want to be encouraging and to that end, I wrote some truth about how amazing you are because you changed your life three years ago. But, I also want to sit beside you in sadness, because you are not alone in how you feel.

I love you my friend,

Casey