Today I’m celebrating four years of sobriety.
And I do mean celebrating.
I’ve come to consider this day more momentous than my birthday because, while I love celebrating another trip around the sun, let’s face facts: I had very little to do with my actual birth. However, I have had a whole lot to do with my re-birth, as I’ve come to think of my post-sobriety life, and in my opinion, all that effort merits a day of reflection and gourmet donuts. In that spirit, here are some unexpected things that sober living has taught me:
It’s OK to live a life people don’t understand
About six months after I first got sober, I attended a daytime gathering with a group of old friends. As I made my rounds to catch up with people whom I hadn’t seen in awhile, I noticed a strange phenomenon occurring: no one seemed to want to talk to me. People whose weddings and baby showers I’d attended, people that I’d cried sloppy, drunken tears with over 2 AM tacos, people whom I assumed would be my friends for life, suddenly wouldn't even look me in the eye. I spent the car ride home in tears, wondering what I’d done wrong.
Several years and many lost friendships later, I understand a truth that, at the time, I hadn’t yet learned: sobriety is an alienating lifestyle. Truthfully, every choice I’ve made that goes against the grain has forced me to lose people with whom I once had that certain belief in common, and it always hurts like hell, at least at first. I won’t pretend it still doesn’t at times. But one of the more important lessons that sobriety has taught me is this: if weeds are always choking out your garden, nothing new will have the chance to grow. The pruning, while incredibly painful, is an essential part of the growth process. I’m happy to report that these days my little patch of earth is blooming with healthy, life-giving relationships.
Life is really freaking FUN
When I still relied on alcohol to supply all my entertainment for me, I assumed I knew what it meant to have fun. For years, every party, vacation, wedding, date night, and dinner out naturally included alcohol and, until I stopped drinking, I didn’t realize how much I’d fused those two things together in my mind.
The equation made sense to me: if Alcohol = Fun, then No Alcohol = No Fun.
To be honest, the terror of experiencing these social situations without a healthy buzz is what kept me from pursuing sobriety well before I did. I just couldn’t picture a sober wedding or see myself playing cornhole on a camping trip without a drink in my hand.
But necessity is the mother of invention and, without that crutch to lean on, I had to get a lot more inventive about how I created fun for myself. While I’ll admit it was a little awkward in the beginning, it’s been a blast learning that I love to dance sober at weddings or that I’d rather be boogie boarding with my kids at the beach than sitting on the shore digging through the cooler. Not to mention the time, money, and brain capacity it frees up to pursue things I already loved, especially reading (I’ve literally doubled the amount of books I read every year because I’m not drinking every night before bed). Before I got sober, I equated drinking with this fun, splashy life of endless good times. The irony is that I only got to have that life once I stopped drinking for good.
Numbing isn’t living
I spent a good chunk of my life terrified of my own feelings, believing that if I let myself experience all those big, scary, technicolor emotions, I might not survive them. So I numbed them with booze and food and sex and shopping and work and to-do lists and people pleasing, and for a while, I convinced myself that was living. But as Brené Brown says, there’s no such thing as selective numbing: when you numb the hard, you also numb the beautiful.
In reflecting on my pre-sobriety life, I think of it like coloring with one of those starter packs of crayons. You’ve got all the colors and it seems like the whole rainbow is there, so you never consider that there might be more than just the eight colors in front of you. Sobriety is like someone coming along and shoving the 96 pack of crayons into your hands. Suddenly, the world you’re creating becomes more intense, more realistic, more vibrant than you ever thought possible. At times, it’s so vibrant and alive it hurts. But once you’ve colored with sunglow or goldenrod or dandelion, who wants to go back to using plain old yellow?
Happy four sober years to me.
If you’re interested in hearing more about my sobriety story, you can read about it here and here.
Love this, and love you!!