How do you talk about recovering from something we aren't supposed to talk about?
Or: failed attempts at re-introducing myself
I feel like a freak when I do, so I don’t talk about it much. My palms sweat even now while I type on this tiny Chromebook keypad, all alone in the quiet cocoon of my writing room. It’s 5:38am. Pitch black out the open window, a cool air moves in and sweeps across the skin on my face and fingers, the rest of me is bundled beneath a hoodie and blankets. I sip my hot coffee, give thanks to whatever it is that afforded me this great luxury of clear-headed early morning silence, and wonder why we never talk about how we have become new people.
Whenever I sit having coffee with an old friend or family member, anyone who’s known me forever, there’s an energy that stirs inside me. An energy that wants to leap up and shout for the newness of her presence inside of me. I’m not who I was before at all, don’t you see?! she wants to say to them (I do not let her, of course, because while I’m ecstatic for reasons inexplicable to most, I am aware enough to know that such an unhinged outburst would more than likely bring about an abrupt end to our otherwise civilized time together over coffee). I am not the person you knew. I am not the person I thought I knew. It’s astounding. It’s all-encompassing. It is so big and so full and it feels like I might burst because I have no way to make you understand what this is.
I don’t yet understand what this is.
This me who feels freedom for the first time because I feel joy for the first time that isn’t tied to anything I can point to or prove. There’s no degree, no diploma, no event, no sacrament to celebrate. Recovering is the greatest experience I have ever known. It is exhilarating and crushing and has shown me my own face more clearly than I’ve ever seen it. I smile now like never before. And I know they’ve seen me smile a million times, but this one comes from somewhere I’ve only just discovered inside me. I didn’t know it could be like this. I don’t know how I ever lived some other way than this.
I didn’t know when I first put down the drinking in January 2022 that I could do this thing. Sobriety was so far from anything I ever dreamed of undertaking. But now, two years and eight months into my recovery from alcohol addiction, and from the traumas that predisposed me to it, and from the culture that slammed it in my face every chance it got, I’m not the person who stopped drinking 964 days ago (but who’s counting, right). When I put down the drinks I picked up something else, but it was so small then that I couldn’t possibly have any idea what it would become. How light, and shaky, and fragile it was in my hands back then, that thing called sobriety.
In my new unsteady hands.
That little tiny hopeful small thing that I trusted blindly to lead me where I would learn I had to go. Bravely, tenderly, relentlessly. Like a soft baby chick, or a single feather, or a thin bare string, I barely knew I was holding onto anything. But I did know. I did know it was something.
But now that small something has grown so big it feels like an elephant in the room everytime I’m with the loved ones I’ve loved all my life. I’m me but it isn’t at all like it was! I’m free, do you get it?! I’m free of all of it! The darkness, the sickness, the terrible! I looked it dead in its angry weary bloodshot eyes and I soothed the goddamn thing — all by myself, in spite of everything, over and over and over, when nobody was looking.
I did it. I’m doing it now.
But now, the beast can’t hurt me anymore. It isn’t sitting with us in the room anymore. I’m not scared anymore.
When I’m alone with myself it doesn’t itch anymore. I want you to get it. So badly, I want you to see. I wish I had the words to make you realize I am trying to re-introduce myself, but I don’t want to scare you away. I don’t want you to think I’m loonier now than I was when I was drinking. I don’t want you to nod and look away and change the subject to something that doesn’t make you as uncomfortable as I have felt for 964 days straight non-stop (okay, I’m counting).
I’m so new that I’m afraid we’ve never met.
When you graduate from college, they get it. When you get married, they get it. When you have a baby, they get it. When you get a promotion or retire, they get it. There’s parties and cards and cakes and accolades because they — the world, the culture, the Hallmark — get it. When you are recovering from addiction, the world doesn’t get it. What is hard about that is: my recovery has taken every shred of strength, commitment, and bravery I could muster. It has taken every sliver of my heart, every corner and crevice of my mind, and every burned out frightened fragment of my being to maintain over these few years.
And I’m only just getting started. Can you imagine? I thought I’d be done by now. I had no idea what I was holding, what I was growing, or what I would grow into. Because the thing is: you don’t grow into yourself. You grow beyond yourself. Over and over again, you expand and expand, and fumble and get the shit kicked out of you because of the tedious, relentless honesty. The brutality of the commitment to wrangling this invisible thing. How is it possible you carried that dark beast around with you all that time, in my case over twenty years? That pain. That crippling, unidentifiable pain.
The sky outside my window has grown a light milky blue. The coffee is now cold, as is the giant mug it’s cradled in. So much time has passed since the beginning of my new self, and yet it feels like so much is only just now dawning on me. Like how dark that dark night really was. Like how it feels to finally get a grip on your own mind, your own actions, your own power.
The truth is there’s no way to explain this feeling of becoming someone you are meeting for the first time. Maybe it’s because it’s not just a ‘feeling.’ It’s the most clear and concrete reality you’ve ever known. For the first time in my life ever — and I got the college degree and had the graduation party; had my baby and raised him well; had the big, big wedding and we’ve celebrated our anniversary every year for seventeen years now; had the career and the promotions — for the first time in my life since recovery began, I know exactly where I am when I’m alone with me.
I know I can trust myself and I know I’m not going to run because I don’t live that way anymore. I chose me all that time ago, in January 2022, when I looked in the fridge and there was water where the wine used to be. And I couldn’t believe I was doing this thing.
There’s no designated public platform or cultural custom around acknowledging or celebrating this kind of radical self-transformation. Maybe because there’s no radical self-transformation quite like recovery. But it feels so good to write about it here with you. To finally have somewhere to open up about what’s it’s really like to re-emerge like this. And not feel like a freak when I do.
I’m finding the sobriety journey to be a double-edged sword. Simultaneously I want everyone and no one to know I’m doing it.
I feel similarly on my mental health journey, which is of course part of your journey too, and also difficult to talk about societally. People who have not experienced something like it themselves have no way to understand how hard I've worked and how much progress I've made, even if I'm still struggling some. I feel like I get more truly sympathetic responses talking about the struggle parts. Trying to describe my wins seems to mostly elicit a kind of puzzled "that's great" that doesn't feel terribly connecting. I guess that's why it's important to find others who do understand from their own experiences, but it does feel like a loss when someone you've previously felt close to can't really come with you on your journey.