One Year Sober: What I Want You to Know

A message for your aching soul.

Photo by Natacha Filion on Unsplash

I celebrated one year sober on January 1, 2023. And I realize this next statement is going to sound wildly dramatic but I do not care because, for one, I’m a full on Sagittarius, and, for two, I really don’t care about a lot of things I used to care about. The strange thing I felt that morning as I watched the sunrise over the Bohemia River in Maryland, was at once completely perfect peace, and also full body, mind, soul, and spiritual overwhelm. I was crushed by the weight of it. Exhilarated and silenced. It was this sensation of complete openness, but without emptiness. It seemed impossible and yet made perfect sense deep inside. Like I had finally reached a place I had always been. And I clicked into myself.

I felt endless humility, gratitude, and grace. As I took a few photos to commemorate my time alone with the Universe on that hugely profound day, I cried the wettest tears I have ever cried in my life. That sounds dumb, of course. But it’s true. And also, please remember, I do not care. I sound how I sound. I cry when I cry. My tears were wet with the delicious sweetness of the brutalness of what it took to get here; triumph and clarity. I could feel the entire expanse of the Infinite in a single breath. And there are very few people who will hear me when I speak of these things. That’s okay. I know. But there are a few. A soft, mindful, driven, fiery, passionate, exquisite few. And for those of you, I have a message to share with you. If you will be so kind, and so quiet, quiet as death, to hear it.

You don’t know where to start because you already started. Long ago. You are looking for the wrong thing. You are looking for direction from somewhere out there. Some horizon. Some savior. Some god. What you need to be feeling for is the compass inside of you that lets you know- according to your own self- what is north, south, east, west. And even then, you could choose any direction that intrigues you- and you will still be loved.

Signs are all around you. All the time. Signs are everywhere. They are signs of a universe that is trying to wake you up. To show you your pain and how to love yourself for it and through it. Signs are all around you. Right now. And what I want to ask you is: are you paying attention to them? What I can tell you for sure is that you will be content in your soul only to the extent that you see these signs and choose to follow them. Wherever they lead. Into battle. Into light. Into the unknown.

And perhaps you will say to yourself, but Allison, what about my sobriety, what about tips for Dry January, what about list posts and tricks and ‘how to’s’ and life hacks, and all the gimmicky shit we are all so used to that we think we need a ‘challenge’ in order to find out if we are brilliant or not at doing life. At staying clean. At staying sober. At recovering. At not being addicts anymore.

You want to know the way. I wanted to know it, too. When I stepped into my first day of sobriety on January 1, 2022, I threw everything at it I could think of- books, podcasts, IG accounts, teas, waters, mantras, meditations, therapy, addictions counselling, AA, not AA- because I didn’t know how any of this worked. I didn’t know if I could do it. Now one year later, I can say for sure that I figured it out. I did do it. I did the thing I thought I could not do. And the overwhelm of the culmination of that first year was nothing shy of monumental. The reality of what I had done all year to sever my ties to alcohol at all costs, the thing that abused me for 21 years straight, the truth of all of it, is incomprehensibly expansive.

You do not need to know the way. You do not need to know how. You do not need to know everything. Or anything. If it will work out. If it will not work out. This is you. Working it out. There is no point to reach. No summit. No prize. No finish. The point is not to know it all in the end. It’s to get to know your most honest, truest self. Now.

And the truth is that you stand alone in it. You stand and cry alone in your sobriety, in your astronomical self-love, and you know the thing that God is, whatever It is that has no name, no end, no beginning, you know it cannot be explained. But that it lives inside of you as you. And it doesn’t ‘save’ you so much as it connects you to its freedom and you fly with it. Because of it. Inside of it. You realize that to be alone with the sunrise is what it was all always going to be about. Fuck booze, fuck intoxication, fuck all of that to hell. It was never about alcohol, ultimately. It was always about how this world will tear you apart from yourself every chance it gets. But this world will only succeed in doing so if you let it. Don’t.

And then what happens is you get to the mountaintop. One year sober. And then you realize eventually you have to come down and get about your day. And stay sober in the quiet, in the regular, in the hard, in the insignificant days and evenings. And you have to sleep at night. Eat the dinner, sip the tea. Wake up. It rains. It is cold and the trees are naked as black snakes. You have to pour the coffee. Try not to ruin the toast. You realize the absolute humbling soul-quaking awe that lives inside of the darkness that hangs all over your kitchen before dawn- it goes on and on forever; into infinity and long beyond forever. And that scares you because you know your humanity cannot. Does not. Will, eventually, not. And that your body- which aches and begs and hurts and orgasms and smiles and laughs and knows hunger and thirst and pain and loneliness- it has its strengths and it has its limits. And so the suffering is very real, even more so than before you got that view from the mountaintop. But so is the joy.

Oh god—so is the joy.

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