I didn’t even realize I’d achieved and surpassed twenty-five months sober on February 1st. Life has felt somewhat heavy and hard and overwhelming lately. Which is not a complaint, it’s just how it feels. Feelings come and go. This I know all too well, because by spending seven-hundred-and-sixty-seven consecutive days sober, I’ve felt every single feeling I’ve had in full, from start to finish, to start to finish, over and over again. (*deep breath*)
Saying it like that, acknowledging that I have felt every feeling back to back to back (to back to back to back, etc…) is important for me to say right now. Because it’s really very hard, right now, in this time of my sobriety, my recovery, my living-this-life-like-I-have-never-lived-it-before. This is a very important thing to say because I am someone who could not deal with feeling my feelings for a really long time. Not just because I drank. Also because I have lived through some overwhelming things, things that clobbered my body, nervous system, and psyche to the point that I maxed out of storage space inside my consciousness. I just could not process what was happening, or what was expected of me, so I developed a warped sense of what I thought was mine to carry, versus what wasn’t. Carrying it all isn’t possible, it turns out. Some stuff falls out of reach. I lost touch with some parts of myself in an effort to hold on to others. This happens. This is a thing, I didn’t know it, though. It’s becoming clearer now, not without a lot of pain and surprise and confusion.
I don’t know if this is a good metaphor or not, the things falling out of reach in my mind. I just know that I have to remember that for almost my whole life (I’m 45 now) I thought about some things in a way that made me very afraid, confused, sad, and likely to give away more of myself than I really should have wanted to. I turned those cumbersome and unspeakable feelings in on myself and yelled at myself constantly to be better and get better, do more and be more, and so forth. I couldn’t make the yelling in my head stop, but I discovered that ‘making’ other people love me, pay attention to me, and compliment me made me feel better for a bit, and quieted the yelling in my mind. Almost everything in my life - my thinking, believing, doing, interpreting, reacting, achieving, creating, loving, relating, and being - was made a bit (or a lot) off-kilter because of some of my unhealthy obsessions.
So the thing is, when I say all of this, I don’t know what it sounds like to someone who is not recovering from an entire way of life that was built on screwy beliefs that made me want to hurt myself. I only know what is happening to me the way I am interpreting it, with the additional help of a trauma-informed addiction recovery therapist, my sober friends and mentors, and the zillions of books, podcasts, and blogs I follow that talk about how to understand what happened to me to mess me up, what to do about it, how the medical people and science people and ‘experts’ interpret me as part of a giant glob of other people they collectively refer to as ‘addicts’ - or not, wait, we aren’t supposed to say that word anymore. People who suffer addiction. People who have had an addiction? People in recovery. We don’t know what to call ourselves, either, so I get it.
What can feel tricky for people like me, or I’ll just say: for me, is that those who do not understand addiction recovery cannot fully understand the way I speak about mine, which can cause the underside of my skin to feel hot and prickly, through no fault of anyone’s. And those who do understand still each have their own ways of navigating it, as well as their own beliefs and stories about how they came to find themselves in their situations, how they are managing it at various stages, and how the people they are surrounded by in their lives have reacted to their struggles to find their own way in a murky, widely unexplored, and wildly misunderstood space.
Which is only to say that for me, a person who very much would like things to be neat, orderly, and spelled out in measurable increments of success (and would also really appreciate more gold stars and cupcakes in general), I am having to learn how to think differently about all the things I thought I had figured out. Namely: living inside a vast new alien world where nothing is certain and I’m strikingly newly aware of it and how it feels to not numb out of it every single day; making my own rules based on my own values that have increasingly presented as being at odds with the culture at large; and trusting myself less in some ways while at the same time, trusting myself more than ever in very big ways I never thought I would. It’s an interesting place to inhabit and by interesting I mean what the fuck.
In any case, living in this new headspace doesn’t lend itself, it seems, to a tidy schedule of any kind when it comes to my writing, creating, sharing, posting, reaching out, or staying to myself. I have to remind myself that having 87 draft posts (yeah) doesn’t make me an unproductive loser, it just makes me someone who cares an awful lot about the things I care about. Meanwhile, there is more sobriety talk than ever before happening all around in the outside world, in society at large, and yet for me (and for so many of us making our quiet way through recovery day in and day out without much fanfare) our unique journeys are extremely personal, intimate, and - I know I keep saying this, but it is true for me right now - difficult to wrap our heads and hearts around.
The thing is, though, I think it makes a lot of sense that it would be difficult right now, or at any given time, really. Even with all the great support I have, and I do, most of what I need to navigate is in my own mind, and I’m the only one who can do it. I’m the only one who decides what jives and what doesn’t. And much of the way my mind has operated up until now has been deceiving. Crueller, meaner, more angst ridden, dismissive, and relentlessly badgering than is required to make it safely through life by a long shot. I think people who suffer addictions get snagged inside minds that force overwhelm on us regularly, and never let up telling us we are just made up of the wrong stuff inside. That’s the part that’s very hard to undo, even when logically you know you must undo it. Because you have to get outside your own invisible patterns to be able to see it. And even once you see it, to not get tangled up in it again means you have to have something else you are building to hold onto instead. Something for which there is no blueprint. Some other kind of mind has to be in construction. This is difficult. This is very hard work.
This can become overwhelming very fast.
Which is why I wanted to tell you there is good news, too. Right now, I’m writing to you about these things that swarm my mind but feel impossible to write down or talk about. But I’m doing it, and you are reading it. And I hope it helps in some way if only to clue you in on a secret: no matter what day of recovery someone is on, you really have no idea what it’s like for that person on the inside. Sometimes I tell people one thing that I really think I mean, but then later I realize I feel differently but that I also mean what I said first. Like when people ask me what would help me feel better in sobriety, and I really don’t quite know because the world outside me and the world inside me is still trying to line itself up with this new version of me that’s walking the dotted line down the middle.
But the coffee is on. And I’ve just poured a cup and it’s black and dark and hot and I know I am addicted to it and I’m letting that slide. I know that most of my coffee drinking is really just emotional support coffee-having-near-me-always. And also I’m very aware that I’m physically here, typing away at my long farmwood table on which sits a softly burning apple cinnamon candle, my laptop, my notes, and many pens, and a book (Soberful by Veronica Valli), and I’m so damn grateful to be here. To be awake and alive and aware and trying and trusting and hoping and determined.
My backyard is brittle and brown in the harsh winter afternoon sunlight. I’ve cleaned my house and done the wash and bought and put away the groceries. My house is in very good order. I am present and accounted for. And I’m just paying attention to the little things that ground me in myself. The coffee tastes good. I am writing. I am going to send this writing to you and then go for a walk in the cold wind. Nothing makes all that much sense but also that makes total sense given the circumstances. I will not be drinking today. I will not be letting my old mind run the show. Even if my new mind is still very new, it’s still very much here. And learning to be kind.
Free gifts for you *yay* Free subscribers get a free copy of 30 days of sober exploration journal prompts. Paid subscribers get a free copy of my sobriety memoir ‘Love Me Sober’ and access to my pre-recorded audio sober coaching series on overcoming the 5 biggest obstacles to continuous sobriety. Cool. :)
Allison Marie Conway is a published author (Love Me Sober, 2023; Luminae, 2018), addiction recovery coach, mentor, researcher, and advocate. Allison currently lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with her husband, John, of seventeen years. She is deeply grateful to be recovering during midlife.
Hello Allison,
you've moved me to tears. I've been trying to organise my thoughts "get a grip" for a few weeks and you've captured my feelings, apprehension and frustration in your beautiful words. No one "gets it" I'm living in constant awareness for the 1st time in my adult life (I'm 56). Every day I consider and evaluate all my interactions, protecting my boundaries and being the best me I can. The self awareness is mind blowing. Saying all this I have no desire to drink alcohol, I'm merely working my way through.
Thank you my lovely friend. ☺️
Healing the old mind while building the new mind to hold onto. So well said. Being a person is so hard and messy and beautiful. You might feel scattered and chaotic but your words are hitting so deep with their honesty love. Keep doing the work, you're doing such a gorgeous job. ♥️