You won't want to do it

a third sober Thanksgiving

It’s not that you have anything figured out. Not even close. It’s just that you are sober, and newly clear, but not nearly as clear as you will be a year from now, or the year after that. I have not had a Thanksgiving yet, as a sober person, that was easy.

The hard parts are hard in ways you cannot explain to anyone who is not in recovery. Because it is hard in ways that don’t mean what they think—what I used to think—hard means. It is hard in ways I am grateful for; it is hard in the ways that mean the most to me. It is hard in the way I can feel the bones in my chest; my heart, hot and pulsing beneath my breast.

---

The second year was harder than the first because I was clearer about who I was, and what I would and would not put up with. There were family tensions that originated with my getting sober. I know this for certain because had I not gotten sober, I would not have had the balls to allow such tensions to go “unfixed.” By that I mean: I would have bludgeoned myself into submission, apologized, shrunk, or otherwise slunk off in a way that made me feel worse about myself, while I smiled, laughed, passed the marshmallow smothered sweet potatoes, and drank my face off.

Happy was a required ingredient back then.

---

I am sitting at my long table writing, which is a miracle in itself, though it is my sincerest hope that you cannot tell just by reading what I manage to get down on the page. I do not sit down easily to type these words. I discipline myself. I have dusted my entire house which is my least favorite house activity aside from cleaning the bathrooms, which I’d rather be doing right now than writing.

I am aware this makes no sense. I can only tell you that every writer will tell you this. We are a strange lot, and I love us for doing what we do. It’s hard. And most of us do it against all odds. Against the grain. Against the current which is the river that runs through all of us, dragging us away from the very thing we were born dying to do, would die without, and would rather subject ourselves to scrubbing a toilet bowl instead of surrendering to.

---

Where was I? Oh yes, sober Thanksgiving. This will be my third.

I am hosting five people including myself. A breeze. I look forward to eating everything and then eating more of it all over again many times in a continuous cycle, beginning Thursday upon waking to coffee and pastries and lasting until Sunday evening, during which time no alcohol will pass my lips.

This is as amazing to me this year as it was the first and the second. The first was itchy and surreal. The second was fraught. I was a true soldier at managing myself, my feelings, my reactions, and my poise.

I needed to go through it. Every bit of it. I needed to watch as I handled myself with grace. As, for the first time in my life, I offered myself compassion first.

You will need to face yourself in battle. Not against alcohol, but rather against the regular, seemingly insignificant choices you will face everyday, and especially at holiday time, to evolve or regress. It will be stark. You will face it alone. You will find that you are more than enough. You will discover you are radiant in ways that will light your new way.

---

It rained heavily all morning. I watched as the metallic droplets ping, ping, pinged what was left of the leaves on the trees in my yard. Of the many trees standing tall, wet, and thick, all are bare except for one. The one skyscraper of a maple remains cloaked in matte caramel leaves, sprawled out unbothered under the chill gray November sun.

---

If I could tell you one thing, just one important thing about this sober Thanksgiving, it’s this: sink into the earth of yourself and don’t budge for anyone or anything. Recovery is a massive tree trunk pushed deep, wide, intrusive into the earth, where you came from. It’s what you are made of and what you are buried inside. All my life I was inside that grave, that hole in the earth where I hid. I am just now only barely emerged. I’ve only just barely recognized the sunlight ramming down through the trees.

When the numbness wears off enough, you feel the warmth of the sunlight as it moves. In and out. In and out. The heart heating up in my chest.

I sit down to write for you against all odds. There’s a million chores I could give myself to do to avoid being alone with myself, with the words, with the gaping void of uncertainty that looms, always, endlessly, ahead.

Engage. Without knowing what may come next. Without the chaos quieting or the problems of the world having reached resolution of any kind.

Engage.

You won’t want to do it.

And then you won’t want to stop.

---

Photo by Leonid Privalov on Unsplash