When Life Changes in a Blink

We All Have Sliding Doors Moments -- I Just Have Less in Sobriety

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What’s your before-and-after moment? The defining moment when life as you know it changed in a blink. Maybe you have one. Maybe you have a few.

Someone you love who died or is critically injured. A car accident. Discovering an affair. A diagnosis.

Your life becomes a semblance of moments defined by whether they took place in the before or the after.

Some would call this a “sliding doors” moment as well, based on the movie by the same name where the main characters life is drastically altered in two different directions when she catches the train home versus when the sliding doors shut just in front of her.

Image via Sliding Doors Movie

Sometimes we can even wish we could go back to the before only with the recognition and gratitude for just how much we had before the rug was swept out from under us.

And sometimes it takes someone else’s before-and-after moment to shake some reality back into you. That this right here — the life you’re living? Someone else would give anything to have it, or get it back. That maybe — maybe — that person will be future you.

Before-and-after’s are inevitable. Life is bound to sneak up on you and break your heart on occasion. While I don’t know what lies ahead, today I hold my hand to my heart and take a deep breath. I’m so genuinely grateful for everything in my life right now.

I hope my future self knows instinctively, but if I do ever look back on this time as a before? I can take comfort in knowing I am savoring every blessing and delight. I’m taking nothing for granted.

Sobriety gives me that gift every day. No more fuzzy memories, no more blank spaces where tender moments should be instead. I still have regrets. I still make mistakes. but the difference is the mistakes I make are in earnest. Mistakes made with positive intent. Always.

Something I could never say with conviction when I was drinking.

We all have sliding doors moments. We all experience the before and after of a life that’s constantly changing. I only have less now because I no longer sabotage my life with alcohol. I no longer wake up and wonder how a night might have been drastically different if I abstained or drank less.

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