You Can Lose Everything to Alcohol
I never thought I would identify as sober. The end goal was always, eventually, learning how to moderate.
Someday, Lord help me, I would be satisfied with just one drink. And that day would probably come when I turned 30.
Then I said it would probably come when I had kids.
Then I said it would come after the brutal newborn stage.
Always, always there was an excuse or rationale to keep drinking.
And it took me sitting at my desk one miserable Monday morning, hungover and sweating -- yes, physically sweating -- as I looked at my computer screen and thought "this is not who I want to be. This is not where I want to be."
I was 38, a mom and wife. I checked off the boxes of everything I hoped for as a child, and yet there I sat with sweat lining my brow and my hands shaking and the thought that I might HAVE everything, but I will have NOTHING if I lose my life to alcohol.
So I quit. I quit drinking alcohol. And in quitting I didn't lose anything. In quitting, I learned how to be the woman I wanted to be, and in the place and stage of life I wanted to be in.
Because you can have the house, the relationship, the family, the money... you can have everything you've dreamed of as a child. But if you are drinking away your mental health. If you are drowning yourself to numb, hide, and fade out each night -- what DO you actually have?
I don't know. But what you might not have is a future. I've lost loved ones to alcohol. I've seen families destroyed by drinking and drugs. And I am grateful that exactly 1,000 days ago I took my leap into sobriety.
And today, proudly, I identify as a mom, a wife. But perhaps most important of all, I identify as sober. Because it's in sobriety that I got here. Sobriety is how I'm still here.