When sober anniversaries don’t feel good

Oh yes, let me gleefully recall the lowest day of my life

I will have 2 full years sober this Thursday.

Consecutive. Days, nights, and weekends. Holidays and birthdays (including the birth-day of my daughter) and anniversaries.

It should feel like something of a celebration, and it is.

Two year sobriety token from my husband

But I woke up on Monday feeling down. Nearly 2 full years of no hangovers, and I just didn’t feel that good. The sky was overcast. It was cold, gloomy. I felt like I was swimming underwater.

Sober anniversaries. I hear a lot of people talk about bad dreams, bad feelings near their anniversary.

People get excited about sober anniversaries, too. And again, we should.

I should clarify: I do feel happy, and I do feel proud. It is an accomplishment. An ongoing accomplishment.

But really — what my body remembers this time of year is the day that led to that sweet surrender, the precious waving of the white flag that led to the happiest days of my life. But before that?

My “rock bottom” came without much fanfare. There were no DUIs, no legal problems, no staged intervention or anyone trying to force me into sobriety. My first marriage was well over, and while I’m sure my drinking didn’t help my emotional state as a wife, my drinking had not been a point of contention in that relationship.

My kids were safe, tucked in their beds, by me, and I had even read them a story and brushed their teeth. I sat alone on my couch to enjoy my buzz. And I thought to myself, might as well go balls to the wall. If I’m going to drink, I thought, I might as well fucking drink.

And so the story goes.

---

That last day I drank, I had just been mad. I don’t think anything specific had happened. I think I thought, you know, I’ll just drink through the holidays and start on the sobriety stuff again in January.

I had gone to the store and bought some of those high gravity IPAs I liked so well. I must have bought some wine, too, because I drank a bunch of that, too.

When I got home that night, I slammed a beer. I actually gagged. I bent over the kitchen sink, feeling like I was going to throw up. I may have thrown up some, my body immediately rejecting that thick, hoppy beer.

But I powered through.

Puke and rally, as I did.

The first two bottles were kind of fun. Like, a bottle of beer. The weight of it in my hand. How many thousands of bottles of beer had I held in my hand. It balanced just right.

I supposed a third beer wouldn’t be the end of the world. And then I went on to drink all 6 of those and some wine, too.

That next morning, I was so hungover. Like, so hungover.

I was 34 years old, and the body wasn’t what it once was, that’s for sure.

I got my boys ready for daycare, with a pounding headache. Although there had been many, many mornings that I had gotten them ready in a blind hangover, I had only drank three times over the past year, so this hangover was so. fucking. bad.

You never have to feel this way again, I had heard in the rooms, a year or so earlier. And yet here I was, and I had been, a few times, feeling this way again.

I toasted 6 waffles and wrapped them two each in paper towels, climbing into the backseat of my van and getting the boys buckled.

After I dropped my boys off at daycare, I drove to Bojangles. My dad and I used to eat a lot of Bonjangles when I worked with him at FedEx, and it felt somehow nostalgic in my hangover.

When I got home with the food, I could hardly eat. It’s possible that I puked in the sink. Perhaps I worked on my Christmas plans.

I don’t remember when I poured the remaining wine down the drain, but I surely did. I remember the smell hitting me, that full-bodied red wine.

I had one work appointment. I drove to Cary, spoke with some people. They had a swing set, little kids. They seemed so wholesome. I think they wanted to remove a tree because it was a hazard to the play set.

I was hoping I didn’t smell like wine. Everything was amplified. Could I hear the pulse of my heart in my ears?

Was this just how I walked through the world, I thought. This was just how I felt every day, wasn’t it? Was my vision always this sensitive to the light? Did my shoulders always hurt this much, were they always this tense?

When I got home from that appointment, I lied down on the couch under my kids’ dino blanket. Then I must have looked around and tried to find a task to complete that would make me feel better about my state of being.

The letter for the annual emissions on my van. Perfect.

I remember sitting in the emissions testing line, listening to noon AA zoom meeting that I like, trying not to throw up.

My sponsor over the last year (most of which I had stayed sober, and we had made it through all 12 steps) had made it clear that if I had another relapse, she was done working with me. I texted her to say I had drank and I understood she no longer wanted to be my sponsor.

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” I wrote. “I’m sorry I am the way I am,” with the facepalm emoji.

“I’m here for you, always,” she replied. But that was that.

I was hungover af, scared, and now without a sponsor in the world. Would I even want to continue with this AA shit, I wondered.

It didn’t appear that I was going to be the first person to crack the code on how an alcoholic and/or problem drinker could learn to moderate and/or drink like a lady.

At least I had completed my annual emissions.

I texted a woman I had known in the program who I knew had relapse in her story.

“Thank you,” I said. Flat. Like, huh. Those are some thoughts you have, aren’t they.

That’s all I could muster. Not even any exclamation points or emojis.

I remember thinking to myself, this lady thinks I can get sober. She really believes in me. And believes that I deserve to lead a happy, joyous, and free life.

Me. This piece of shit who just can’t get it together.

But I did hear what she was saying about getting endless chances. It was the perfect balance of chin up, it gets better and you can actually die from this.

And so the concept “to drink is to die” began to truly seep into my bones.

And I haven’t picked up a drink since.

---

The anniversary is a weird thing. It’s a milestone, I suppose, but it’s also an arbitrary marker of time.

365 days two times.

Two trips around the sun.

It's really a compilation of many, many small decisions working together to create what we have identified as two full years.

The depth of my recovery does not directly correlate to the amount of time.

I live an honest life. I take accountability for my actions. I try to do the next right thing, one moment at a time. I pause and ask the universe for the next right thought and action.

I didn’t drink then, I didn’t drink then, I didn’t drink then, either.

I don’t drink.

---

That January I took a boundaries course. I finished the shamanic medicine wheel. I became a reiki and archangelic light master. I learned how to read astrological charts.

I learned how to stand on my own two feet.

I remarried a man who has four children from his first marriage himself, and together we had another baby.

I have walked through some of the darkest and most hopeless times of my life.

All without picking up a drink.

With the anniversary on the horizon, I feel conflicted.

Thinking of that night. It’s always darkest before the dawn, and all that crap.

But, cynicism aside: I have mostly lived a life that is what they promised it would be : happy, joyous, and free.