Yesterday I celebrated nine consecutive months of sobriety. It’s what some might call a “full term sobriety”. It’s as if your sobriety is a fetus and now it’s ready to emerge from the safety of the womb and into the harsh world. So I guess I’m due any day now. However, I myself was a late birth. I am only assuming it was because I knew what was waiting for me when I came out. But, still, I celebrate this achievement. As I have done at six months, I will take a moment to look back at my journey till now. I’ll try not to repeat myself too much.
After sitting on the fence for about two to three weeks, I made the leap to start recovery in early May. I never wanted to be one of those sad, sorry saps waiting outside the church for the AA meeting to start. Now, I’m one of those people. It’s nowhere near as bleak as I had imagined it would be. Had it been, I’d have left a long time ago. I stayed because of the community it afforded me. I found people from all walks of life trying to do what I was trying to do; stitch my life back together. Some people had just started while others had been recovered for years. Either way, it’s a group of people actively trying to be better.
A friend of mine from the meetings mentioned the other day how he’d seen a great change in me since I started showing up. He told me that in the beginning I would always manage to work in that I was a piece of shit in my shares. Over time, he’d heard less and less of it until it finally stopped. Funny thing is, I remember sharing that I thought I was a piece of shit early on, but hadn’t even noticed that I’d stopped doing it. I mean, I have noticed a great change in my heart, but I hadn’t considered how it was reflected in my shares.
So, I guess I’ll write about why that is. The answer? I don’t think I’m a piece of shit anymore. Up until recovery I had kept hidden so many things about myself that I was ashamed of. Most of which I had no control over. I guess I felt that I needed to be perfect to be worthy of respect. Since I was so far from perfect I hid everything that reflected poorly on me. The result was that I simply just stopped talking about myself. I stopped sharing about who I was because I thought that once someone found out that I wasn’t hilarious on command, devastatingly handsome, whip smart, and incredibly athletic, they’d think poorly of me.
Yes, I know, it is a childish thing to be afraid of, but I have been very childish my whole life. What I am finding out is that nearly everyone I meet is also very childish. I am finding out that everyone has insecurities. Everyone has pain. That’s the magic that happened when I began to expose who I truly was in my meetings. The more I told the truth about myself, the more I realized that I was not a monster, but a flawed human being amongst other flawed human beings. That’s it. I wasn’t an outlier. There was nothing about me that was worthy of the poor treatment I had given myself for so long.
The more I told the truth, as painful as it was, the lighter the world became. All that hate that I reserved for myself became pointless. I released all the lies I told over the years, and all of the terrible things I thought I had done. Every sin I confessed in those meetings, the closer I was getting to myself. I had spent so much time hiding things from everyone around me that I never considered that I was also hiding from myself.
Each exposure got me closer to the truth that I was me the entire time, I just hated myself. I began to see the whole picture, or at least, more of the picture than I had ever given myself a chance to see. What I am seeing is just a person who is trying his best and always has been. He’s made a lot of mistakes and has held onto a lot of pain. That’s okay, it hasn’t killed him.
As I write this I also realize I am not yet recovered if there is such a thing. I still have work to do and the amazing thing about the 12 step program is that there is always work to be done on yourself. This notion would have floored me when I started this journey. I looked at recovery as a means to finally be the perfect self that was buried underneath a mountain of bullshit. I thought it was a way to let go of all of the things stopping me from being the real me. However, the real me is not perfect and never will be. Getting sober and starting the recovery process is not about reaching perfection, but about accepting who I am in this world.
Yes, I have a drinking problem. I have lied to many people over the years to mask a crippling insecurity. There is no changing any of that and that’s okay because that is a part of my story. That is what makes me who I am. The perfect me is a figment of my imagination. He does not exist and thank god for that! That’s the person I don’t know. I don’t know what it would be like to be perfect all the time but it fucking sounds exhausting. I know this because it was tiring trying to act like I could be perfect.
The truth is I need help. We all do. And I am so happy and proud to be sitting here and sharing about my nine months of sobriety. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but right now is pretty awesome. In the past, I would not have allowed myself to celebrate a moment like this. But today I am. I deserve it. I am at peace, and though my life is far from perfect, I can finally accept that. It’s an acceptance that my life cannot be perfectly planned out. Life will never be “all happiness, all the time” and there is beauty in that. There is beauty in the mystery of life. That used to scare the shit out of me. It still does, but I accept that.
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