Dear Sobriety

A love letter to the relationship that's teaching me how to be with myself.

A few weeks ago, I marked four years without the grip of alcohol on my life. When I think back to that early morning when I knew I was done, I’m relieved to note that I mostly feel calm acceptance and compassion for that confused, hurting woman/child. I’m lucky to be part of a small group of women exploring who we are as sober people. We meet monthly on Zoom and discuss a theme for an hour and a half, taking turns choosing a theme and holding the space for that night. These calls are like church to me. The February theme was to write a love letter to our sobriety. Here’s what I wrote:

Dearest One,

Thank you for staying with me. I know it can’t have been easy to stick around when I often abandon myself with self-criticism and judgment, with behaviors that don’t align with my values. I always felt your roots under the surface of my days through the blitzed or hungover haze. I feel the cool shade you provide when I’m lost in the frantic heat of the world. A mighty live oak in a wild meadow. Home.

I find myself moving toward you in so many ways now. At first, it was to change my relationship with alcohol—a most pressing need—and you helped me find my edges and boundaries, my co-dependencies. My social system fell away when I stopped drinking, and you became the friend I could relate to the most: you, a brighter, more serious version of myself. You helped me heal enough to have the energy to commit to taking care of this body for the long haul, whatever might be left of it. You sat with me when my body was drowning in rye whiskey. You placed your warm hands over mine, clutching the heavy-bottomed tumbler with the gently rolling ice ball tinking against its side. You hummed a soothing promise of freedom that buzzed my nervous system as every sip of amber liquid slipped past my lips, and you said so plainly — I’m here when you’re ready to learn who you are and to live without this mask.

I wonder if you lingered nearby at the wedding when I was the five-year-old flower girl passed out under a table in a velvety, fizzing sherbet haze of party punch. Did you watch me empty the abandoned half-full glasses, not understanding what they were, thinking I was sneaking extra dessert as the adults danced in their drunken daze? Did you lift the tablecloth so my mother could see me as she searched in a frantic panic when it was time to go home? I think I felt you near.

Were those your scuffed red Doc Martens in the next restroom stall at Carmine’s on the upper West Side? Was that your nervous cough as I prayed into that filthy public toilet bowl on my 24th birthday, all the house-made red wine leaving my body with a force whose shame still lives in my belly? Were you sitting next to me on the bench by the bonfire on my 45th birthday, watching as I followed the rye and beer into a space where only I existed and I let a man who was not my husband trace the shape of my long, bare legs with his hungry fingertips in front of everyone?

So many moments you were there waiting in the light while I danced naked in the shadows. I finally saw your face that last time four years ago as I walked home in the freezing February night fresh from my friends’ hot tub down the block. Three in the morning, dressed in nothing but a towel and boots, clutching my crumpled clothes to my chest, reeling from liquor, my blood pressure a whining bass thump in my ears, fear and shame a hot green aura lighting up the neighborhood. I heard your footsteps crunching the snow on the sidewalk behind me. I imagined sweet elderly Betty across the street watching me slip and pitch forward going up the steps to my front porch. I lay there with my knees scraped, trying to remember if my daughter was home or at her father’s. The dog barked wildly on the other side of the door, and I felt your warm hand on my elbow lifting me to my feet, guiding my shaking hand to the doorknob, helping me into the living room. You sat down on the floor with me, watching me closely. We both wondered, is this it now? Are we doing this? Are we done?

Yes, we did.

Yes, we are.

Yes, I am.

I wonder if I will eventually stop marking the day, February 22. I considered skipping it this year and letting myself live in a sort of untethered acceptance of this sober reality, but then along came the topic for the sobriety circle, and I realized I wanted to celebrate the day when I finally acknowledged your presence in my world and began building the most important relationship I have.

I love you and our life together. It’s hard, and it’s easy, and most importantly, it’s true. I have a long way to go with this being sober thing. I’m applying everything you’ve been teaching me to all the other areas of my life where I self-medicate. Social media is now gone; next up: negative self-talk, sugar, and binge-watching television. Those are my alcohol these days, and I see how I use them in the same way I used alcohol for most of my life — to make myself feel more palatable in the world.

Thank you for staying by my side even though I spent so many decades pretending I couldn’t see you. Thank you for showing me that I’m enough exactly as I am without regulating myself with poison. My heart thanks you. My liver thanks you. My spirit thanks you.

That five-year-old girl with Shirley Temple banana curls passed out under the table covered in whiskey-soaked sherbet thanks you, too.

Let’s do this forever.

Love,

Kelly