I took my last drink nine days ago. I admitted I am powerless over alcohol, and that my life had become unmanageable.
There it is.
***
I have been silent online. I have been suffocating beneath the weight of my truth, the elephant on my chest, the muzzled agony in knowing that if I can’t say this, I can’t say anything at all. I don’t want to say anything else.
I have written and re-written this post in my head a thousand times. I wanted it to be just right. I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know how it–I–would be received. In the end, it’s really about that word, powerless; there is no prettier way, no way less shocking, no way more poetic to speak my truth. I choose my words carefully and that right there is the one, the only one I need to know, the only one I have the energy to utter most of the time: powerless. I was powerless. I am steadily reclaiming my power now, one day at a time.
***
I am not one of those tell-all bloggers. I am uncomfortable in the spotlight. I love to write and I relish the community that blogging brings to this craft, the loneliness you break by being here. I do.
But I am not fully honest with you. I still stubbornly believe the people who bring me chicken soup and suffer through my neuroses in person deserve to know things about me that you don’t, and vice versa. I don’t believe in giving you all the details, in telling you the names of my children, in journaling my every move and thought. And you all know that, and yet you keep coming back. You make me feel like I’ve given you just enough of me, shown you just enough, that you find me worth liking and worth your precious time. I sit here behind this screen and think, But they don’t know me at all. Everything I have ever put out into this space is real and true, yes. It’s just that there are so many things I haven’t put out there.
I need to ease up, though, because I now understand I was keeping many of those things from myself, too. And one of the biggest components of my disease is the need to have everybody like me. Impossible, yes, but that doesn’t stop me from reaching, from withholding, from editing, from dancing, for you.
Most of you never saw me drunk. I met my deadlines, I excelled at work, I juggled all of my social and familial obligations well. There was no crazy rock bottom for me, no wild nights at the bar, no sloppy fool-making, no jail time, no apparent loss. You rarely heard me talk about drinking, whether in person or online. I know that. That was on purpose. If any of you are in shock right now, I hope you hold that feeling close. I hope you look around at the people in your life, the women in particular, with a little more awareness. I don’t look like what I thought an alcoholic looked like, and that kept me drunk for many years. Trust me, though, there are a whole lot of us out there who look just like me, and if I don’t say it, you’ll never know. I preach it every day over on Violence UnSilenced, that speaking out will set you free. I am standing here today, shaking, but free.
Up until a few minutes ago I did not know whether or not I would hit publish. I agonized with my husband, with a few friends. I spoke with a family member and asked her to speak for the rest, asked her if they would find it upsetting, or too revealing. She said absolutely not–but that she was worried for me. She worried that a future employer would see these words and judge me unfit for work, that a schoolyard bully might use the word “alcoholic” as a taunt. I felt her concerns deep in my bones and I retreated back inside myself again. I slipped back between the sheets of the fear and settled in to sleep.
And then I woke up this morning and, much like the last nine mornings, this one looks a little bit different. I’m a little bit more lucid. A little bit stronger. A little less ashamed.
I woke up feeling very calm, very peaceful about the decision to go public with this. I thought about my friend Erika, who lives her truth on her blog every day. It dawned on me that a gay person must have these exact same worries upon coming out–surely a future employer, or a schoolyard bully, could and will read her blog and judge her in the same way I will most certainly be judged for this admission–but she does it anyway. She does it proudly, bravely, because it’s who she is.
Why should I be punished for doing the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life? This is not some questionable behavior I’m engaging in, this is who I am. Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive, fatal illness, and though I had no control over its occurrence I have absolute control over taking responsibility for it, over its treatment. If there is anyone out there, future employer or not, who will dismiss a girl for an act of honesty, an act of bravery, well. I’d rather not work for that person. I have also learned over the past nine days that quitting drinking is a very different thing from getting sober, and that most people have something, something, whether they drink or not. Most of us have something we use to disconnect, to zone out, to hide, to run, to stuff away. There’s no shame in facing that something head-on. I am learning that if there is something that knocks my breath away with fear, then that is exactly the thing I now need to move toward, not away from. That is where this lives.
One of the things they talk about in recovery is that you cannot control other people’s perceptions of you, other people’s reactions, other people’s emotions. They talk about making a commitment to live without fear. Even just one short week ago, I worried I would never speak these words here. I worried I would never write anything again because early sobriety has consumed my entire existence and if I can’t talk about it, I can’t talk about anything at all. My words have been stuck behind these other ones, with no dam-buster in sight. I either pull the plug on this blog and quietly disappear, or I face you, it, this. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Today, however, I choose the latter. I choose to stay and fight and expose myself to you with honesty and clarity, unapologetic.
It is the most utterly foreign feeling I have ever felt in all my life.
***
Alcohol is one of my oldest friends, one of my best. She is always there for me, right there, here, her breath hot on my neck, her whispers hissing in my ear. She slides a warm soft hand over my shoulder and down my chest, cups a breast and breathes into my hair You are mine. You are nothing without me. You can’t write without me. You cannot play with your children without me. You are not interesting without me. You are not a desirable wife without me. You cannot meet your deadlines without me. You cannot meet their expectations without me. You cannot carry their stories without me. You cannot cope, cannot deal, cannot face, cannot fight, without me. You are mine and I am yours and it is good, it is safe, it is warm, it is secret, it is ours. Stay. And for some reason I turn into her, not away, even though she cruelly names my biggest fears aloud. Or, maybe, because she’s the only one who does.
***
The amount, the circumstances, the longevity, the history, the escapades, the who what where when why, none of those things are important here today. (Though, if you want these details, I am willing to speak with you privately. I’ll answer any questions you have. Part of speaking this truth aloud is to help others, just in case you see yourself in me, as I finally saw myself in someone else. Someone who is an alcoholic.)
There is a trap in comparing my behavior to others, a voice, her voice, whispering, Well maybe you’re not an alcoholic. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. You’re not like them, after all. Come back. But I can’t compare myself to you, I only know what it was like for me. For me. All those nights of quiet, secret heartbreak. All those times my head hit the pillow and quiet disgust, the self-hatred, the shame that washed over me heavy, pregnant with salt, breaking again and again and again on my battered shoreline where I lay soaking, helpless, broken. My GOD it was exhausting, that secret, private, 24-hour internal battle. All those nights whispering You did it again. You weren’t gonna do it and you did. All those prayers on my knees, my heart on the ground, wailing Please! Help me stop. Please.
It’s just no way to live.
***
I’d reached out to a few people over the past year. Some of them are people you know, some are people you don’t. People I knew were in recovery, or people I knew would love me no matter what I had to say. I said a lot of things like maybe and kinda and sorta and what if and later and who knows but I never once used the word powerless. That came later, in a moment of clarity, a moment of great grace, a moment of tremendous, unexpected peace. It came spilling out of my mouth in a torrent of grief and fear and honesty and shock where it pooled at my husband’s feet and I saw my reflection in it, and I spoke those words for the first time, “I am powerless.” I cried those words ten hours before my very first support group meeting where I learned, to my great shock, that I had just spoken the first step out loud and I didn’t even know it.
From that moment on I have walked toward this beast, not away. I have walked with a dignity I haven’t known in years. I have walked on the backs of hundreds of people who have been there, and for once I have accepted that help without guilt.
And what a nine days it has been. Telling my story, over and over, to strangers, to loved ones in my life, to myself. The reading, the processing, the talk talk talk talk talking, these feelings (at least I’m told that’s what they are, these stealthy little bombs) assaulting me, invading my air space, pounding my former alcohol-fortified no-man’s-zone with bomb after bomb after bomb all day long, my God, my God, I am completely worn out. By 6pm every night my body is one giant ache.
But I’m grinning.
I have logged hours and hours and hours on the phone with my friend Heather, my personal tipping point, the match to my piles and piles and piles of alcohol-soaked shame. Together, we combust. Often spontaneously, sometimes multiple times a day. I have a lot of support in my life, but she is the only person on this earth who knows exactly what is going on in my head and heart right this very second because the inside of her head and heart mirror mine. What a gift. What an amazing, amazing gift.
***
Speaking of gifts, today is my daughter’s fifth birthday. I can meet her eye now, look at her straight as she dances across the room, alight with the pleasure and wonder I crave. All those promises I dared whisper only to my pillow, I can speak them now. I can keep them, I can hold them out to her the way she offers fistfuls of dandelions and crayons to me. I can sit next to her, and her ten-year-old sister, my girls, my daughters, and I can breathe them in and let myself feel it, sometimes terrifying, sometimes panicky, this hot, fierce, unpredictable love I hold so clumsily for them, for us, for this big, achy world. I couldn’t bear the weight of that feeling before and frankly, I don’t know how I’ll bear it now without my sweetest, most awful friend–but I will. I know I will. They are beyond worth it. (So am I, I’m told. I have faith that belief will come.)
I don’t know what’s next for me but I can’t think about that yet. I need to stay right here, sit here, inside this, in the now, soak, just be. Trust in the grace of the universe that brought me to this place today, that it will lead me where I need to go and that I don’t need to know exactly where that is. I don’t need to know. I need to let go.
***
I’ve got this very clear picture in my head, a memory that hasn’t happened yet, a prophecy of hope. I am barefoot on my porch, a summer skirt lapping lightly at my thighs, my arms bare and strong. I am squinting into the brightness. The warmth I feel on my neck is no longer her breath, but rather the sweet sun’s hot prickle. I am free and I am peaceful and I am open to what’s next. I am here.
I am Maggie, I’m an alcoholic, I refuse to be ashamed, and I’m going to say this out loud every day for the rest of my life. Thank you for letting me say it to you.