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.

I went digging through my pictures in search of one, this one I had in mind,  an image of serenity. I wanted to print it out and paste it into my journal, the ever-present notebook I now carry to catch those droplets of awareness and peace, the ones that ping me in the aftermath of that great storm 23 days ago. I knew exactly what picture I was looking for. I’m standing at the ocean’s shoreline all by myself, and it was taken by a friend from the top of a high rise 16 floors up. My footprints pock a trail in the sand leading up to what I thought to be a moment of great serenity–me, alone at the ocean’s mouth, without another soul or care in sight.

I found this picture, printed it out and carefully pasted it in, ran my fingers over its edges like braille and smiled. Surely this was peace.

***

I love my daughters more than I could ever begin to express to you, and I believe they know it. I am a hands-on mother, a gushy sort always touching and fussing and kissing, telling them over and over and over again how much I adore them, how proud I am to know them, what a gift they are to me. I thought I was doing a pretty good job, I really did. Yes, I drank far too much, but I did it when they weren’t looking. I made the bed every morning, I kept relatively on top of the laundry, I went out to work each day and I came home from work every night. I cooked meals. My husband had no idea how much I drank, either. I hid everything, and I thought I wasn’t hurting anyone but myself.

It’s funny, how subtle this disease is. How baffling, cunning and powerful, as they say. I really believed I was keeping it all together perfectly. I had no idea just how many filmy levels life has, like Photoshop layers added and peeled away in infinite combination to change every picture just so. I had no idea how many shades of color my own life lacked.

Last Sunday I sent Dave and the girls off to church without me. I wanted to worship on my own, in my own way, with hot freshly-ground coffee and rhombus shapes of crisp white sunlight hiding and seeking on thick, plush carpet. I wanted to stand alone in my home, steep in the stillness and hush of a winter morning in the Wisconsin countryside. So they went, and I thought I would lie on the couch and read, or knit, or maybe do nothing at all, but soon I found myself heading downstairs to the girls’ rooms. I turned on The Weepies and I sipped my coffee and I slowly, calmly started to clean, to rearrange, to sweep out and make new. I did several loads of laundry and I folded each tiny t-shirt and well-worn mini-skirt with what I can only describe as reverence. Hours passed like effortless, powerful waves and before I knew it the entire downstairs was spotless, and I was salt-swollen with love for my family.

That’s when it hit me, when it broke, as these tiny epiphanies so often do these days, how much I’ve resented them. How angrily I’ve cleaned up after them, cursing their laziness, the way they don’t care about anything, why should I buy them anything at all if they’re not gonna take care of it, how fucking hard is it to throw your own clothes in the hamper I don’t care if you’re five, and on mornings like this in the past I would have been sweaty, silent and angry, fuming, my back one ripping scream, and still I would have felt I’d accomplished my tasks for that day, I would have thought it a good day, and I would have not had any awareness at all of my intense anger, the rage eating my insides beneath my perfect, perfect shell. And it was most definitely a shell.

I feel like I’m seeing my family for the first time these days. Like I’m seeing the world for the first time. It sounds so simple, but it’s not. I drove past this majestic sledding hill yesterday, one I’ve been past a thousand times or more, but had never really seen. Never taken my children to. This time I pulled over and I stared at it, glowing and brilliant in the sun, empty and clean as a starched sheet on a brand new day. I was overcome with a powerful urge to take that hill, to feel the biting cold in my teeth and hair as I flew down it, the solid warmth of my daughter braced in my lap, the ache in the backs of my thighs as I climbed it for another round…. I don’t know how to explain to you that I have never really felt things like this before– a true desire to do things because I want to know how they feel, not because I’ve read somewhere that these are things normal people do, things good moms do. Yesterday I bought ingredients to make my own pizza, with the intention of enlisting the kids, because I want to know how it tastes when we make it ourselves. I want to know how it tastes when I eat it with them. I walk through the rooms of my house so deliberately now, putting things in their places, sorting out and fixing what doesn’t make sense, trying to help it recover from years of neglect. I could go on and on, these tiny examples that probably mean very little to you but are so incredibly profound to me.

Tomorrow, the four of us are taking that hill.

***

I was sitting in a meeting yesterday, running my fingers over the edges of that photo of serenity, when a memory crept slowly into my raw and waiting brain. Suddenly I could feel myself in that photo, remember what that afternoon was really like, and I began to realize, with horror, the truth. I was sloppy drunk in that picture. It was the afternoon, I was on spring break with my family, and I was completely isolated. They went sightseeing every single day without me while I stayed behind to read, to have “healthy” mommy alone time, to drink. The memory continued to play out before my eyes though I wanted to slash the screen and I saw it then, what happened next: my oldest daughter runs down to the beach to meet me. I hug her like I always do. She tells me about the camera, we turn and smile brightly up at the high rise together, wave. Another picture is snapped. She starts to drag me back to the building and I fall. I fall down in the sand, pulling my nine-year-old with me, and we both laugh at my clumsiness, at what a fun mom I am, but the truth is it is mere hours after lunch and I cannot even walk.

I sat inside that memory yesterday and closed my eyes against the pain of it, the shame, the agony of the brutal truth. I let myself feel it. I acknowledged it. I vowed to keep it close.

That’s the thing you learn in recovery, that everything you thought was true about yourself when you were drinking, everything you really believed in, was a lie. Black becomes white and four becomes three and up is down and it’s so easy to lose it, to vomit from the dizziness of it all, to really realize, I mean really know, that what you thought was peace, what you thought was good, was a tremendous misunderstanding. That that photo I’d sought out, that picture in the sand that to me meant the ultimate relaxation and bliss, was in reality quite possibly one of the loneliest moments of my life.

But not this. This, this new moment, this fresh peace, it’s breaking my heart in the most exquisite way. Everything I thought I was giving up pales–no, straight-up ghost-white blanches–in comparison to the holy gift of today. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, the moments of true realization are as pure a pain as I have ever felt. Yes, the road ahead is long and blind in its curves and drop-offs, yes. But the colors. Oh, the colors.

If only you could see them.

I’m good. I’m in a really, really good place. I am supported and I am loved and I am engaged in a handful of proven programmed solutions. I am parenting and wife-ing and working, all with a new sense of peace and pride. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wretched sometimes, yes, and it’s outlandishly busy almost all the time, and it’s equal parts mind-blowing and brain-numbing and it’s fresh and it’s wicked and it’s glorious and it’s foul and it’s all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time, but that’s okay. I’m okay.

The outpouring of generosity and support you’ve shown me defies description. Believe me, I wish I could describe to you what it means to me. I wish I could find just the right words but they escape me and I have to let them go, for now. Let them run. (I think they’ll come back, over time.) Right now please know that not only have you given me a tremendous gift, you have also loosened some of the fear that grips so many other people out there, people like me, who are afraid to be honest. I know this is true because they are writing to me. My honesty helped them, yes, but so did your support. Maybe even more so.

[And now, a disclaimer.] I spoke out because I want to be honest about who I am. Because every word I ever think or write from here on out will be tinted with shades of this Big Thing, even though I may not write directly about it at all. I feel like I need to say that it was never my intention to become a mouthpiece for any particular program, or a representative for any particular addiction. It was simply an unveiling, a very personal unveiling, so that I could move forward with my life and my work, particularly in this space. Also, for those of you who are new to this blog, I am relatively anonymous here. I only use my first name, do not disclose my city, and use pseudonyms for my children. [End awkward disclaimer.]

I’m closing comments on this post because I don’t want you to feel like you need to offer more support than you already have. I just wanted to update the many, many of you who continue to so sweetly reach out to me. I’m good, I’m hard at work, I’m wholly supported by every single person in my life, I’m lucky beyond measure, and I’m ablaze with hope. Hope, and gratitude.

Thank you. So much.

By 7:22am today I was stranded on the side of the road, my car a heaping, silent dead tree, my fingers frozen twigs on this frigid winter morning. I was only driving this old, neglected car because our main vehicle succumbed to fire a couple weeks ago, after a family of rodent squatters took up residence near the engine. It is not a good time to be an automobile in my family.

I was about 25 miles from home and ten miles from where I was headed, which was my support group meeting, the place I start each day so that I’ll have what I need to do it all again tomorrow. My phone, naturally, had zero bars. I could not get a signal. My heat, naturally, had gone out about five miles before the alternator had. My schedule and my resolve, naturally, were in tatters. I powered off my phone, leaned my head against the steering wheel and breathed hard into my chest to keep warm. I cried. (Naturally.)

And then I stopped. And then I wiped my face and powered my phone back on. And the bars suddenly appeared. And I called my husband and gave the problem of the car over to him. And I called a family member, one who lives about five miles from where I was stuck, and she got out of bed to come and get me. And though I hadn’t told her where I was headed, and though all I could think about was seeking refuge in her warm house, she said, “Let’s get you to your meeting.” And even though I was 30 minutes late for the meeting, and even though I felt tremendously guilty for putting her out, I gave it over to her and I let her drive me there. And I let her wait for me in the parking lot while I gave it over to everybody inside, who took it all from me so gracefully. And then I let her drive me to my office another 20 miles back the other way, where I am now.

Where the coffee is hot. Where a vase of flowers sits, still perky, a fragrant Valentine from my husband and my daughters. Where piles of file folders lie ready to be sifted, where words run waiting to be wrangled, where my wallet sits empty but intact. And even though I have no idea how I am getting home from here, I have faith that it will happen, naturally, because yes, this morning sucked, and no, we don’t really have the money to fix either car, but my God I am only a phone call away from any number of people that care so much about me and are so reverent of what I am going through that they will not only leave their warm beds on a second’s notice, but they will ferry me to a meeting without even asking because they know and believe that that is exactly where I need to be, first and foremost. And so I am rich. And I am loved. And I am so lucky.

That’s what I am focusing on today, today, right now, right here, at 9:36am, where the only thing I know or even need to know is that I am alive, I am sober today, I am doing the next right thing, and that I can’t, shouldn’t, will never again, do any of this by myself.

####

Update, 11:04am: My incredibly talented husband has already fixed the little car. I’m back in business! (He scoffs at the term “talented,” however. He says talent is for dancers and artists. He is okay with “skilled,” if you feel the need to praise him as you read these words. He is definitely okay with the idea of you praising him.) I’m sitting here giggling because it’s so new to me, this whole giving it over and letting go of the false sense of control thing, and it occurs to me that this would have been a far crazier few hours a month ago. Anyway, enough blathering.

Feelings assault me now like sniper fire, bullets ricocheting off their unsuspecting target, slicing open my cheekbone, my hip, red, angry slashes. I’ll be blissfully gliding along and BAM, I’m hit, and I’m angry. I’m scared. I’m irrational. I’m out of control.

Control, the loss of it, is probably the most familiar one these days, the parent to all of these other unfamiliar sensations. I am clumsy with feelings. I can’t hold them, whether bullets or bombs, it’s all live ammunition; I fumble, they drop and smash and scatter, hitting everyone around me. I myself am a walking wound, open and stunned.

I’m told, though, that there are no good or bad feelings. That I’m not supposed to judge them, I’m supposed to invite them in for coffee, get to know them, no matter how hostile and unfamiliar they seem. But guilt–ah, guilt!–is an old familiar friend. I carry so much guilt—for the terrible things I’ve done, the shameful places I’ve been, the innumerable ways I’ve hurt the ones I love most. Now the guilt feels more pure and raw, with nothing to blot it out.

And then the rage hits, the self-righteousness, the resentment, the yes, but and the what about. And maybe I’m walking down the sidewalk or maybe I’m driving in my car or maybe I’m lying awake at 3am and BAM, suddenly, I can’t control what I’m feeling. I can’t think my way out of it, can’t reason it out, can’t puzzle out what’s next, can’t figure how to fix it, can’t bring it back to me, can’t breathe through it, and it’s terrifying.

And then there’s this other new thing, this thing that doesn’t make sense, this calm. This subtle sliding and clicking into place as I walk through the rooms of my life “first straightening the rugs,” as a friend of mine says. Because I’ve always thought it so weird that I’m a Virgo. Virgo’s are notoriously neat, clean and organized, and I have not been. My house has so often been messy, I procrastinate terribly at work, I’m broke and anxious and (able to go on and on.) But, not anymore. I look around now and I blink stupidly at all this tidiness; books aligned on shelves, floors mopped, spice labels facing front at attention. My oil changed, my assignments completed early, my bank account suddenly black, its red wounds miraculously healed. My husband smiling, my children laughing, each of my brain cells stretching and purring like a cat. There’s only been this one change, this one basic, vital, gut-wrenching change, and every other single thing in my life has fallen to its knees in quiet, obedient reverence. Without me raising my sword, without me making a list or a plan, without me reading a stack of books about how to make it so. And I’m astonished.

And yes I get angry—new, and scary, but clean. And yes I get scared—new, and scary, but clean. And yes I get brutally honest—new, and scary, but clean. Because I also get happy, now, joyous, even, and while terrifying, it’s the cleanest I’ve ever felt, a spick-and-span soul, a core clicked into place, an energy whirring and humming along as it should be, through no doing of my own. My life a beast that cannot, should not, be wrangled, tamed, steered, one that’s happiest if I simply let it run as I hold on tight, but not too tight, close my eyes against the force of it and ride.