January 24 - Amazing Things Can Happen
January 24 - Amazing Things Can Happen
There were many days in those early years of sobriety when I wanted to quit quitting.
Finish this sentence: Amazing things can happen when I …
…Stay sober.
When I first got sober I knew it wouldn’t be enough to focus entirely on not doing something. Not doing drugs. Not smoking weed. Not drinking. Sure, I needed to remember why I hit my many bottoms over the years—and I definitely couldn’t listen to that little voice that tempted me with “just one glass of wine.” That voice was lying. I never had just one glass of wine. I never wanted just one. Maybe one bottle! But one glass? That was like eating one Pringle.
As much as I knew it was important to remember where I came from—I was more interested in what would happen when I stayed sober for the duration. Not just for those few days I would string together after a bad bender. Not for the month to prove to myself that I could do it and give my system a break. I even went sober for a year just to prove once and for all that I wasn’t an alcoholic.
The strangest thing happened in that year—my life started getting better. Quickly. Dreams that I’d had since childhood, like traveling the world, resurfaced and became attainable. Did I stay sober then? Nope. I did my thirteen months to prove to myself that I didn’t have a problem and was off to the races, one-way ticket in one hand, glass of champagne in another.
Two years later I hit another bottom. This time I knew I had to be done but I did not go quietly into that good night. I raged, raged against the dying of Coors light. There were many days in those early years of sobriety when I wanted to quit quitting. The discomfort was unbearable. I longed to crawl out of my skin. Entering the world at 35 with zero coping skills wasn’t easy. Little things that adults handled like adults would send me into a spiral.
In the first couple of years alone I found out I had basal cell skin cancer, I got rear-ended, and a dude I was dating gave me bed bugs. BED BUGS. Those fucking spawns of Satan nearly drove me back into the arms of alcohol but I became determined to learn from their tenacity instead of succumb to it.
“I promise, it gets better,” my sponsor would tell me.
I had to stay curious about long-term sobriety in those moments. Only focusing on not drinking/using/smoking wasn’t enough. There needed to be something aspirational to keep me hanging on. I knew what life looked like on the hamster wheel of functioning alcoholism and I could count on always ending up exactly where I started.
But staying sober for a year, two years, five years? That seemed like science fiction when I first stopped drinking. It was so far out of the realm of anything I could imagine—I couldn’t begin to comprehend what life looked like without substances. It didn’t even need to get better per se. I just had to believe if I stayed sober day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year…that my life would change.
My sponsor was right. Little by little, amazing things started to happen. Around two years in my brain started coming back online. Around year three my heart started to melt. Year four and my relationships with my family started healing. At year five I experienced the classic: “that’s the sound of your head popping out of your ass.” I write for a living, my dream job. My company, Phetasy, still lives in spite of it all and I get to make podcasts and shows with my cousin. Another dream. I met my husband. We now have a baby.
If you had told me this story before I got sober, I would have asked you for whatever drugs you were on. Marry a man I met in a 12-step program? Get the fuck out of here. Have a baby at age 44? You’re smoking crack.
And yet, here I am. It’s all because of that one decision that I made and continue to make over and over and over. There is power in telling that little lying voice trying to undermine your health and sanity to kick rocks. Amazing things can and have happened when I stay sober. Excited to see what wonders the future holds.
Sobriety truly is the biggest trip of all.
Amazing things started happening when I stopped wearing a bra in the house.
There is little I can control at this point of my life. My internal weather man is bananas. The gray hairs, the sag, and what the actual f* is happening to the skin under my arms?
For most of my life, I've been strapping these weights in like Charles Manson in Quentin State. The grand canyon runs through both shoulders. They were never welcome, always a source of shame. It wasn't until I nursed the first of my four kids that I thought, ok, I get it.
But since then, they've gone back, but not in the physical sense, to being part of the design, more an appendage to be squashed by Mammogram Terminator once a year, biopsied and prayed over, before returning to their permanent utility, crumb catchers.
It is a moment of bliss when that bra comes off at night. If you know, you know. TBH, sometimes I didn't bother and slept in not just makeup, but an underwore bra!. There were always teenaged boys at home (yeah, those same kids who spent their first year on the very area we pretend does not exist on my person) so I kept the Bali on until they were in college.
Some people call this time of life empty nest. I call it empty breast.
Sorry neighbors and husband and people who show up at my door unexpectedly. Sorry kids who show up to borrow the car or do laundry. These weighted blankets never brought me comfort, or safety, but they did for the most important people in my life.
Now it's time for me to be one of the most important people in my life, and damn it, I'm flying comfort class.
Amazing things can happen when society embraces remote work.
Looking back on the olden times of 40 hours in the office + 10 hours of commuting feels like looking back on a prison sentence. The 2010s was a grind! Once the main working day was done, like Andy in the Shawshank Redemption, I continued working on my own little project (blogging) and chiseled away at the walls of the corporation which confined me.
After 4 years of blogging on the side, I finally built around $1,200 a month coming in as side hustle money. I was close to freedom. If I could just double that then I would quit my job and begin an exciting life as a digital nomad and gallivant through South America.
But then something happened. Overnight, my day job suddenly became not only tolerable... but dare I say enjoyable! March 2020 marked the dawn of the Work-From-Home revolution. Freedom rang from coast to coast. I remember my boss leaving me a voicemail that Friday in mid-March when the spread started in America and they told us we’re all gonna work from home for 1 week next week to see how things go. I didn’t set foot in an office for another 2 years. Fully remote from March 2020 to April 2022. The empire has stuck back with the “hybrid model” and I will be ready to lead the charge with phase 2 of the Great Resignation when the economy inevitably picks up :)