As I was putting this week’s newsletter together, I got a text from a friend I’d seen at a big gathering a few weeks ago. Prior to that gathering, it had been years since we’d seen each other in person. My friend, very sweetly, noted that I seemed to be doing well. My life has changed a lot in recent years and the change, my friend noted, suited me. It was validating and saddening at the same time. Validating because I crave the approval of others. Saddening because I’m not in fact doing well — have I ever in my life been doing well? Perhaps not, but recently that’s been especially true — and I felt, reading my kind friend’s kind words, that if my pain wasn’t visible, that meant on some level it wasn’t real. Which isn’t true but gosh it feels that way some times!

Which is one of the things I hope these check-ins can do: Provide a form of proof, to those writing in, that it is real, what they’re feeling, the good, the bad, the myriad moods in-between. Maybe we shouldn’t need the proof that comes from external confirmation in the form of a check-in text from a friend or a check-in newsletter to which you yourself contribute. But we’re human! We’re deeply social! We’re terminally enmeshed! And it can’t be everything but I think it can be one thing, one good thing, that glimpse of recognition that means: I see you! You, trying out there! I see you waving! I see that you’re now tired of waving! I see that actually you’re drowning, not waving! And I’m getting in a little dinghy to come help. —TSB Editor

It’s Fucking Beautiful Out There

By The Small Bow Family Orchestra

I am five years sober in June. I don’t remember the exact date. Maybe it’s June 6 or 7. Most likely, it is June 6, because that is my sister’s birthday and I can feel her eyeroll across several years of awkward silence informing me that it is so typical that I would have a sobriety date that perfectly coincides with the one day that is meant to be about her.

Anyway. The sobriety thing is going well. Sometimes so well that I forget that I have this thing where I don’t just not drink. I don’t drink anymore. That last word — which I always add in my mind — changes the whole sentence. For now, it remains a silent addition.

I have built a life where my circle would be shocked to learn that I used to wake up with no recollection of how I got to bed with alarming regularity. To paraphrase John Mulaney, I don’t look like someone who used to do anything. But I don’t drink anymore.

Maybe I should speak up and make it clear that we need to have a summer party for the interns that doesn’t involve an ocean of booze, because you never know who might be in our summer class. Or maybe I should explain that the way we speak about addiction matters because you never know who might be listening. Maybe if I said something, it would make a difference in how my little corner of the world views sobriety, and maybe that would make the world just a tiny bit kinder and more compassionate. Or maybe that is all just self-aggrandizing nonsense.

How many years sober is sober enough to start feeling comfortable telling people that you don’t drink anymore? The answer is not five.

There’s a heartbeat, and I heard it. It sounds like a galloping horse on another planet. My body feels like another planet. My dad doubts my ability to teach a future kid how to piss and control my anger. I don’t buy it. My boss froths at the mouth about potential layoffs. I remain pensive and solid. The job rejections continue to pile up and I think, if they release me into the ether, pregnant and trans in a world that truly hates this shit, how will I cope? There is no other option but to maintain this trajectory. There is no Xanax, no seatbelt, no god. Just me, and the baby, and one foot in front of the other. 

My sobriety feels stable but also full of hypocrisy and disappointing juxtapositions. Like, I’m working with two sponsees, which feels great, definitely for me and hopefully for them. But fresh off the high of a step work session I come home and get into it with my spouse. UGH. Why don’t they see how loving and wise I am? Will they even care to listen to the speaker tape I was just so honored and grateful to record? And as everything swirls and shifts around me — school ending for the kids, summer camps starting, big projects and looming layoffs at work — my part in it stays dully the same: next right action, again and again. This too shall pass. Don’t be an ass.

It’s almost June, and that means my mother is coming to visit soon. The amount of energy required to interact with her is more than I have, and I don’t know how to tell her that. I’ve been thinking I should tell her about my arrest so that maybe she can grasp the heaviness of the situation. 

In March I was at Wal-Mart during a particular period of feeling invisible at home with my emotionally neglectful husband. Although I knew the reality that I was indeed not invisible, I decided to test the theory because for the last couple of years I’d floated in and out of the grocery store like a ghost, positive no one noticed me. Turns out I was noticed as I dropped cookies in my purse. Everything after that is a blur; I kept my face unreadable, giving them nothing. After they asked me if I was in the drug trade, I snorted a laugh incredulously. They gave up and went through the motions of taking me to the sheriff’s department. I was out within the hour to return to my life. 

My husband arrived home from work and, without a word, tumbled onto the couch. I took a Klonopin, the one thing that dulls the sharp edges of being ignored, and continued with my housework. It’s a constant pull and tug of using and stopping (or saying I’m going to stop), but with my husband as a non-present parent, I am indeed operating as a single mom, and for that I need armor in the form of substances. Anything I can get my hands on, from over-the-counter Benzedrex to my prescription for Tramadol for rheumatoid arthritis, which I was diagnosed with last year. For the last 20 years I’ve been under the influence, functional but altered, so I don’t know any other way to be now in 2026.

I got 10 months on May 22. This is the longest I’ve ever gone, by 7+ months. While I sometimes romanticize about drinking again — it’s always a Manhattan with a single, huge ice cube — I won’t drink, at least today. I’m scared of it now. I know the shame and guilt alone would crush me.

But learning to live sober — happy, joyous, and free — is hard. I’ve heard a lot of people say the first year is the hardest. It makes sense; I was drunk or thinking about drinking for 30+ years.  But I hope it gets better. Today is 1000 times better than how I felt on July 21st last year. But it isn’t awesome! 

At two years and three months(ish) sober, I am at last creeping up on the revelation that I am just as “undisciplined” as the Big Book claims. Of course I was annoyed when I first came into recovery and read that passage (“How dare they? You don’t know me!”), but it has been occurring to me that I am — let’s say — selectively disciplined. Things I want to do? Great. Watch me run this marathon and landscape the shit out of my house. Things I’d rather not do? Even the dumbest, easiest parts of my very good job that I definitely do not deserve seem like trudging through mud. I have a lot of freedom in how and where I spend my time, and I’ve suffered through paying my dues to get it. I’m afraid I’m going to lose this because of my own laziness, stupidity, and ingratitude. It’s embarrassing how many people seem to think I’m good at something that I might just be faking (?). Been feeling kicked in the face by God this week to make a change — to my routine, my workflow, my general aura. At least I haven’t punted a project for a fake migraine (hangover) in two years and three months. Mercies every day, etc. 

The malignant narcissist I’ve been trying to get rid of unsuccessfully for the past 2 years projectile vomited all over my new floor (because opioids and alcohol don’t mix and we had champagne to “celebrate” my new home but he lied and said he’d only had a “few beers” before he arrived chez moi (riiiiiight, buddy) then hiccupped horribly before puking everywhere). I found his pills on my car floor later. 

And of course his puke has grown mold and my bedroom stinks now despite me bleaching the space between the floorboards. I can’t stay here now. He’s ruined it for me.

Then a week later I bumped into him in broad daylight for the first time sober, and he called me fat.

I lost my shit. I told him to never contact me again.

So of course he dialed me at 4 a.m. high. 

I had blocked his number so he laughed and left a message. He thought it was funny that I’d told him to leave me alone.

Never occurred to him I might be sick of him treating me like shit?!

Then on Friday night, I was heading downtown to an art gallery but noticed him walking down his driveway. Both of us looked back at each other — but we didn’t say a word.

I thought about cycling back to talk to him but am so angry I figure it is better to hold that rage for now and try to finally let him go. Even though it feels like a piece of my heart is missing now. 

That was the last time I saw him before he died  kidding. Morbid thought but he IS dead to me now. 

Asshole. 

I will NOT let an addict dictate my sense of self esteem.

I will NOT let an addict dictate my sense of self esteem.

I will NOT let an addict dictate my sense of self esteem. 

Time to shrink my diet and expand my tiny social circle.

How can I still possibly feel love for this jerk?! What is WRONG with me? 

I went on a date with a man who told me in advance that he had spent most of his 20s and 30s as a DJ, that he had smoked weed for breakfast for 15 years, that he had taken so many drugs he felt he had “completed them.” On our date he drank four double rum and cokes and I drank four pints of cordial and soda, which is at least two pints too many of cordial and soda. He told me that he spent the recent holiday weekend, all three days of it, playing poker at the casino. He told me he didn't understand people who could no longer be around their substance of choice after they'd quit. Everything about this man was flashing neon red warning signs but he made me laugh a lot and was very attractive so we are in the process of making plans for date two and I am watching myself like a hawk for more signs that I'm in a making bad choices zone. But part of me feels like I deserve to have sex with him “as a treat” and I am just not doing the next right thing about it. Writing this out has helped to clarify the extent of my ridiculousness. 

I am divorced but have not told anyone because I feel guilty and shameful as it was my decision to do this “evil deed” to my partner of, as of this coming June 23, . . . 30 years . . . as I have a teeny weeny bit of money for my old age and he has early Parkinson’s which will swiftly devour that teeny weeny fund when the time comes and he needs serious medical help . . . which I know would be provided by his Medicaid and I know I would still assist him in all the ways that I can but not by ending my only financial ability to take care of myself in my own old age/aging. I have no kids, almost no family and surely the few family members I DO HAVE, TWO YOUNGER SIBLINGS WITH THEIR OWN FAMILIES, KIDS, AND PETS,  ARE NOT GOING TO COME TO MY AID. NOR IS HE . . . BECAUSE ONCE AGAIN HE HAS EARLY PARKINSON’S NOW AND SO IN 5, 10, 15 YEARS . . . WELL YOU GET IT. WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF ME??? I am 67 now . . . and on my own it seems.

This all screams in my head and my heart as I do love him of course . . . and being the gendered female of the two of us . . . I have ALL those pesky societal roles to answer to inside my crazy spinning alcoholic/addict/sugar self. So there it is. A secret that I cannot share said out loud in some caps and now sending it off to the internet perhaps to read it back to myself in the June “The Small Bow.”

In the meantime . . . it is coffee and finding a walk in nature for myself to meditate and practice simple breathing and self acceptance. Not sure I can muster self love but will try.

I’ve been sober now for about five years (I didn’t count days for fear of failure early on, so now I just have an approximation). This is the first time in a long time where I feel like a relapse could happen. I’m tired, burnt out from feeling unappreciated and overworked and yet constantly broke. Trying to balance night class and full-time work while avoiding isolation. It’s about to be the sixth anniversary of the loss of a friend who really changed my life and I never got to share that with him. I’m so depressed, but I’m trying to do all the tricks and healthy habits. Full nights of sleep, eating enough food and drinking enough water, drinking Heineken 0.0 and going to the gym and talking to my friends and trying to keep moving. I know that alcohol will not fix my hurt, and in fact would make everything so much worse, and so I just have to keep going. Grateful to have support and friends and fellow sober people to keep me going (like the friend who told me to subscribe to TSB). Without sobriety I don’t think I could have built this community and support network, so I have to commit to sobriety to maintain it. I just keep telling myself to take it a day at a time.

Last year, I earned six figures as a writer. Enough for a bank to approve me for a nice big loan on a lovely home by the beach. But this year, the work has been so sparse that I’ve found myself unable to pay the bills. The only thing I could get was a factory job. Ten hours each day, folding sheets for minimum wage. My ego is bruised and sore after taking a battering. Six months ago, TV companies were paying for me to fly overseas and putting me up at the Hilton. And now here I am eating cold sandwiches in a break room. I know I sound ungrateful, and I admit I am. I’m nearly five years sober, and all I can think about is drinking. 

I remember my mom once told me that, after spending the day with some newish friends in their retirement community, my dad said “this was one of the best days of my life”, and then lay on the couch for two days. That story stuck with me, and chilled me, because I understood exactly what she was describing. My dad was also a binge drinker like me. Since I quit drinking, the extremes of my highs and lows have become more even and predictable. I’m still getting used to what a “baseline” for me is in sobriety. Alcohol helped me be “down for whatever” because, especially near the end, it just erased me. I feel really grateful for where I’m at in my life because it’s given me a lot of space to get acquainted with who I am without drinking. I am still a person of mood swings- periods of high energy, more enthusiasm, greater irritability. I know now this is when I need to get consistent sleep, not drink too much coffee, and resist the urge to make a ton of social plans. I know a low will come, usually about a week before my period, and there will probably be a day or two when I am bedbound. I don’t feel as much shame about this anymore, because it just really is me, and not a terrible hangover, or shame from whatever happened when I was drinking. What to do about this is still pending- if I need more mental health support, different meds, or if this is just the cycle of my life and I can make it work for me.

The world is blooming and I am shrinking. I have €4 to make it through the week. I am out of everything that I would turn to in distress, and that’s only more distressing. Funny enough, up until the past few weeks I felt like I was doing great! I was building friendships, cooking and eating well for the first time in months, going out without getting wasted, and focusing on my studies. There was just a part of me that felt it had to drag me back down I suppose. 

Even now, at some sort of a rock bottom, I’m not nearly as distraught and bad off as I was when I was using. It’s a funny sort of solace, knowing that what is an objectively deeply shitty situation is still miles above waking up covered in shit and piss or forgetting entire weekends. There’s also a fun challenge — if I can make it through this without relapse, I’ll know just how resilient I can be. 

It’s painfully hot and obnoxiously sunny. I used to get so mad at nice weather for making me feel like I should be doing something other than staying inside doing line after line. Now I embrace the weather as a gift, showing me the beauty and splendor that life could hold. It’s fucking beautiful out there.

fin

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN