I can only be up at 5:30am in a dark house with a steaming mug of coffee beside me while I write to you because I am not hungover. There is no choking dry mouth or regret-laden headache pounding like a drum line through to the ends of my hair. My hands are not shaking on my keyboard and the anxiety coursing through my veins is just my “Mama-stuff”- like how much time do I have before Piper and I despairingly crawl around on our knees in the pantry lamenting the lack of actual food in our house. But even that will be tolerable because I won’t be needing to lie down with a cold washcloth on my head- well, hopefully not, but I guess you never know what a day can throw at a girl. There is no wine in my house except some expensive red over there in that corner, but red wasn’t really my thing. I liked (ok, fine, loved) the quick rush of a buttery Chardonnay washing over my sharp, painful edges until they blurred into the softer me, the easier me, the chattier me, the better me (ha), cheap suit me. But it wasn’t just a glass anymore. It was an entire bottle. Alone, usually. Nighttime. Sneaky sips and 1/2 glasses poured while the rest of the world was playing Fortnite.
Hi. My name is Cecily. And I am alcoholic-ish.
My junior year of high school I made a New Year’s resolution. I had read somewhere how soda (we Nebraska girls call it ‘pop’) was terrible for a human body. Remember we are talking about detail girl here- the one who carried every article she would read in her jean pockets. So when I read that one, I took heed. I declared while sitting at my sticky high school lunch table I was “done with pop and the rest of you should be, too!” Toxic stuff! Get rid of it! And the completely weird thing was I DID get rid of it, well, pretty much, mostly. I had occasional cans throughout college when I needed to stay up all night when coffee just tasted like ash to me. And there was some gingerale if I was trying not to throw up while pregnant or while flying on an airplane (until there was wine on the airplane). There is no soda in my house now, and my kids don’t drink it either. (I’m not being preachy here because I swear to you Piper ate Tofutti Cuties for dinner last night). Ok, so if I got rid of soda at age 15, 41-year-old big girl me can shake the wine habit, yes? Well……..
I hit a wall. No, literally. Two years ago I stumbled off the couch and walked right into a wall after a late-night movie coupled with several glasses of my vice wine. Oops, probably shouldn’t be doing THAT while raising children. So I laid off for a few days and proclaimed my birthday month that year to be alcohol-free which lasted three days. Then I decided it was ok to start sipping again while I made dinner and was done driving for the day and the babies were bouncing off the walls and the puppy was chewing the corner of a cabinet and my husband wasn’t home and I was lonely and bored to tears and all of my friends were on another coast or in a different country and, “yes, we are moving again isn’t it exciting” and good God I DESERVED, at the very least, a glass of wine, right? Smooth those edges off, babe, people like you better that way. Take a big swallow and let it help you shove down unnecessary feelings so when people say “How are you?”, you can answer, “I am GOOD! WE are doing great! (Why do I always say WE? I am an I.) The kids are cute and the puppy is cute and my husband is cute and my new top is cute and my hair is not cute but that’s ok-wine a little, laugh a lot, right?” Hahahahahahahaha……insert sob.
I was starting to feel like a leaking boat and instead of bailing the water out and carefully examining the holes I was just dumping more water (ummm…wine) into my sweet little ship.
And the scariest scariness of my overindulgence? I was forgetting my details. My very favorite precious details were leaking out with the rest of my self-confidence. My brain was fuzzy, and I couldn’t remember what I actually texted to my best friend the night before nor what I screamed at my husband nor if I had locked the doors. I felt the need to keep texting pictures of myself with glasses of wine to my friends. We are all drinking and trying not to lose it, right??? I was so very, very tired, and the boat was going under quickly, glug. One night I stumbled off to bed and left my adored dog outside in the dark night until her panicked barking woke my slumbering boys, and they rescued her. Somedays I had trouble with the lingering headaches, and it would take me until 2pm for the nausea to wear off and any form of adult motivation to kick in. Yet 5:00 always came and the itch started to sting my eyes and there was usually a need to go to the store with 4 starving children and the wine was always RIGHT THERE next to the Goldfish crackers anyway. I mean, come on, I am a highly-functioning person with a well-run home and highlights and homeschooled kids and happiness and health and humor and huh………..holy hell. Help.
What was so very wrong in my life that I had to slam back a bottle to make it to bedtime? That needed sorting out, straightaway. So three weeks ago, I rode in on my own very sober horse. My horse is never white and gleaming like a knight might have but more like a donkey with a limp, and she and I hauled out cheap suit Cecily from her ocean of despair and sat her down, hard, on the sand. I had some help. My people came running (well, they had to “virtually” run because I practically live in the Yukon) and leapt like ninja warriors into the rabbit hole with me and said, “Hi, my friend, we missed you. You looked like shit in that suit anyway. Let’s get you back into something a little more comfortable.”
I told one of my rabbit hole angels I wasn’t going to write about this yet. I am still in the midst of it, and I didn’t want to frighten everyone and make them think I needed an intervention. (I don’t, not today.) But the funny thing about drying out your ship and swabbing the deck with a clear mind is this: All of the colors and details come rushing back in as the most glorious tidal wave of truth. I can’t wait anymore to tell you all I am here and there you are! I see you! Increasing clarity and deep gratitude, instead of clouded, buttery Chardonnay sweat soup, run from my pores every morning. There is something very daring and absolutely terrifying about knowing no masks get to be put on at 5:00- this is it, baby.
Truth? I still want a glass of wine every single night, but instead I make iced green tea with a squeeze of lemon and take a bath while watching Netflix. Then I have a lengthy chat with the Universe and go to bed knowing all of my trusty details and with my favorite fur baby safely inside and with my pain acutely focused right in front of me where it belongs, where it can teach me something. It might take us a minute, my limping donkey and I. She and I are a little slow and the whole running-with-my-eyes-closed thing has turned into a a lumbering haul, but I’m on my way. I think we are all just on our way for the rest of our lives.
I say it all of the time to my people. In texts, on phone calls, in person. It’s my phrase of love and deep understanding, to myself now, too, for when the boat starts rocking and waves keep coming and it hurts and it’s scary and leaks keep springing up on every single side of your boat……
Hold steady, my loves. xoxoxoxoxoxox
