I’m here for a work function. ConExpo, which features heavy construction equipment, a critical piece of my professional industry. My job here is to network, which means attend parties, which used to mean an embarrassing overconsumption of alcohol.
In my drinking days, professional events were my favorite places to tie one on. Hear me out: drinks were mostly free. Of course, the resulting humiliation, anxiety and hangovers were an expensive ransom to pay, although it took me 46 years to reach that conclusion.
I’ve met plenty of people who were able to keep it together at work events, saving their drinking until they reached the privacy of their homes. That never made any sense to me. Why indulge if my intoxication wasn’t going to lead to a flirtation, a tear-filled deep conversation or a mountain of laughs within the fold of my nearest and dearest? I didn’t want to drink alone. I hated alone.
And that just may be the crux of my addiction.
Alone is my biggest fear. It’s the reason I can’t meditate. Being in close proximity with myself is a mountain I can’t quite climb yet.
But I’m working on it. And that right there is something I’m really, really proud of.
For the first time in my life, I’m doing it right. I’m not rushing progress and then quitting because it’s not working fast enough. It’s a daily slog. It’s hard. But sometimes, it’s just a day.
The things I thought would be impossible are difficult, but not as much as I’d feared. The social part. Parties, dinners, work functions. I haven’t gotten through a single one of these things unlubricated in decades. And yet, one by one, I did.
I felt awkward, unfunny, uninteresting, like I was deep underwater and the easy dance of interaction was heavy and slow. I felt painfully on display. Vulnerable. Soft and open and exposed. My personality took one look at me and fled for the hills.
I was alone, but I wasn’t. I had a friend, who’d been a vague acquaintance, checking in every day. I didn’t know that once I reached out to him and asked for help, he’d show up. Never judging, but knowing.
“You can have everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Everything,” he told me on day one. “Or you can have booze. But not both.”
Slowly, gradually, in frustratingly teensy drips and drabs, my personality is finding her way back to me. And not only when I’m “on,” but more steadily now. I’m one person at all times, with all people. It feels good. Good enough to continue.
The main thing I’ve learned in these 6 months is that by loving myself enough to let myself heal from the inside out, to replace humiliation and anxiety with compassion, is a statement I’m making. To myself. To my children. To my job. To the world.
And to you. Thanks for listening.
Congratulations. One day at a time.