Before my husband and I quit drinking, I told myself a lot of stories about how it was going to be when we really did it. I was going to lose all the weight I’d put on; we were never going to waste an evening, or a weekend; we were never going to fight again. I was going to make friends, the kind of girlfriends I would have if life were a rom-com, not just coworkers that I chat with on a quick break. I thought that mentally I would be in a much better place. Drinking me was depressed, sedentary, full of self-doubt and doubt about everyone around me. I thought, if we could just get back to sobriety, all that would fall away. I could let go of the past, and let go of my own sadness, and just be the person I used to be. Sobriety became a sort of fairy tale for me, a magical land where nothing took work, where everything just was. Life was going to be perfect. Turns out, I may have slightly exaggerated the perfection of sobriety. The reality is, sobriety is hard. It requires work. Not just the staying sober, but also, dealing with the reasons that drinking became the answer. I’m struggling to retrain my brain and my body. Struggling to open up when something is bothering me, instead of just shoving it down for fear of causing waves. Striving to change my eating habits, and forcing myself to move more. Pushing myself to talk to coworkers about more than the last meeting, or the next big change at work. And it is working, just not as quickly as I painted it in my head. I’ve lost 30 pounds (but I’m still chubby). We go out more, have more adventures (but we still binge watch Netflix). The husband and I laugh, and joke, and celebrate the fact that after all these years, all the mistakes, and the heartaches, and the stupidity, we still genuinely like each other (but we still argue about stupid things). I chat with coworkers about life, family, even occasionally about sobriety; and have even received invitations to hang out with women in a non-work environment, and do non-work things (though I typically beg out and go home to my family). I guess the biggest thing is, I’m working on it. Not sitting on my couch, drink in hand, waiting for the miracle. Putting in the work. Earning the changes.
doing it dry 