#12. day one

instead of 167

Content Warning: Discussion of alcohol use-intentional and unintentional, explicit, as always.

the sunrise the day my sober streak ended…

I have been sober since May 21st of this year. That was until tonight.

A little backtrack may be helpful here. I was waiting to talk about how and why I got sober until I surpassed my 1 year soberversary, but now that it will be pushed back a year from tomorrow, I’m more in a fuck it place. Let’s dive in mid-stream. 

what to expect from this edition:

• mine: personal essay about what I learned this week—I need to be exponentially more willing to be annoying to f*cking strangers.

• Inner-dialoguing–"I am OK”

If you want more info and my full disclaimer check out the about page here. Abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi!~ this isn’t a session. dialoguing is an educational and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment. If you’re new here, a great place to start is my first ever edition of this newsletter.

dialoguing with myself: what I learned this week

I need to be exponentially more willing to be annoying to f*cking strangers.

My story with alcohol is a pretty uninteresting one until I decided to stop. I drank a bit in high school, but honestly not much. Same in college, I drank a few times, felt like shit and then wouldn’t for months. Once I turned 21, I drank more regularly and socially. Living in Chicago, it’s definitely a drinking scene. After that point, it became more of a regular fixture in my life. Drinks while out, a drink or two with dinner most nights. I had a lovely sabbatical from it all while I was pregnant. While postpartum felt like death, my pregnancy had been the best I had ever felt in my body and mind (until I became sober earlier this year) and I knew not drinking was a huge part of it. Then COVID brought drinking back in to the picture—Stanley Tucci making a Negroni on Instagram; Zoom happy hours with friends a new norm—helping separate the nights from the days. I stopped questioning anything at that point. Just trying to get through. The time for questions would—and did—come later.