The Sober Naked
I went into drinking knowing little about what might come of it. I wasn’t that young, really, for a kid growing up in the rural Midwest. In fact, for most of my middle school and high school years, I followed the rules. Being good was good. And I was good. I was good at everything; sports, music, academics. (I even had friends.) I was fortunate as I went to a very small school where I was able to participate in every activity I chose. My parents supported me in every endeavor. Like I said, I was fortunate. Lucky.
When I tried drinking, it was because I was at an age where it was expected that I should have been partying and experimenting already for years. I became exhausted by refusal. Many of my peers had been drinking on the side of the gravel road or in a barn somewhere since middle school. I demurred. The rules were set.
I don’t think of my introduction to drinking as peer pressure. I think of it as cultural. I don’t mind saying No to a person if whatever is suggested bleeds into the black of my rigid thinking. It’s not about the person, in those instances. If anything, being contrary at that time in my life was more exciting than being part of a group.
But at some point I opened myself to questioning what it was that they were doing. At some point the resisting became tiresome. Those ditches along the gravel roads finally ate me up.
In college, I started to drink more. It was fine those few times in high school, but I don’t remember it occupying my mind like it did later on — and still does, to a certain extent. In college, I became enamored with having alcohol available to me in whatever living situation I had at the time. I coveted knowing that I could at any moment open the fridge and amplify my current mood.
I functioned this way for years as alcohol does what it does and doubled down over and over again. I needed more of it to satisfy my need. It was a slow progression, which I think is one of the most troubling things about alcohol. The lengthy compression squeezes out over time other ways to live; it is a constant companion whether you are participating in an otherwise health conscious lifestyle or not.
When I became a parent, my high sensitivity was quickly maxed out. Being pregnant was a parasitic experience for me. There was simply nothing I could do to escape the growth inside me. I did not drink during any of my pregnancies, but what did not occur to me is that the sensation of pregnancy in its many forms gripped me as a tree spreading roots. The sensation was all-encompassing, physical as well as emotional. When my first child was born, I nursed him for two years. And then I was pregnant again. And I nursed her for almost as long. There was so much happening to me, on me, and from me. I was not aware that “high sensitivity” applied to me, or was even a valid description.
I didn’t understand that the noise of motherly life could be deafening to such a volume that I simply couldn’t hear it.
When I was able to drink again, the need for it was different. Instead of extending my mood and pushing the volume and the color of everything up to its highest, the alcohol changed its nature like the ever-accommodating devil it is. I needed less of every single thing apart from alcohol. I couldn’t get less of anything, so I chose more of the alcohol. The alcohol separated me from the moment. I was able to step away from my body for a while and let it go ahead and sit where it was: at dinner, at a playdate, at the park. But though my body looked like I was there, conversing, laughing, even, I was able to stand apart from it. Lift away from all of it.
It served its purpose until COVID-19 invited my children and my husband to stay at home with me in our house all day, every day. Waking up shaking, still drunk, probably, did not lend itself well to facilitating distance learning with any semblance of grace.
I quit drinking the first time in February 2021. I joined a couple of online support groups. I know that alcohol is debilitating, and that it stands between me and the way I want to live. I know this.
But much like I stepped into drinking with no real idea of what it was, I am now wobbling about in this new sober life. I suffer with chronic pain and have recently acquired a fun new stomach issue that has coupled itself to a constant headache. I continue to have little kids, two of whom I believe are highly sensitive (and the other is a toddler, so he’s his own bag of potential and possibilities). I am now questioning whether I have issues with codependency. I have a new addiction to fitness, which I cannot gratify as this stomach pain and headache won’t dissipate.
I had the thought a couple of days ago that I could start drinking again and all of this would be flattened for a while like a mess under a blanket. If the blanket is pretty enough, not only does it muffle the madness, it could distract me with its pattern.
I couldn’t realize how hard it is to stand naked in the storm. I suppose the trick is to learn how to dance inside it.
