Parts of early sobriety felt like stepping into a new body with a new mind, suddenly aware of everything around me. The world seemed sharper at the edges, as though someone had turned up the contrast while I wasn’t looking. Mornings arrived differently. I woke without a headache or the familiar surge of anxiety tightening beneath my ribs. I heard my kids giggling from another room, their voices carrying down the hallway in a kind of symphony. I noticed sunlight stretching across the kitchen floor, catching specks of dust suspended in the air. I paid attention to the low melodic hum of the refrigerator, the smell of fresh coffee brewing, the cool oak beneath my bare feet. Small things that had once blended into the background suddenly felt important.

I began appreciating nature again. I would drive down a road I had taken hundreds of times and suddenly notice how green everything was, how sunlight flickered through the leaves, how branches swayed and bent with the wind. I watched clouds stretch thin across a baby-blue sky, the translucent wash of color at sunset, the first amber leaves beginning to peek through at the end of summer. It was as though the world had been there waiting for me the entire time and I was finally paying attention. After years of abusing alcohol, the relief of sobriety made me feel proud, clear, capable. I stood a little taller. I trusted myself a little more. Mostly, I felt light.

Later, I would learn there was a name for some of this feeling: pink cloud syndrome, a period in early recovery when relief, optimism, energy, and possibility can become almost overwhelming in their intensity. At the time, I didn’t know I was floating on anything. I didn’t know there was a hypothetical cloud beneath me, or that clouds, by their nature, eventually move on. I thought this was simply what sobriety would feel like for the rest of my days.

How naive of me.

Alcohol had once been my shortcut to this kind of bliss. When I was anxious, it softened the edges. When I was bored, it created excitement. When I felt uncomfortable in my own skin, it gave me somewhere else to go. My brain had grown accustomed to the promise of alcohol: the reward, the rush, the almost immediate shift in how I felt. Then I got sober and, somewhat unexpectedly, sobriety itself became the new source of exhilaration.

There was always another first in those early days, and each one brought another burst of confidence. My first sober dinner out. My first sober holiday. My first sober vacation. My first difficult day when I crawled into bed exhausted, pulled the covers up to my chin, and realized with pride that I had made it through without drinking. Each one felt like proof that something inside me was changing. I felt better internally and externally. My sleep grew deeper. My skin looked brighter. My eyes no longer carried the same dull heaviness. I had more energy. All of these new sober experiences created momentum, and momentum felt a lot like certainty. I began believing I had crossed some invisible line, that perhaps the hardest part was behind me. If I had made it this far, maybe sobriety would simply keep carrying me forward.

I pictured myself suspended there, buoyed by the pride of every new milestone, moving farther and farther away from the person I had been. For a while, it did feel that way.

Until one day, something changed.

There was no dramatic moment when the pink cloud evaporated beneath me. No thunderclap or sudden storm rolling across the horizon. No warning that the soft ecstasy carrying me through early sobriety was beginning to thin beneath my feet.

Life simply became life again. The mornings were still clear, but they stopped feeling miraculous. Friday eventually became another square on the calendar. I stopped congratulating myself every time I ordered a Diet Coke instead of wine. The milestones stretched farther apart, and the applause inside my own head began to fade.

Real life was still exhausting. Laundry multiplied in corners of the house faster than I could put it away. Someone could say the wrong thing and leave me replaying it hours later. I could wake up anxious, irritated, restless, or sad without being able to explain exactly why. My chest could feel tight. My patience could run thin. I could move through an entire day beneath a heaviness I couldn’t name. Sobriety hadn’t removed any of that. It had only removed the thing I used to reach for when I didn’t want to feel it.

As the euphoric feelings drifted away, I began to understand something I hadn’t fully considered when I stopped drinking: getting sober meant I was going to have to experience my life. All of it. Not just the beautiful parts I had started noticing again. The boredom and disappointment were still there. Overstimulation and loneliness still found me. There were afternoons when nothing was particularly wrong and nothing felt particularly exciting. There was the hour before dinner when everyone was tired, hungry, and talking at once. There were bad moods that arrived without explanation and days that simply felt heavy. There was no drink waiting at the edge of those feelings anymore.

That was harder than I expected. I had spent so long changing how I felt that I had to relearn how to let an emotion exist without immediately trying to alter it. I knew how to numb, distract, bargain, postpone, and escape. I did not know how to sit with frustration until it softened on its own. I did not know how to let sadness move through me without treating it like a problem that needed fixing. In early sobriety, I thought the challenge would be learning how not to drink. Eventually, I realized the deeper work was learning how to live without constantly needing to feel different.

I inevitably fell from the pink cloud. Maybe it happened somewhere around three to six months sober, though I can’t recall the exact timeframe. It wasn’t a relapse or a failure. Figuratively, it was gravity. It was the realization that I wasn’t going to float forever. For a while, I missed the version of early sobriety that felt exciting. I missed the breakthroughs and the pride that came with doing everything for the first time without alcohol. I missed the sensation that I was constantly moving toward something. There had been comfort in having a clear enemy and a clear victory.

Then there I was, feet back on the ground, with nowhere to float and nowhere to hide. Standing face-to-face with myself required more than motivation. Motivation changes with the weather. It swells when things are going well and disappears when life becomes difficult. I needed something sturdier beneath me. Something I could reach for when I didn’t feel inspired, proud, or especially grateful to be sober.

I began noticing the things I returned to when the feeling of early sobriety was no longer enough. Most of them are simple: movement, routine, presence, honesty, gratitude, and meaning. None gave me the rush alcohol once promised. None lifted me back into the clouds. Instead, they did something more useful. They helped me plant my feet. They became the pillars I returned to when I needed to remember how to stand.

Movement gives my feelings somewhere to go. I used to ruminate and analyze every thought until I had worked myself into circles. Walking anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours a day gave those thoughts somewhere to travel. There is something grounding about the rhythm of my feet hitting pavement, the change in air against my skin, the steady rise and fall of my breathing. Movement reminds me that I have a body capable of carrying me through difficult moments, not just a mind capable of spiraling inside them. Walking doesn’t always solve what I’m feeling, but it helps me move through enough of it to remember that discomfort is survivable.

Routine gives me something predictable to hold onto. For years, my life revolved around alcohol: when I could drink, how much I would allow myself, whether there was enough at home, whether anyone would notice, how terrible I might feel the next morning. Removing alcohol created blank spaces where those calculations had once lived. Routine helped me fill them. What I do today is nothing revolutionary. That became the point. I wake around the same time each day. I make space for some form of movement. I go to bed around the same time each night. There is comfort in repetition, in waking up and having a sense of what comes next. Consistency taught me that stability isn’t built in dramatic moments. It is built through different choices made often enough that they eventually begin to feel familiar.

Presence teaches me to stay where my feet are planted. Alcohol had always pulled me somewhere else. If I wasn’t drinking, I was thinking about drinking. If I had been drinking, I was recovering from it. My body could be in one room while my mind was already reaching toward the next glass or retracing the night before. Sobriety began asking me to remain inside my own life. It meant sitting at the table and actually tasting my food. Hearing the full story my child was telling me instead of nodding while my thoughts wandered elsewhere. Noticing the warmth of the sun through the windshield, the smell of shampoo in my daughter’s hair, the weight of my son leaning against me on the couch. Letting an uneventful evening be exactly what it was without needing alcohol to make it louder, faster, or more exciting.

Honesty has become the pillar beneath everything else. I used to negotiate with myself constantly. I became skilled at rearranging the truth until it became something I could live with. I changed rules, moved limits, invented exceptions, and found explanations for why tonight should be different from all the nights before it. Sobriety required me to stop doing that. Now honesty is far more direct. It looks like naming my feelings for what they are: I’m struggling today. I’m overwhelmed. I need rest. I’m jealous. I’m angry. I’m scared. I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes the truth is inconvenient and uncomfortable. But I have learned that naming what I feel rarely makes it worse. Pretending it isn’t there usually does.

Gratitude came slowly. Not the kind that asks me to pretend everything is wonderful or search for a silver lining while something hurts. A more grounded kind. A clear morning. Being available when someone needs me. Hearing my alarm and knowing exactly how I got into bed the night before. Making coffee without nausea twisting my stomach. Looking someone in the eye without wondering whether they know something I don’t remember. There are so many things I once dismissed as dull that now feel like evidence of a life returned to me. Gratitude became less about feeling lucky all the time and more about noticing what is here.

Meaning changed my relationship with the past. This pillar came last. For a long time, I wanted distance from the years I spent drinking. I wanted to slam the door behind me, lock it, and become someone new. Instead, I started writing about what was on the other side of that door. Writing didn’t erase those years, but it gave them somewhere to go. The memories that once felt like proof of everything I had done wrong became something I could examine, understand, and put into words. What once felt like wasted time began becoming material another person might recognize themselves inside. The past stayed the same. My relationship with it did not.

Real life is messier than the version I imagined from the pink cloud. Sometimes I do everything “right” and still feel terrible. Sometimes gratitude doesn’t erase exhaustion. Sometimes a walk doesn’t solve anything. Sometimes I go to bed early and still wake up irritable. I am still impatient, insecure, overwhelmed, jealous, angry, and unsure of myself. That unsettled me at first. Somewhere along the way, I had started believing sobriety would turn me into someone who handled life beautifully, effortlessly, flawlessly. Instead, sobriety introduced me to life without anesthesia.

I used to think the pink cloud was something I had lost. Now I think it carried me exactly as far as it could. I needed that lightness in the beginning so I could see what was possible. I needed mornings that felt miraculous and milestones that made me proud. I needed the rush of discovering that I could do things I had once believed were impossible without alcohol. I needed to look around at the world and realize how much of it I had stopped seeing.

Eventually, the cloud had to give way, and I had to return to earth. The fall frightened me because I mistook the loss of euphoria for the loss of progress. I didn’t yet understand that landing was part of it. My feet needed to touch something solid. When they finally did, I realized sobriety was never going to be about floating above my life. It was going to be about standing inside it, feeling the ground beneath me and staying when things became uncomfortable. It became trusting that I could carry my own weight.

Some days I stand firmly. Some days I wobble. Some days I lean hard against every pillar I have built just to remind myself that I know how. The euphoria showed me what life without alcohol could feel like. The fall taught me how to live when that feeling disappeared.

The pink cloud helped me float. Everything I built after it taught me how to stand on my own two feet.

Until the next page,

Katie

Before I even open my eyes, I feel the dull throb pressing against both sides of my temples. My mouth is drier than the Sahara, my tongue like sandpaper against the roof of my mouth. I reach toward the bedside table for my water without looking. My arm swings too far and catches the glass, nearly knocking it over.

“Shit,” I mutter under my breath.

I sit up quickly enough to save it, bring the glass to my lips, and drink as though I’ve been starved of water for days. It’s lukewarm, but I don’t care. I swallow until I have to stop for air. When I finally do, a deep sigh leaves my lungs. For a moment, I just sit there in the dim morning light, holding the glass in both hands. Then I feel it. The first wave of panic. It creeps in slowly, tightening somewhere beneath my ribs.

Another morning after another night of drinking too much.

I thought I had this under better control. For weeks, I had been trying to cut back. I had made promises to myself about how much I would drink and when I would drink it. I had been paying closer attention—or at least telling myself I was. I tried to stay one step ahead of myself. Then last night, I let all of it go. On a Friday night, per usual. I plopped myself onto the couch to watch a movie and somehow managed to finish not one, but two bottles of wine. I can’t even remember the exact point when one bottle became two.

I get out of bed and begrudgingly make my way to the bathroom, my body heavy and my head pulsing with every step. The woman staring back at me in the mirror looks weathered and hollow. Funny, because it’s exactly how I feel inside. I study myself for a moment, searching for evidence that I’m still in there while simultaneously trying to figure out how quickly I can make the hangover disappear. Water. Advil. Coffee. Something greasy. Anything that might make me feel normal again.

Then my mind drifts toward another thought. A familiar one. An alarming one. Hair of the dog. I need a drink to even myself out from this hangover. The thought scares me, partly because of how easily it arrives. There is no shock in thinking it, only the subtle recognition that I’ve thought it before. Not enough to stop drinking, though. Not yet. Instead, I do what I have become very good at doing. I make another rule.

You see, I got very good at making rules for my drinking. Guardrails I strategically put in place to help keep my drinking habits under “control.” I don’t remember exactly when I started making excuses for my drinking. Probably very early on. I had a hunch my off switch was broken. I’d justify why I got too drunk. I’d find something else to blame that wasn’t the actual issue at hand. There was always another adjustment I could make, some small correction that allowed me to believe the whole thing was still fixable.

There was always something I could change without changing the one thing I wasn’t ready to give up—alcohol. For too many years, this was how I managed the growing discomfort around my drinking. I treated each new rule like a solution, even as the growing list became evidence of how much energy I was spending trying to keep my alcohol consumption at bay.

Something would happen that scared me, embarrassed me, or left me standing in front of a mirror wondering what the hell I was doing. And I would respond by adjusting the rules. Each one arrived with the same empty promise: this will be the one that fixes it. The rules sounded reasonable when I made them. That was important. Reasonable meant responsible, and responsible meant I still didn’t have to admit I had a terrible drinking problem. As long as I could convince myself I was in control, I didn’t have to ask the question I was becoming increasingly afraid to answer.

When I’d debate whether or not I should have a drink, I could spend hours going back and forth with myself, carrying on an argument no one around me could hear. On the outside, it was just another normal evening. Inside my head, I was building a case. The thoughts would collide like bumper cars in my mind: I’ve been good all week. I don’t have anything important tomorrow. One or two glasses isn’t a big deal.

Eventually, I would find the answer I had been looking for all along. An exception. That was the beauty of my rules. They always came with exceptions. And those exceptions came in all sorts of forms. Holidays, birthdays, celebrations, vacations, good days, bad days, boring days, sunny days, dreary days. You get the point.

There was always a reason to drink. The rules were strict until following them became inconvenient. Then I simply moved them. Two drinks became three because I had already opened the bottle. Weekends suddenly became Thursday through Sunday. No hard liquor became no hard liquor unless someone else poured it. The boundaries were always firmest in the morning and somehow much more flexible by evening.

And when I broke a rule, I rarely questioned alcohol. I questioned myself. Why couldn’t I just stick to what I said I was going to do? Why did I have such terrible willpower? Why couldn’t I drink like a normal person?

So, I would do what I did best. I would wake up the next morning frustrated with myself and create another boundary. This time will be different. I meant it every time. That may be one of the hardest parts to explain: the promises weren’t empty when I made them. In those mornings filled with regret and anxiety, I believed every word. I wanted to change. I wanted to be a better person, to make different decisions. I hated how I had become this incredibly selfish version of myself who depended on alcohol.

I wasn’t lying to myself when I made those promises. I wanted to follow them. I wanted the drinking to stop scaring me. I wanted to wake up without shame. I wanted to trust myself again. But I also wanted to keep drinking. Those two things existed beside each other for a long time, pulling me in opposite directions like Gumby.

I thought the rules would somehow make them compatible. As long as I was still setting limits, I could convince myself I hadn’t completely lost control. There was something comforting about a new rule. For a little while, it gave me hope. It felt like change without requiring me to change very much at all. Looking back, I can see how much of my life became a negotiation. Not just while I was drinking. Before it. After it. In anticipation of it.

The planning, the bargaining, the guilt—it all took up space. The promises I made the next morning took up space. Even when I wasn’t drinking, some part of me was still occupied by alcohol. I didn’t need a glass of wine in my hand for it to pull me away from where I was. I could be making dinner, talking to my family, driving home from work, or sitting on the couch while an entire argument about alcohol roared quietly in the background of my mind. I could nod along to a conversation while another part of me was somewhere else entirely, calculating, negotiating, anticipating.

Can I drink tonight? Should I? How much? What did I say I was going to do? Does tonight count as an exception?

I thought I was creating boundaries around alcohol. Really, I had become very good at finding ways around them. And eventually, something became impossible to ignore. Every rule I created had one thing in common. Alcohol was allowed to stay. I could change what I drank, when I drank, how much I drank, where I drank, who I drank with. I was willing to rearrange nearly everything around it. Everything was negotiable except the alcohol itself.

Anything but the alcohol.

It would make for a cleaner story if I told you that morning at the beginning was when I finally understood all of this. It wasn’t. I wish insight worked that quickly. There were more mornings and several more hangovers. New promises made while staring at my tired reflection. Failed attempts to cut back. Fresh rules created with complete sincerity and abandoned when I wanted to drink more than I wanted to follow them. I kept believing the next boundary would be the one I could finally hold. For a long time, I believed that meant I was failing at the rules. Eventually, I understood that the rules had been failing from the beginning.

They weren’t really designed to remove alcohol from my life. They were designed to help me keep it there. They gave me something else to blame, something else to adjust, something else to work on before I had to consider letting alcohol go completely. When I finally stopped drinking, I thought I was creating the strictest rule of all. Never drink again. No exceptions. No loopholes. No moving the boundary when I didn’t like where I had placed it. The permanence of that terrified me. I had spent years making rules I could renegotiate, and there had always been some comfort in knowing I could change my mind. Sobriety seemed to leave me nowhere to hide. It felt less like freedom and more like a door closing behind me.

But then, something magnificent happened. Over time, sobriety stopped feeling like another rule. It became the end of the negotiation. The noise began to quiet. I no longer wake up wondering how much I drank the night before, reaching through a fog for pieces of the evening. I don’t calculate how many glasses I can have. I don’t have to decide whether tonight is different enough to justify breaking a rule I created yesterday. I hadn’t understood how exhausting the argument was until I no longer had to participate in it.

I spent so many years believing freedom meant learning how to control my drinking. I thought if I could just master the rules, I could finally relax. I could drink without worrying, without thinking so much, without disappointing myself. Instead, the rules became another thing I had to manage. Another voice in my head. What I had called control required almost constant attention.

Today, no more rules. I just have a better roadmap for my life. Tell myself the truth, especially when the truth is uncomfortable. Let a bad day be a bad day without needing to make it disappear. Ask for help before I convince myself I shouldn’t need it. Pay attention when something begins taking more from my life than it gives back. Trust the discomfort that once sent me searching for another loophole. And stop abandoning myself just to hold on to something I’m afraid to lose.

The old game was built around keeping alcohol in my life. The new one is built around keeping me in it.

Until the next page,

Katie

I was sixteen days sober from alcohol. But who was counting?

Me.

I was counting every single one. Obsessively. Almost subconsciously. The number of days I had been sober seemed to tick somewhere in the back of my mind every minute of the day.

Sixteen days felt like an accomplishment until I pulled into the liquor store parking lot and put my car in park. Then, suddenly, it felt like nothing.

I kept both hands wrapped around the steering wheel, gripping it so tightly I could feel my pulse beating in the tips of my fingers. The air conditioner blew steadily against my face, filling the car with a low mechanical hum that somehow made everything around me feel even quieter.

Outside, people came and went. A man pushed through the front doors carrying a brown paper bag tucked underneath his arm. A woman walked inside without hesitation, keys swinging from one hand. Another car pulled into a spot a few rows ahead of me. The driver got out, shut the door, and disappeared inside.

I watched all of them. And I felt jealousy gnawing at my stomach.

Not because I knew anything about them. I had no clue what they were buying, how much they would drink, or what their relationship with alcohol looked like.

I was jealous because they could just walk effortlessly through those doors. They didn’t appear to be having an existential crisis in their car first. Not that I knew of, anyway.

Meanwhile, I sat frozen behind my steering wheel, debating what felt like the rest of my life.

Just go in.

The thought came quickly.

You don’t even have to buy anything.

Then another.

You made it sixteen days. You proved you can stop.

And then the one I actually wanted to hear:

Maybe this time will be different.

My hands tightened around the wheel.

I knew how this worked. I knew myself well enough by then to understand that walking into the liquor store was not some innocent experiment. I wasn’t there because I needed a bottle of water. I was there because I wanted a drink.

Badly.

And beneath that craving was something even bigger that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Was this really it? Was I really never going to have another drink ever again?

Not next weekend while celebrating a friend’s birthday. Not sitting outside enjoying a beautiful summer day. Not at the Saturday night bonfire we had planned with neighbors. Not at an upcoming work event where I knew there would be complimentary drinks. Not ten years from now when, surely, I would have figured myself out enough to drink like a normal person.

I could understand sixteen days. Maybe I could understand seventeen.

But the rest of my life? My stomach dropped just thinking about it.

I stared at the front doors of the liquor store.

All I had to do was let go of the steering wheel.

Open the car door.

And walk inside.

Present Day

I make eye contact with my friend when I enter the restaurant and wave as I head toward the bar, where she is already sitting.

We greet each other, and the bartender walks over once he sees me settle onto the stool beside her.

“I’ll have the house white wine, please,” my friend says.

The bartender nods and turns toward me.

“Diet Coke, please.”

The words leave my mouth without hesitation.

I watch as he fills a tall glass with ice, the cubes cracking as the soda pours over them. Foam rises toward the top before settling. He slides the glass across the bar, and I wrap my hand around it.

Condensation is already collecting on the outside. Tiny beads of water slip slowly toward the napkin underneath.

My friend’s wine arrives a minute later. I notice it. Of course I notice it.

But then we keep talking. And that’s it. No argument unfolding inside my head. No internal battle over whether I should order one, too. No staring at her glass and feeling cheated out of something everyone else gets to have.

Instead, I take another sip of my Diet Coke.

Today, I am 844 days sober from alcohol. But who’s counting? Apparently, I still am.

Just differently now.

There was a time when I couldn’t imagine this version of myself. Sitting comfortably at a bar beside a friend, with alcohol inches away from me. And being completely okay with it. Not even an inkling of envy that she could have a glass of wine and I couldn’t.

Early in sobriety, I assumed not drinking would always feel the way it did in that liquor store parking lot. I thought I would spend the rest of my life white-knuckling my way through it. I was under the impression that sobriety meant wanting alcohol forever and simply getting better at telling myself no.

That was the part that terrified me the most. Not necessarily today.

Forever.

Because when you’re sixteen days sober, forever is an awfully long time to imagine feeling exactly the way you feel on day sixteen. What I didn’t understand yet was that I wouldn’t always feel that way.

I did eventually let go of the steering wheel that day. I opened the car door. And I walked inside. The fluorescent lights felt brighter than I remembered. I wandered slowly through aisles filled with bottles and cans I knew all too well. For sixteen days, I had worked so hard not to be there. And suddenly, there I was.

I could have grabbed something. Part of me wanted to. But another part of me remembered. I remembered why I had stopped.

I remembered how helpless I had felt toward the end. How sick I was of feeling sick. How alcohol had swallowed up nearly every inch of my mind. How I’d been hiding it around my house, sneaking drinks. Running on a hamster wheel every single day, always ending up with the same shameful outcome.

I remembered that I hadn’t quit because I was simply taking a break. I quit because I couldn’t keep going the way I was going.

I walked the aisles until I reached one of my favorite bottles of red wine. There it was. Familiar. Easy. Like it’d been calling my name the second I stepped into the store.

I stared at it for a while, thinking about the relief it could give me. How quickly that first glass could quiet everything down.

But I also knew, quite certainly, what came after.

One glass becoming one bottle. The spiraling anxiety waking me at 3 a.m. The gut-punching shame waiting for me on the other side of a debilitating hangover. The realization the next morning that I was right back where I started.

I picked up the bottle and wrapped my hand around the neck. For a moment, I just gazed at the label.

I can’t keep doing this to myself.

The thought was simple. But it stopped me.

I put the bottle back. And I walked out of the store empty-handed. I got into my car and drove home.

I did not solve forever that day. I didn’t even try. I just made it to day seventeen. Then eighteen. Then nineteen.

Eventually, I stopped needing to know what I would do for the rest of my life. Because I started to understand something that seems obvious to me now: I was trying to live days that hadn’t happened yet.

I was afraid of weddings I hadn’t been invited to. Vacations I hadn’t booked. Holidays that were years away. Birthdays belonging to versions of myself I hadn’t even met. I was predicting the future before even knowing what lay ahead of me. Assuming the worst.

I was sitting in a liquor store parking lot on day sixteen demanding an answer from myself about day 10,000.

No wonder I felt overwhelmed.

That’s the problem with forever. It’s too vast when you try to hold all of it at once.

So, I stopped holding onto that. And I started holding onto today.

The word forever still makes me uncomfortable sometimes. Maybe it always will. But I don’t know what my life will look like twenty years from now. None of us do. We talk about forever as though it’s a destination somewhere in the distance, waiting for us to arrive. But it only exists in our imagination.

There is only this day.

This version of myself sitting at a bar with a friend, drinking Diet Coke and realizing that the life I once thought would feel restrictive actually feels remarkably normal.

Nothing about how I felt on day sixteen lasted forever.

And the woman sitting in that parking lot didn’t stay the same either. That may have been the part I misunderstood most. I thought staying sober meant spending day after day fighting the exact same internal battle. I couldn’t picture a future where the battle itself might change, where I would get stronger. Where alcohol might become quieter. Where a bar could become a place to see a friend instead of a place to get plastered.

I spent so much time asking myself: Can I really do this forever?

Maybe that was never the right question. Because I still don’t know if I can do anything forever.

I don’t think anyone can.

But I do know one thing.

I can do today.

I proved it sixteen days in, when I walked back out of the liquor store empty-handed. And I’m proving it again now, 844 days later, as another drop of condensation slides down the side of my Diet Coke.

Tomorrow will eventually become today.

And when it does, I’ll make the decision again.

Forever can take care of itself.

Until the next page,

Katie

I don’t drink today because I can’t stop after one.

I don’t drink today because I don’t want to feel like straight garbage in the morning. A mind whirling with anxiety. A stomach turning. That lingering sense of dread floating through the room.

I don’t drink today because I spent enough mornings trying to piece together the night before.

What did I say?

Did I embarrass myself or others?

Is someone mad at me?

I don’t drink today because I don’t miss waking up afraid of something I couldn’t remember.

I don’t drink today because it stopped being fun a long time ago. Maybe it was never really fun to begin with. The warning signs were always there. I just got pretty good at ignoring them.

I don’t drink today because I have too much to lose.

I don’t drink today because toward the end, it felt like only a matter of time before something bad happened because of my priorities.

I don’t drink today because I don’t ever want to find out what that something could have been.

I don’t drink today because I feel healthier than I ever have. I sleep better. My resting heart rate is lower. My mind is clearer. My body finally feels like it’s working with me instead of constantly recovering from what I did to it.

I don’t drink today because it’s a waste of calories, money, and time.

And I wasted enough of all three.

I don’t drink today because I have a family that depends on me. That needs me. And I want them to know they can count on me.

I don’t drink today because I want to remember putting my kids to bed. Kissing their foreheads. Tiptoeing out of their rooms.

I don’t drink today because if one of them calls for me in the middle of the night, I want to be able to get up.

I don’t drink today because I don’t want my children wondering which version of their mom they’re going to get.

I don’t drink today because I don’t want to keep abandoning myself.

I don’t drink today because I don’t want to hurt people anymore.

I don’t drink today because saying I’m sorry starts to lose its meaning when you keep apologizing for the same things.

I don’t drink today because I got tired of disappointing myself.

I don’t drink today because I don’t want to calculate how much alcohol is left, how much I’ve already had, or whether there will be enough.

I don’t drink today because I like going somewhere without wondering if alcohol will be served.

I don’t drink today because I like leaving a gathering when I’m tired instead of staying because there’s still alcohol left.

I don’t drink today because I don’t miss the constant negotiation happening inside my own head.

Should I have another?

Maybe just one more.

How much has everyone else had?

Am I drinking too fast?

Is there more?

I don’t drink today because that was exhausting.

I don’t drink today because I like having a peaceful mind.

I don’t drink today because my thoughts finally belong to me again.

I don’t drink today because I like waking up on Saturday morning and actually having an enjoyable Saturday morning.

I don’t drink today because coffee tastes better when it isn’t being used as a hangover treatment.

I don’t drink today because I’ve wasted enough beautiful days lying on the couch waiting to feel human again.

I don’t drink today because I used to think drinking made life more fun. Now I realize how much life I missed because of it.

I don’t drink today because I’m tired of romanticizing something that caused me and others so much pain.

I don’t drink today because alcohol never made me better. It only gave my spiraling thoughts somewhere else to go.

I don’t drink today because I don’t need alcohol to make me brave.

I don’t drink today because I spent too much time trying to become someone I already was.

I don’t drink today because I’m learning that the person I was trying so hard to escape was never the problem.

I don’t drink today because I like remembering conversations. I like remembering vacations. Birthdays. Weddings. Holidays. Tuesday nights with my family sitting around the living room.

The completely ordinary moments I once thought weren’t important enough to remember.

I don’t drink today because I’ve already lost enough memories. There are nights from my own life I will never get back. Stories other people can tell me that I was there for, but I can’t remember.

I don’t drink today because that makes me sad.

I don’t drink today because I want to be present for the memories I haven’t made yet.

I don’t drink today because shame is heavy, and I carried it for long enough.

I don’t drink today because I don’t miss lying in bed replaying every mistake I’ve ever made.

I don’t drink today because peace feels better than a buzz ever did.

I don’t drink today because I trust myself now, and I never want to lose that again. I trust myself to drive home. I trust myself to remember. I trust myself to show up. I trust myself to make decisions I won’t have to apologize for tomorrow.

I don’t drink today because I fought hard for this version of myself.

I don’t drink today because I actually like her. And it took me a long time to be able to say that.

I don’t drink today because I have things I want to do. Stories I want to write. Places I want to go. Children I want to watch grow up. A family I want to grow alongside.

A life I want to remember.

I don’t drink today because I spent enough years trying to escape my own life. Now I want to be here for it. All of it. The exciting days. The boring days. The hard days.

I don’t drink today because I used to think sobriety meant giving something up. Now I know how much it gave back.

I don’t drink today because I don’t know what’s waiting for me on this long and winding road through life.

And for the first time in a long time, I’m excited to find out.

I don’t drink today because I can’t promise myself forever.

Forever is enormous.

But today?

Today I can do.

So, I don’t drink today.

Until the next page,

Katie

I hear my daughter before I see her. A small, broken sound, followed by tiny whimpers. They pull me down the hallway faster than I realize I’m moving. My steps feel too loud against the floor, like I’m intruding on something fragile by simply being there.

Her bedroom door is cracked open just enough for me to see her curled under the blanket, face buried in her pillow, shoulders shaking. Her favorite stuffed animal sits beside her, untouched, as if it doesn’t know what to do either.

Something tightens in my chest before I even reach her. A dull, immediate pressure. My body is bracing for impact before my mind has caught up. I’m at her bedside in seconds.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, but my voice already knows this isn’t small. It comes out softer than I intend, thinner somehow, like I’m afraid of breaking her further by speaking. She tries to answer and can’t. Another whimper slips out instead, and it lands in me like a jolt.

“Hey,” I say softly, reaching for her hand.

She finally speaks, barely.

“My friends and I got into a fight.”

A pause between a breath that catches.

“Then my friend called me quiet.”

And just like that, her face crumples again.

The word lands in the room heavier than it should.

Being her mom, I want to fix it for her. I want to dry her tears, tell her exactly what to say, and make the whole thing disappear. But I know I can’t.

This is part of growing up. Learning who you are and who your friends are. Understanding that sometimes the things people say about you can hurt, even when there’s nothing wrong with those things at all.

“I get it,” I tell her.

And I do. Because when I was younger, people called me quiet and shy all the time.

And I hated it.

Every time someone pointed it out, it felt less like an observation and more like a personality defect. As if everyone else in the room had been handed instructions on how to socialize and mine had somehow gotten lost in the mail. My shyness became a barrier between me and the rest of the world. At least, that’s how it felt. Like it was holding me back from the person I was supposed to be.

Then alcohol entered the picture. And suddenly, I thought I had found a solution.

When I drank, I was more outgoing. I could have conversations with people I normally wouldn’t approach sober. I felt brave and fearless. Funny, even. I felt like people liked me.

I had my first drink at eighteen. Cheap vodka, straight from the bottle. One pull and I thought it was atrocious. I gagged and nearly threw up. I couldn’t understand why anyone would voluntarily drink this stuff.

Then the effects settled in. My body relaxed. My mood lifted. I laughed more easily. The nervous voice in my head became quieter. It felt like I had finally found the missing key to my social life.

I don’t think alcohol was really a “problem” in those early days. Everyone around me was drinking, so I didn’t think much of my own relationship with it. But looking back, there were signs.

The obsession started settling in. I began to plan events around drinking. The excitement bubbled up in my stomach when I would think about the next opportunity to drink. I was willing to drop everything for a party or a night at the bar. Drinking became an extension of my personality. I was the friend who was always up for a drink and ready to go out. I would be prepared to turn any ordinary night into an occasion.

And when college ended and I moved into adulthood, alcohol came with me. Only somewhere along the way, it stopped being something I used solely to socialize. It became something I used to cope.

I’d experience an uncomfortable emotion and, instead of sitting with it long enough to understand where it came from, I drank.

A hard breakup. Drink.

Losing friendships. Drink.

Insecurity. Loneliness. Anger. Shame. Drink.

I didn’t process much of anything. I numbed it. I masked it. Over the years, alcohol helped me create a version of myself I thought the world would like better.

Less shy. Less awkward. More confident. More fun. More willing to take up space.

I thought the mask was protecting me. I didn’t realize that, with every passing year, it was becoming harder to take off. Underneath this mask were all the feelings I had never learned how to face. The insecurities I had buried. The hurt I had ignored. The questions I never bothered asking myself. Why am I feeling this way? What am I actually afraid of? Why do I believe being quiet makes me less worthy of being in the room? Alcohol made it possible to avoid those questions.

Until it didn’t.

Addiction is a difficult thing to understand if you’ve never experienced it. Why would someone keep doing something that was clearly hurting them? Why would I keep burning pieces of my life down? Why couldn’t I just stop?

Alcohol had woven itself into nearly every facet of my life. I made excuse after excuse after excuse to keep drinking because I couldn’t imagine who I would be without it.

And I hurt people along the way. I wasn’t a good friend during active addiction. It’s difficult to show up for other people when your mind is consumed by one thing.

I buried my deepest insecurities and emotions inside a tiny box and tucked it somewhere far away. Or at least I thought I did. Because alcohol never actually made those feelings disappear.

Eventually, it ripped the box wide open. My anger. My hurt. My sadness. My insecurity. Everything I worked so hard to hide when I was sober came spilling out when I drank too much. The mask didn’t hide those parts of me. It only made them louder.

I don’t expect forgiveness from every person I hurt along the way. That isn’t mine to ask for. I do have to learn how to forgive myself. I lived inside a cycle of shame and guilt for far too long. I would drink, regret what I had done, hate myself for it, and then drink again because I didn’t want to feel the shame.

Round and round the carousel I went.

Until one day, I stopped. And when I took alcohol away, it felt like I had taken off the mask in a crowded room. I felt exposed. Without my social lubricant, my buffer, my familiar escape, I had no idea how I was supposed to exist in the world.

How would I socialize? How would I celebrate? How would I handle awkwardness? How would I sit through boredom?

Who was I without alcohol? More than two years later, I’m still answering that question.

I’m still insecure about being quiet sometimes. I still feel shy in rooms full of people I don’t know. I still occasionally wish I were the kind of person who could walk into a room and effortlessly talk to everyone in it. I’m also learning that I don’t have to be. Quiet isn’t a defect. Shyness isn’t a flaw. I don’t have to become louder to be allowed to take up space.

Maybe that’s what I want my daughter to understand sooner than I did. She’ll learn these things in her own way. My heart aches when hers does, and every instinct in me wants to protect her from ever believing she needs to become someone else to be accepted.

But I know I can’t figure out who she is for her. I can only remind her that whoever she discovers underneath all the noise is already worthy of being loved. And I can be beside her while she figures it out.

As for me, the mask has finally come off.

There are days when being without it still feels uncomfortable. There are moments when the shy eighteen-year-old version of me shows up again and wonders whether she should be different.

The difference is that I’m not trying to drown her out anymore. I’m learning to listen to her.

Alcohol no longer decides whether I’m interesting enough, confident enough, social enough, or fun enough. It no longer controls my decisions, my mornings, or my life.

I took that control back. After spending so many years trying to become someone else, I’m finally learning how to be myself.

Until the next page,

Katie

Hey kids,

It’s Mom.

I’ve had something on my mind lately.

Don’t worry. I’m not here to remind you to finish your dinner, or brush your teeth, or use your listening ears (but, seriously, we need to work on those listening ears).

I’m here to tell you a story.

We love our stories, don’t we? Every night, we curl up together and read about silly animals and brave kids. Sometimes the main character is a talking truck or a scary dragon who somehow ends up being friendly. We giggle, we make funny voices, and sometimes we read the same book three nights in a row because it becomes our favorite.

This story is a little different.

Once upon a time, there was a woman searching for a lighthouse. She didn’t know exactly where it was, only that she had somehow drifted farther away from it than she’d ever meant to.

From the shore, her life appeared perfect. She had a beautiful family, a steady job, and a warm home waiting for her every evening. Everyone who passed by would have assumed she had already found her way.

But they couldn’t see the dense fog that surrounded her. They couldn’t see how lost she felt inside of it. The woman spent years searching for something to calm the waves. Whenever the sea became rough, she’d reach for something she believed would steady her boat.

For a little while, it seemed to help. She thought the waves grew smaller. The wind was still, if only for a fleeting moment. But every time that fog lifted, she realized she’d floated even farther from the lighthouse she had been searching for all along.

She wasn’t sailing toward home anymore. She was simply trying not to sink her boat.

Then one day, after drifting for what felt like forever, she stopped looking out at the horizon. Instead, she decided to look inward. There, beneath all the noise, was a tiny voice she’d almost forgotten.

It whispered,
You already know the way.

So, she made one decision. Then another. And another. They weren’t giant leaps. They were small turns of the wheel, one at a time. Slowly, but surely, the fog began to clear.

The waves didn’t disappear. However, they no longer controlled where she was going. And finally, she realized something that changed everything.

The lighthouse had never stopped shining. She had simply forgotten how to see it.

Kids… I have to tell you something.

The woman in this story is me.

Someday, you’ll realize your parents weren’t born as moms and dads. We were just people first. We made mistakes. We lost our way. We carried burdens we didn’t know how to put down.

If you ever find yourself searching for your own lighthouse, I want you to remember this story.

When life feels heavy, when you’re feeling ashamed or lost, when you’ve floated farther than you ever thought you would…

Come home.

You never have to earn your way back. There isn’t a mistake you could make that would make me stop loving you. Not now. Not ever.

You became the reason I kept looking for that beacon of light. You always have been. Without even realizing it, you helped guide me back to the mother I dreamed of becoming.

Thank you for that.

I want you experience your life fully. Notice the sunsets. Laugh until your stomach hurts. Read one more bedtime story. Love people deeply. Be kind. Ask for help when you need it.

And if you ever lose sight of who you are…

Look for the light. It will always lead you back home.

Love,

Mom

Until the next page,

Katie

My son kneels to pick a tiny purple flower before suddenly yanking his hand back. A sharp cry escapes him as he runs toward me, a tiny speck of blood forming on the tip of his finger.

“Mommy,” he says between deep breaths and tears running down his face, “I was picking a flower for you, but it hurt me.”

“It’s okay, buddy,” I say, kissing his finger before leading him inside for a bandage. “You picked a thistle. They’re sharp.”

A few minutes later, his tears have dried, and he’s back outside chasing his sister through the backyard, weaving around patches of prickly weeds that have begun creeping through the grass.

It’s one of those perfect Midwestern summer days. The sky is cloudless, the sun is warm without being oppressive, and the whole yard feels alive.

“Let’s get rid of these thistles first,” my husband says as we plan the afternoon’s yard work. “But make sure you pull the whole thing by the root. If you don’t, they’ll just come back.”

I kneel beside one of the weeds and wrap my hand around its base. It resists at first, clinging stubbornly to the earth before finally giving way. When I lift it from the ground, a long, tangled root dangles beneath it.

I study it for a moment. From the surface, it doesn’t look particularly dangerous. Just another patch of green mixed in with the grass. But what’s visible above ground is only a fraction of what’s really there. The real work is happening beneath the soil, inaudibly spreading where no one can see it.

I’d never thought much about weeds before that afternoon.

Pulling away what’s visible doesn’t solve the problem. It only makes the yard look cleaner. Underground, the roots are still alive, waiting patiently for another chance to grow.

As I looked down at the thistle in my hand, I realized I’d spent years growing a garden of invasive weeds of my own. Not in my own backyard.

In my mind.

People often think addiction lives in the drinking. In my darkest moments, mine lived in the thinking. The drinking only lasted a few hours. The thoughts never stopped.

I need a drink after today.

Will there be alcohol where we’re going?

I’m only drinking on the weekends.

When I finish this one, what will I have next?

Persistent thought after thought after thought.

Every decision bent toward alcohol. Errands became opportunities to buy it. Dinner plans became questions about what wine would be served. Weekends became countdowns. Vacations became calculations.

It slowly became the soundtrack to my entire life.

I still went to work. I still took care of my children. I still made dinner, folded laundry, and showed up for the people who depended on me. From the outside, my life looked relatively normal.

Inside my mind, it was crowded. Alcohol had wrapped itself around my attention, stealing space from everything else. Thought by thought, the roots spread. By the time I realized what was happening, they had woven themselves through nearly every corner of my mind.

Every thought we repeat is a seed. Some grow into hope. Others grow into fear. Some become confidence. Others become shame. The thoughts we return to, day after day, eventually grow the deepest roots.

For years, I tended my obsession with alcohol. I watered it with every justification, every excuse, every promise that tomorrow would somehow be different. And it grew exactly as weeds do.

Silently. Patiently. Relentlessly.

When I finally decided to end my tumultuous relationship with alcohol in 2024, the drinking stopped. The thoughts didn’t.

I can’t do this.

I’m not strong enough.

I need a drink.

My brain was convincing. Oh, it was incredibly convincing. There were countless moments when I almost gave in, not because someone handed me a drink, but because my own mind kept insisting that alcohol was the answer.

My brain wanted what it had been trained to expect. Dopamine. Relief.

Escape.

In those first thirty days, I wrestled with those thoughts every single day. Whenever they became too loud, I’d put on an audiobook and listen to someone else’s story of recovery. I borrowed hope from people who had walked the path before me because I couldn’t quite believe my own thoughts yet.

One day, I wanted to be able to say the words they were saying: I am sober. I am happy. I am free.

Around ninety days, something began to change. The fog lifted. For the first time in years, there was quiet. I could drive somewhere without wondering whether alcohol would be there. I could enjoy dinner without mentally planning my next drink. I could tuck my children into bed and remain fully present in the room. The silence felt unfamiliar. Then, gradually, it began to feel like peace.

I started planting different thoughts.

I don’t need to drink today.

I am stronger than this craving.

I can do hard things.

I can trust myself again.

Not every day is filled with sunshine and rainbows. Negative thoughts still find their way in. Fear still tries to plant itself. Doubt still occasionally takes root. But now I notice those thoughts before they have the chance to spread. I care for them differently. I choose which ones deserve my attention.

My son probably won’t remember the afternoon he tried to pick a thistle for me. I will. Because while we were pulling weeds from our backyard, I realized I’ve been pulling them from somewhere else, too.

Every day, we are tending something inside our minds. Whatever we water is what eventually grows.

For years, I watered the weeds. Now, I’m learning to grow a garden.

Until the next page,

Katie

The evening had finally settled into that rare kind of silence that only arrives after my children are asleep. I follow the concrete path toward the lake, kicking a pinecone off the sidewalk as I walk. It tumbles into the grass and disappears beneath a patch of wildflowers. The air is warm, carrying the earthy smell of pine needles and damp soil left behind from last night’s rainstorm.

As I reach the water’s edge, I stop.

The lake is so perfectly still that not a single ripple disturbs its surface. The setting sun stretches across the water in long streaks of gold and orange, while dragonflies skim just above the surface as if they’re afraid to touch it.

This is my favorite time of day. For the first time since my alarm rang this morning, no one needs anything from me.

I notice a weathered park bench just off the path and make my way to it. The wooden slats have been softened by years of rain, snow and summer heat. I lower myself onto the bench and it answers with a slight creak. The cool metal frame of the bench presses faintly through my clothes, reminding me that even the strongest things change with enough time.

I breathe in deeply. The fresh evening air fills my lungs. I close my eyes for a moment, letting the peace and quiet settle over me. When I open them again, I notice someone walking in my direction.

She’s moving quickly, almost frantically, her eyes darting between the path ahead and the phone clutched tightly in her hand. Her thumbs fly across the screen before she shoves it into her back pocket with an exasperated sigh.

As she gets closer, she finally looks up and our eyes meet. For a brief second, something about her feels strangely familiar.

“Sorry to bother you,” she says, catching her breath. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

“Not at all,” I say, sliding over. “There’s plenty of room.”

“Thanks.”

She drops onto the bench beside me and immediately pulls her phone back out, reading something on the screen before rubbing her forehead with the palm of her hand. Whatever she was waiting for, it isn’t going the way she had hoped.

She slips the phone back into her pocket and looks out across the water.

“I’m supposed to meet a friend here,” she says. “This has always been our spot. Doesn’t the lake look beautiful from this bench?”

“It really does,” I say. “I come here whenever I need to clear my head. It’s one of the few places where my mind finally slows down.”

She nods.

“I hope I have a place like that someday.”

I smile.

“You will.”

She glances over at me.

“Do you come here often?”

“I do.”

“What brings you here?”

“Two kids.” I say under my breath.

She smiles and says, “How old are they?”

“Six and eight.”

“That’s really cool,” she says while gazing at the water. “I’ve always wanted kids.”

Her phone buzzes and she picks it up, reading the message. Almost instantly, the color drains from her face. She locks the screen without responding and places it beside her on the bench.

I don’t ask what happened. Sometimes people need silence more than questions.

We sit together, watching a family of geese drift across the lake.

She speaks again.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

She hesitates for a moment.

“Are you happy?”

The question catches me off guard. I look over at her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” she searches for the words. “Are you happy with your life? How everything turned out?”

There is a short pause as she continues looking out in the direction of the lake.

“I just feel so… stuck right now.” she says under a nervous laugh. “Sorry, I know we don’t know each other.”

“It’s okay,” I say gently. “Can I ask how old you are?”

“Twenty-two.”

Twenty-two, I think. Fresh out of college. Her whole life ahead of her. Young, wild and free. I remember those days.

“Why do you ask if I’m happy?”

She doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she seems to get lost in her thoughts.

Finally, she says quietly, “Because I just want to know if it gets better.”

I study the profile of her face. There’s something so familiar about her. I can’t quite place it, though.

“It did,” I say softly, “It got better. But I had to learn some things the hard way first.”

She turns toward me. “What do you mean?”

“I quit drinking a couple years ago.”

The words leave my mouth more easily than they once did.

“I didn’t have an off switch. Alcohol slowly became the answer to everything. I used it to celebrate, to help with anxiety, when I was bored. It felt like it was weaved into every part of my life. And then it became a really bad habit. It was ruining my life.”

She is quiet.

Then she says, “Drinking problems run in my family.”

She fidgets with her fingers and then says, “I’ve been having these awful panic attacks lately. Sometimes I feel like I’m outside of my own body. Wine helps, at least for a little while.”

I nod.

“I know it feels like the wine is helping.” I say and then pause. “But sometimes the thing that gives us relief today becomes the thing we’re trying to escape tomorrow.”

She lets that sit between us.

“Have you talked to anyone about this?” I ask.

“I’m seeing a therapist. I started medication not long ago.” she shrugs. “I just don’t know why I feel this way.”

“I understand.”

Neither of us says anything else. The lake says enough for both of us in this moment of stillness.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice an older woman making her way toward the bench.

“May I sit with you?” she asks.

“Of course.”

I slide over, making room.

The three of us sit quietly, facing the water.

“Beautiful evening,” the woman says.

“It really is,” the younger girl replies.

The older woman smiles and says, “What brings you both here?”

“I was supposed to meet a friend,” the younger girl responds.

“And I come here whenever I need to think,” I say.

She studies us for a moment.

“You know…” she says with a smile. “You two look remarkably alike.”

The girl and I laugh.

“Funny,” I say. “I was thinking the same thing.”

The younger girl’s phone buzzes. She glances down, and this time her face softens.

“My friend can’t make it. We’re meeting for dinner instead.”

She slips the phone into her pocket.

“I should get going.”

She stands before turning toward me.

“It was really nice talking to you.”

“It was nice to talk with you, too.” I hesitate. “I never asked your name.”

She smiles and says, “Katie.”

Something catches in my chest as she turns to leave.

“Katie,” I call after her.

She looks back.

“Be brave.”

She pauses, waiting for a moment.

“The world can feel heavy sometimes. Don’t carry it alone.”

A beautiful smile spreads across her youthful face.

“I’ll remember that.”

I watch her disappear down the path until she’s swallowed by the trees in the distance.

Beside me, the older woman lets out a quiet sigh.

“Oh, to be twenty-two again.”

She chuckles.

“Actually…”

She shakes her head.

“I don’t think I’d go back. Too much worrying. Too much drinking. Too much time spent trying to become someone I already was.”

I laugh and say, “I know exactly what you mean.”

She reaches over and gently takes my hand. Her skin is paper-thin, her veins raised beneath it, but her grip is steady.

“You’re still so young,” she says. “Go do the things you’ve been dreaming about.”

She squeezes my hand tighter.

“Do I know you?” I ask, after holding eye contact with her for a few seconds.

Before she can answer, my phone rings. My husband is calling me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “One second.”

I step away to answer. The conversation lasts less than a minute.

When I return, the bench is empty. Only a small yellow note rests where she’d been sitting. I pick it up and read it.

You will do wonderful things with your life. Be brave. Be courageous. Live fully.

Keep writing. Someone somewhere needs your story.

I’m so proud of you.

Love, Katie

I scan the note again and look around. The woman is nowhere to be seen.

The breeze stirs the trees above me. The lake remains perfectly still. I fold the note carefully and slip it into my back pocket.

As I begin to walk home, I realize something has shifted. Not around me, but within me.

Some conversations don’t happen because we meet the right people. Some happen because, at last, we’re finally ready to listen.

Until the next page,

Katie

The year is 2034. I’m ten years sober from alcohol.

The first frothy beer I’ve touched in a decade is already halfway down my throat before I realize what I’ve done. I freeze. Not because I chose to drink it. Not because I was craving alcohol. Not because I spent the afternoon fighting temptation and finally gave in.

I drank it by accident.

A careless mistake. The kind that sounds insignificant until it happens to you.

The moment I see the label, my stomach drops. The bottle looked identical to the non-alcoholic version. I never questioned it. Not until the familiar warmth hit my tongue. Not until I spotted the words I hadn’t willingly consumed in a decade.

My chest tightens. A decade.

Ten years of hard-won trust and showing up for myself. The number hammers through my head as panic begins to rise. Did I just ruin everything I’ve worked so hard for? The question sounds ridiculous, yet I can’t stop asking it.

I think about Day One. I think about the woman who woke up at 3 a.m. filled with shame and self-loathing. The person who didn’t know how to face their alcoholism. The individual who promised herself every morning that tonight would be different.

She feels impossibly far away now. And yet, with one accidental sip, she’s suddenly standing right beside me. The guilt arrives first. Then the fear. Then something unexpected.

I feel compassion.

A decade ago, I believed sobriety was something fragile. A glass sculpture that could shatter at any moment. Now I know better. Sobriety isn’t a single choice. It’s thousands of choices.

Every social outing I attended without drinking. Every Friday night I drove past the local brewery. Every difficult conversation I stayed present for. Every morning I woke up clear-headed.

Every page I wrote. Every memory I kept.

One accidental beer cannot erase a decade of becoming.

I still feel guilty. I still wish it hadn’t happened. But for the first time, I understand something I couldn’t have understood in early sobriety.

Recovery was never about perfection. It was always about finding my way back to myself, again and again, and finally believing I deserve to stay.

Until the next page,

Katie

She arrives around the same time each month.

Not always on the same day, but her schedule is remarkably consistent. She never bothers knocking. She lets herself in as though she’s lived here for years.

During the most debilitating months, I know she’s arrived before I ever see her. My thoughts move slower. My body no longer feels like my own. Somewhere between brushing my teeth and folding the laundry, a quiet shift takes place. It happens so gradually I almost miss it, until I realize I’m no longer alone in my own mind.

She settles into the smallest crevice of my brain, unpacking her belongings as though she belongs there. She hangs doubt from the walls. She tucks shame into the corners. She drapes loneliness over the furniture until the space feels eerily unfamiliar.

Dust settles over everything she touches.

Joy.

Confidence.

Hope.

Nothing disappears entirely. It simply becomes harder to find beneath the layer she leaves behind. She smears fingerprints across every window in my mind until nothing looks quite the way it really is.

She turns July into January. The sun is still shining outside, but inside of me, everything feels cold. She drains the color from ordinary life. The bright greens of summer fade into dull olive. Flowers in my garden appear wilted. The sky seems to lose its blue.

The laughter of my children sounds farther away. Music loses its melody. Even my favorite foods taste flat.

For the next week—or sometimes two, depending on how long she decides to linger—everything I see passes through her filter instead of mine.

My patience grows thin. My fuse feels shorter, as though any small inconvenience might set me off.

Sometimes I stand in the kitchen staring into the refrigerator, unable to remember why I opened it. The milk. The strawberries. Last night’s leftovers. They all stare back at me while I search for something I cannot name. After a full minute, I close the door and walk away empty-handed.

There are mornings that getting out of bed feels almost impossible.

When I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror, she points to the deep lines on my forehead. The face that no longer belongs to the woman in her twenties, but instead a woman fast approaching forty and no longer thriving.

Look at you, she whispers.

You’re getting old.

The compliments I received just days earlier suddenly feel like people were only being polite. Every accomplishment I’ve worked toward becomes insignificant.

My writing isn’t good enough.

My motherhood isn’t good enough.

I am not enough.

She is convincing. The frightening part is that she never sounds like a stranger.

She sounds exactly like me.

And then, almost as suddenly as she arrived, she leaves.

The house she occupied grows quiet again. I reread the pages of thoughts she left behind and wonder how I ever believed them.

While deep in alcohol addiction, this was the time of the month I reached for another drink with even more urgency than usual. I believed alcohol could silence her.

Wine softened the thoughts. Vodka quieted the anxiety—if only for a few hours. White Claws became another attempt to outrun the mood swings. But she always fought back.

The alcohol muted her voice for a fleeting moment, only to amplify it when it wore off. The hangovers bled into the following days, making the emotional and mental struggle even heavier.

She never introduced herself while I was drinking. I didn’t know her name. I only knew that every month I became someone I barely recognized, and alcohol felt like the only thing capable of turning down the volume.

I thought I was treating the problem. In reality, I was anesthetizing it.

When I stopped drinking in April 2024, my body slowly began to heal after years of alcohol abuse. Day by day, the mental fog lifted. I felt clearer, stronger, and healthier one passing day at a time.

But she still came back.

The difference was that I no longer had alcohol to hide behind. Without my usual escape, I had no choice but to experience every symptom exactly as it was.

I finally mentioned the pattern to my doctor during my annual appointment. She asked me to describe what happened each month.

Irritability. Anxiety. Depression. Restlessness. Insomnia. Exhaustion. Difficulty concentrating. Mood swings. The overwhelming feeling that I was becoming someone I didn’t recognize.

She listened carefully without interrupting under the bright lights of the sterile office. Then she asked a question that changed everything.

“Have you ever heard of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder?”

I hadn’t. She handed me a symptom tracker and asked me to document what I experienced over the next few months.

I did. Month after month, the same symptoms appeared during the same phase of my cycle.

Later, I learned that Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) is far more than “bad PMS.” According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, it is a severe, chronic condition that can cause significant emotional and physical symptoms during the week or two before menstruation. Suddenly, what I had been living with for years had a name.

Receiving that diagnosis didn’t make the symptoms disappear. But it gave me something I had never had before. Understanding.

Being in my third year of sobriety has helped me see my drinking through a different lens.

I understand now why alcohol held such power over me during certain times of the month.

I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t lazy. I wasn’t failing.

I was desperately trying to quiet symptoms I didn’t yet understand.

Alcohol never healed them. It only made them louder.

Today, I manage them differently. I track my cycle. I move my body. I prioritize sleep whenever I can. I give myself permission to slow down. Most importantly, I remind myself that this voice is temporary.

Its words are distorted. They are not the truth.

I can’t escape her. I live alongside her.

Some months are easier than others. Some months she still convinces me for a little while. But now I know something she doesn’t.

She always leaves.

And unlike before, I don’t hand her a glass of wine and invite her to stay longer than necessary.

Resources

If you recognize yourself in these words, know that you are not alone. PMDD is a real medical condition, and help is available.

• International Association for Premenstrual Disorders (IAPMD)

• Johns Hopkins Medicine – Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD)

• Office on Women’s Health (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services)

• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)

If you think you may have PMDD, consider speaking with your primary care provider or gynecologist. A diagnosis can provide both validation and a path toward effective treatment.

Until the next page,

Katie

It’s happening again.

The disappearing act I’m so good at.

Lights.

Camera.

Action.

My vision fades in and out. My eyes glaze over, the room blurring as though I’ve stepped into a foggy morning. My head drifts to one side. The room tilts with me as my gaze wanders from the gleaming vodka bottles behind the bar to my friend sitting beside me.

“Katie!” she shouts. “Katie, wake up! You can’t sleep at the bar!”

I look at her, furrowing my brow. Confusion settles into every corner of my mind.

Where am I?

Sleep… at a bar?

My eyelids feel impossibly heavy, as though invisible hands are pressing them shut. My head drops forward. Darkness creeps in.

I’m tired. So very tired.

I jolt awake as my friend pulls me to my feet by the arm.

“We have to go,” she mutters, frustration tucked beneath her breath.

The last thing I remember is ordering another drink and chatting with the nice people sitting next to us at the bar.

Then it comes in flashes.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Earlier that evening, I had dinner with two of my closest friends at a new Italian restaurant in town. With two young kids at home, nights like these were rare. We planned them months in advance, squeezing them into calendars overflowing with work and family obligations.

When I’m with these friends, I feel at home. We’ve known each other since grade school. We’ve lived through braces, first crushes, graduations, weddings, babies, heartbreak, and all the ordinary moments in between. The conversation comes easily. The memories tumble out one after another.

And the wine flows just as freely.

We order a bottle for the table. A crisp Sauvignon Blanc.

I nod thoughtfully when my friend recommends it, pretending I have an opinion. Truthfully, I would have happily drunk whatever was placed in front of me. I wasn’t looking for good wine anymore. I was looking to get drunk.

The first glass disappears before the appetizers even reach the table. Of course I finish first, swallowing each sip as though someone might steal the glass from me before I’m done.

The conversation continues around me, but my attention drifts. I’m only halfway listening. I’m thinking about my next drink.

When the waitress clears our appetizers, I order a vodka cocktail. My friend glances sideways at me.

“You sure you need hard liquor tonight, Katie?”

She laughs as she says it.

Or maybe she doesn’t.

“Just one,” I grin, nudging her shoulder. “I never get to see you guys. It’s a special occasion.”

By the time dinner arrives, I’m slurping the melting ice from the bottom of my glass. Empty already. Lately I’ve been counting my drinks in an attempt to stay in control.

Or maybe I’m counting them because I already know I’m losing it.

My relationship with alcohol has completely unraveled. I live in a perpetual fog, waking in the morning hungover, promising myself today will be different.

Then evening comes. And I pour another drink.

I know what I’m doing isn’t healthy.

I know it’s destroying me.

I know this.
I know this.
I know this.

“I’ll have a glass of the house red, please.” I say to the waitress when she comes back to the table.

The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.

I know I have a problem. Still, I keep drinking. That’s the part people don’t understand.

Once we pay the bill, I stand to put on my jacket. The room sways beneath me.

We head to a bar a few blocks away. More drinks. Maybe a shot.

I can’t remember.

The night comes in flashes.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Bright lights. Music. Someone laughing.

My friend helping me into a car.

I think.

It’s happening again.

Lights.

Camera.

Action.

The disappearing act I’m so good at.

I’m here.

And then I’m gone.

Showtime.

Present Day

Life is a series of choices.

Left or right.
Yes or no.
Take the job.
Leave the job.

Keep destroying my life with alcohol.

Or finally surrender.

When I woke the next morning after that night with my friends, my legs were covered in bruises. My wallet was gone. My pants were ripped.

But what hurt the most wasn’t anything I could see.

My dignity had disappeared somewhere during the blackout.

A short time after that night, on April 27, 2024, I poured my last bottle of red wine down the drain and I never looked back.

When I first quit drinking, I was terrified. Alcohol had become my solution for everything. Celebration. Stress. Loneliness. Boredom. Joy. Grief. I didn’t actually want to stop drinking.

I wanted to stop destroying my life.

In those final months, I blacked out more often than I’d ever admit out loud. I wasn’t eating enough. I was drinking far too much. It was a recipe for disaster, and I knew it.

When I quit, I counted every single day.

Five days sober.

Nine days.

Fourteen.

Nineteen.

Twenty-two.

Time crawled as if I was sitting in the DMV.

Every sober day felt impossibly long. I wanted someone to push an easy button and make everything better. But here’s the thing - recovery doesn’t work that way.

I had to learn how to sit with discomfort instead of running from it. I had to retrain my brain to live without the one thing I thought I needed.

Around thirty days, something shifted. The fog began to lift. Thirty days became sixty. Sixty became ninety. And somewhere around that ninety-day mark, I caught a glimpse of myself again. The version of me that had been buried underneath years of alcohol abuse.

Today, I’ve been sober from alcohol for 807 days.

I don’t stare at my day counter the way I used to. Somewhere along the way, I stopped counting days and started collecting something far more meaningful.

Peace.
Presence.
Self-respect.
Memories.

I’m more self-aware than I’ve ever been. I pay attention to how my actions affect the people I love. I show up. I keep my promises. I remember conversations. I remember the drive home. I remember the ending.

Life is still a series of choices.

Every morning, I make the same one.

I choose to stay. To remember. To be present.

To build a life I no longer need to escape from.

The lights are still on.

The camera is still rolling.

But the disappearing act is over.

Until the next page,

Katie

“Next, please.”

I make my way to the open register and set my book on the counter.

“Hello,” I say, reaching for my wallet in my purse.

“Oh, I just love corgis,” the cashier says with a wide smile, looking at the cover of the book before scanning the barcode.

“My boyfriend and I are getting a corgi in a month,” I blurt out. I’m willing to talk to just about anyone and everyone who will listen about this puppy.

I grew up with family dogs. They were woven into many facets of my childhood, and I was looking for that same companionship in my adult life. This would be different, though. She would be my first dog. I couldn’t wait.

I pay for my book, and she hands me a small paper bag.

“Good luck with the new puppy.”

When I get home, I place the book on the coffee table.

Pembroke Welsh Corgis: Your Happy, Healthy Pet.

The title of my new read.

The only priorities on my to-do list over the next month are to research corgis, prepare for her arrival, and count down the days, hours, and minutes until we bring her home.

My now-husband and I had just moved in together. What better way to test the waters than to get a dog? It felt like one of those “practice parenting” opportunities.

I had done some research on dog breeds. I knew more about certain breeds than others. We had a good idea of what made sense for us given our living situation and work schedules.

When a friend suggested a corgi, my heart skipped a beat. It was almost as if something inside me signaled that I should dig deeper. After learning more about the breed, I realized corgis met nearly all of our expectations.

Slowly but surely, the pieces were falling into place. We found a local breeder with puppies available within a time frame that felt just right.

We brought home our golden corgi in March of 2013. We named her Meeka.

She was small enough to fit in the palms of my hands. When we set her down in the living room on the first day home, she zoomed around like a squirrel, darting from room to room.

The first few weeks with a puppy in a multi-level condominium were challenging and fun in equal ways.

Her daily routine looked something like this: Sniff. Eat. Play. Sleep. Potty. Eat. Play. Sleep. Chew. Potty. Sleep. Eat. Chew. Sleep. Play. Sleep. Chew. Eat. Potty.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

And the puppy smell. That sweet, familiar scent of an innocent little furry companion.

Before I knew it, her needle-sharp puppy teeth, habit of chewing everything in sight, and frequent accidents were under control. The transition from mischievous puppy to calm, friendly companion felt as though it happened overnight. Lucky for us, Meeka was incredibly intelligent and easy to train. We settled into a routine, and it felt like she’d been there all along.

Meeka had a way of drawing people in with her bubbly spirit, warm energy, and playful nature. She had a confident trot and a beautiful smile.

I understood why Queen Elizabeth II adored corgis. They are every bit as lovable as they are adorable.

Meeka quietly became the center of my world. I felt lucky to have a well-behaved and healthy dog who fit perfectly into our lives. She stood beside us through some of life’s biggest milestones: moving into new homes, welcoming babies, and meeting new people in new places. She was the constant presence in our family.

When we brought our daughter home in 2017, Meeka likely felt the attention shift away from her. That’s only natural when a newborn joins the family.

Still, her company remained steady. She was gentle and patient. I looked to her for comfort during those early postpartum days. She’d sit with me while I stayed home day after day with a newborn, sometimes smiling, sometimes sobbing. She didn’t ask questions or pass judgment. She was simply there, and somehow that was enough.

When we brought home a second screaming child in 2020, I don’t know how thrilled she was this time around. But she found ways to tuck herself beneath a bed upstairs, escaping the earth-shatteringly loud noises coming from two young children.

She remained there. Always there.

The click-clacking of her paws. In the background of family photos. Curled beneath my feet. Cleaning up scraps on the kitchen floor.

She was basically a Roomba disguised as a corgi. It was fantastic. I’d toss her scraps of dog-friendly fruits and vegetables while I prepared meals. Apples, strawberries, and cucumbers were some of her favorites.

As the kids grew older and the years passed, Meeka remained our constant. Once I started working from home more often, she rarely left my side. She’d lie beneath my feet while I worked. When she wanted something, she’d stare at me from across the room before slowly inching closer every few seconds until I finally acknowledged her.

She was my dog. I was her person. It was a special bond.

In her final days, she had significantly slowed down. There were signs her aging had accelerated. Moving and breathing for her became harder.

We made the difficult decision to let her go on a blustery, sunny summer day. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

I would never be ready to say goodbye.

Meeka lived a healthy, happy life. She was loved fiercely. And for everything we gave to her, she gave back tenfold through her unconditional love and steadfast presence.

In her final moments, I kissed her nose lightly. She smelled like a puppy. I’ll never forget that.

I hope it means she’s running around somewhere with the boundless energy of a puppy once again.

I look for her face in the window as I drive away. I look for her sprawled beneath the dining room table. I look for her in her spot near the vent in the bedroom. I look for her when there are pretzel crumbs on the kitchen floor.

I look for her, but she isn’t there. And that makes me sad. A deep sort of sadness that sits in my chest, both heavy and empty at the same time. Quiet, yet filled with a loud, buzzing silence. A constant reminder of what’s missing.

I notice the unfolded laundry sitting in baskets. The dishes lingering in the sink. The groceries running low. Small signs that grief has settled into the corners of my life. I see similarities between grief and early sobriety. The uncertainty. The discomfort. The feeling that you’re simply trying to make it through the next hour.

Old Katie would have used this as an excuse to burn her life down.

She would have driven to the liquor store, walked confidently inside, and filled her cart with bottles of wine. Maybe even a few cases. She would have told the cashier that her dog had just passed away, that she was devastated, and that the wine would help soothe the pain.

Then she would have overshared all of it in an effort to make herself feel better. A way of convincing herself that if she said it out loud—if she told a stranger about her grief—then the binge drinking would somehow be justified.

I know the games she would have played. The way she would have made it all about herself.

She would have tried to escape the reality that her dog had died. She would have done anything to silence the ache. For a few hours, it would have worked. Then the alcohol would wear off, and the grief would come rushing back even stronger than before. A tidal wave of sadness, anxiety, and self-loathing.

I would have drowned Meeka’s memory in alcohol.

Instead, I’m sitting with it. Feeling the emotions. Remembering the sound of her nails on the hardwood. Her familiar smell. Her sweet face. Her loyalty. The way she followed me everywhere.

I miss her. And it hurts.

But today, I’m grieving her with a clear mind. Somehow, that feels like the greatest act of love. To sit in the sadness. To remember with teary eyes. To let it wash over me.

And to let it pass. Without alcohol. Without numbing.

Being sober means so much more to me than simply not drinking.

Yes, it’s incredibly important that I stay away from alcohol because I cannot stop at just one drink. I will not drink today. That is my choice.

Beneath that choice, though, is a woman who doesn’t like facing painful realities, like losing a dog she loves so deeply.

Sobriety has taught me to sit with uncomfortable emotions. To understand why I’m feeling a certain way instead of numbing. Instead of avoiding. Instead of running.

I’m using many of the same tools that carried me through early sobriety to help me navigate grief: walking for at least thirty minutes a day, keeping my living spaces tidy, and making simple to-do lists that keep me moving forward.

Moving through the grief of losing my dog has been incredibly difficult. This heartache exists because Meeka filled my life with purpose, love and companionship. I am lucky to have had her.

In an effort to keep her memory alive, I choose to look for signs of her.

We were out for a family bike ride this weekend when my daughter noticed a white butterfly fluttering ahead of us along the gravel path.

“Look! A butterfly!”

“Maybe it’s Meeka,” I say quietly.

“What? Meeka?” she looks over at me with a perplexed stare.

I laugh and say, “I like to look for signs of Meeka. I imagine she’s saying hello through a rainbow, a cardinal, or even a butterfly. It helps me feel like she’s still here with me.”

“I like that,” she says through a small smile.

A few miles later, we reached our destination. We parked our bikes, rested our helmets on the handlebars, and walked toward the entrance.

My daughter ran up beside me, and our sweaty palms collide.

“Mom, I saw two butterflies a little ways back. I think it was Jasper and Riley saying hello.”

Behind my sunglasses, my vision blurs with tears. Those were the names of my parents’ late dogs.

“I’m going to start looking for more signs,” she said. “I’ll look with you.”

She squeezed my hand before running off to catch up with her brother.

We’ll keep looking for Meeka in all sorts of ways.

We’ll still expect her to come around the corner when we walk through the front door. We’ll still glance toward the kitchen to make sure she isn’t stealing food from plates within reach. We’ll still wonder why no one is barking when someone knocks.

I’ll look for her in my dreams. Always.

I’ll look for her on the Rainbow Bridge when the time comes.

And for today, I’ll look for her in butterflies.

In Loving Memory of Meeka

2013 ~ 2026

Until the next page,

Katie

And there are others I have no recollection of. No memory whatsoever. Wiped clean from the slate all by my own doing. Somewhere along the way, binge drinking and blacking out became normal for me. Not every night. Not all the time. But often enough that I should have been concerned.

I used to think alcohol was the villain in my story. Stealing my nights, my memories, and pieces of my life I could never get back.

The truth is more complicated than that. Alcohol didn’t pour itself into my glass. It didn’t order the shots. It didn’t hide itself around the house during the darkest parts of my addiction.

I did those things.

I was the one filling my glass to the brim and drinking it at an alarming pace. I was the one saying yes to another round. I was the one convincing myself that none of it was a problem.

Give me a reason to binge drink, and I’d gladly participate.

Especially weddings. Like the one I (almost fully) attended in the summer of 2022.

After pregaming the wedding—because of course you pregame a wedding—we arrived around three o’clock for the ceremony. Once the vows were over, cocktails started flowing freely before dinner. I told myself it was fine because everyone else was doing it.

I told myself a lot of things.

While eating dinner, I continued drinking wine, but my memory becomes fragmented after we finished the meal. I was eventually cut off at the bar, and my husband had to take me home early. At some point, I fell into a bush before stumbling onto our ride home.

It was not classy. It was not funny. It was not normal.

I passed out for the entire ride back to where we were staying. While everyone else danced, laughed, and celebrated, my husband sat beside a sedated wedding date who had become a source of embarrassment rather than a partner.

The physical evidence of my wreckage welcomed me when I opened my eyes the next morning. My stilettos were ruined. The bottom of my dress was ripped. The contents of my purse were strewn across the floor. Bruises covered my legs. Every muscle in my body ached.

The emotional evidence hurt far more.

The silence and disappointment from my husband during the four-hour drive home.

The concerning questions from friends via text.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Do you remember what happened last night?”

“How much did you have to drink?”

Each one felt like another painful reminder of who I had become.

Looking back, I can see what I couldn’t see then. I wasn’t drinking because I was having fun. Not really. I was deeply unhappy and carrying painful memories I didn’t know how to put down. I was stressed, anxious, and exhausted. Alcohol quieted the noise in my head for a few hours and convinced me that was relief. It wasn’t.

I was also mixing alcohol with antidepressants, which only increased the likelihood that another blackout was waiting for me around the corner.

Again and again, I chased alcohol into the darkness. Again and again, I disappeared there. What I know now is that this was my way of coping with life. A dangerous and reckless way, but coping, nonetheless.

If you’re reading this and any of it feels familiar, I see you. I see you in the justifications. In the promises that it won’t happen again. In the humiliation that follows another blackout. I see you because I lived it.

I built a home for myself in the dark because I thought it was what I deserved. What I didn’t know then was that there was a path out of this darkness. A path back to myself. A path back to a life that felt more manageable.

For a long time, knowing I had willingly erased parts of my own life filled me with shame. I’ve learned to forgive myself for that wedding in 2022, though there were many nights like it.

I am fortunate that nothing irreversible happened. Not everyone gets that outcome.

The blackouts remain a scar I carry, a reminder of the damage I caused and the pain I was trying so desperately to avoid. I still cringe when I think about those nights. I still wince when I write about them. But I am no longer tethered to that version of myself. That version belongs to another chapter now.

I found my light. That doesn’t mean I never stumble into darkness anymore. I still struggle with anxiety. I still have difficult days. I still encounter emotions I’d rather avoid. The difference is that I no longer try to escape them. I acknowledge them. I name them. I remind myself that they are temporary.

And if you’re reading this while searching desperately for your own light, I want you to know something.

You are the light.

You are the person who can bring yourself back. No one can walk that path for you. And when you decide to remove whatever is blocking your way, you’ll discover that the light was inside you all along.

I see you.

I believe in you.

I’ll meet you in the light.

Until the next page,

Katie

The Monster waits in the corner, hiding in the shadows.

I take a sip of cabernet, and the Monster is free. Free to roam the small space it occupies.

I take another drink, and the Monster creeps closer. Lurking. It wants to see my face. It wants to study me.

I finish my first glass, and the Monster takes a seat beside me.

Waiting. Watching. Willing me to drink more.

I refill my glass.

Warmth spreads through my body. Relief washes over me. The busy thoughts quiet. My shoulders loosen.

Halfway through my second glass, the Monster drapes an arm around me.

It feels comforting. The Monster understands me.

The Monster sees me.

Alone. Hopeless. Deflated.

Maybe it’s here to help, I think.

I finish my second glass of wine. The weight of the world lifts from my shoulders.

I’ll take it from here, says the Monster.

Grateful for the company, I refill my glass.

I drink quickly, and the room begins to blur.

The Monster is standing in front of me now.

Isn’t this what you wanted?

I don’t know what I want. I’m lost.

But the Monster knows the way.

Back to the bottle. Back to relief.

I finish the first bottle, and the room spins.

Something shifts.

The Monster’s hands are around my neck.

Keep going, it bellows.

I know I should stop. I’ve had enough.

My blinking slows. My heartbeat pounds in my ears.

I open another bottle. I pour another glass.

Good job.

The Monster loosens its grip.

For a moment, I mistake that for freedom.

The second bottle disappears. So do I.

The Monster is the only one left. My only company.

As I drift away, it returns to its corner across the room. Arms crossed. Head nodding.

Watching. Waiting. Patient.

Because it knows I’ll wake up tomorrow believing it was never there.

And that’s the Monster’s favorite trick.

To convince me that it isn’t the thing hurting me.

To convince me that it’s the thing helping.

By morning, the Monster is gone.

Ready to return the moment I invite it back.

Until the next page,

Katie

Day 1

Saturday
April 27, 2024

My body jolts awake in the darkness.

My legs are restless, unable to stop moving. The stale taste in my mouth is a good indication that I didn’t brush my teeth before passing out.

I reach for my phone and tap the screen. The light shines in my face like a spotlight, and I squint.

3:06 a.m.

My usual wake-up time after a night of binge drinking.

My heart pounds as anxious thoughts begin spiraling through my head. I stand, and a wave of lightheadedness washes over me. Tiptoeing to the bathroom, I can already feel the nausea creeping in.

As I flip on the light, I glance in the mirror. A ghostly face stares back.

My red-rimmed eyes are hollow. Specks of slept-in mascara cling to my lashes while a faint shimmer still lingers across my eyelids. Dehydration has inflated my pale face, leaving it swollen and tired. My crimson lips remain stained with traces of overindulgence.

I hate that I’ve done this again. Dread settles heavily in my chest.

You’re worthless, Katie.

The thought arrives automatically, as familiar as the woman staring back at me.

After using the bathroom, I quietly climb back into bed, knowing sleep won’t come easily. My mind is too crowded. Thoughts crash into one another like bumper cars.

Why do I keep doing this to myself?

Did I get into an argument with my husband last night?

How much did I drink?

How am I going to get through today?

After tossing and turning for what feels like forever, I finally drift back to sleep around 5 a.m.

A short while later, I’m awakened by a little face beside my bed.

“I’ll be right downstairs,” I tell my daughter.

She runs out of the room, leaving me alone in my self-loathing silence.

I stare at the ceiling, mentally walking through the day ahead. The soccer game. The errands. The family time I’m supposed to enjoy.

When I finally make my way downstairs, my kids are already playing in the living room. The sun feels especially bright this morning. The curtains sway as breeze drifts through the open window.

Birds sing outside, and I wish I could match their joy.

Instead, a dull throb pulses behind my eyes.

My husband sits at the kitchen counter, sipping his coffee.

“How are you feeling this morning?” he asks. The sarcasm isn’t lost on me.

“I’m fine. Just tired,” I lie through my teeth.

He rolls his eyes and sighs.

“I’m going to shower. We need to leave in the next hour.” As he walks toward the stairs, I feel the disappointment in his avoidance, the exhaustion in his voice, the weariness of loving someone whose drinking has become a serious problem.

The kitchen wears the evidence of the night before. A glass sits abandoned on the counter. A half-empty bottle of wine waits exactly where I left it beside the sink.

Taunting me.

I walk over to the sink and pick it up by the neck, bringing the opening to my nose. The familiar aroma envelops my senses. For a brief moment, I imagine the warmth spreading through my body.

The temporary relief.

The quieting of my mind.

I almost take a sip.

I pour the remainder down the drain. The dark red liquid swirls through the basin before disappearing. I stand there longer than necessary, staring.

I know what I need to do next.

I’ve known it all along.

The disappointment and shame are palpable. My relationship with alcohol feels like a tornado ripping through my life, destroying everything in its path.

Would I be able to rebuild after all this damage?

A knot forms in my stomach.

I have to start making real changes. I have to take accountability for my actions.

My eyes fill with tears.

I’m shackled to my obsession with alcohol.

I don’t know if I can stop.

But I have to try again.

Day 728

Saturday
April 25, 2026

The wind howls outside as rain cascades down the window. Another cold spring day. The trees have started to bloom. Their branches are dotted with small bursts of green. A sure sign of warmer days ahead.

I wake on this cloudy morning feeling a little groggy, but there’s no headache. No nausea. No spiraling anxious thoughts waiting to ambush me before sunrise.

It’s been almost two years since I’ve experienced a hangover.

Life looks different today.

The somber woman who woke up at 3:06 a.m. on day one would hardly recognize this version of herself.

Today, I trust myself.

Today, I wake up remembering the night before.

Today, my children get the best of me instead of what’s left of me.

The hamster wheel of addiction that once consumed me has finally stopped spinning. The siren song of alcohol no longer rings in my ears. I no longer see it as an escape hatch from my life.

My day one looked pretty boring. Pretty mundane. Pretty normal.

There was no dramatic rock bottom. No life-altering catastrophe. Only a defeated woman standing in her kitchen, reluctantly pouring the remainder of a bottle of red wine down the drain.

But defining moments rarely announce themselves when they’re happening. Sometimes they look quite ordinary.

The choice I made that day changed the trajectory of my future. It gave me the chance to rebuild what alcohol had nearly destroyed.

My marriage.

My confidence.

My peace of mind.

My relationship with myself.

Had I not made that decision on that bright Saturday morning, I’m not sure where I’d be today.

What I do know is this:

I was stronger than I believed. I was capable of change. I was able to heal.

A new life was waiting for me on the other side of the hardest decision I’d ever made.

And finally, after all this time,

I am free.

Until the next page,

Katie

Said screw it, what’s the use?

This whole thing might just be a waste of time.

No, I didn’t relapse on alcohol.

I’m talking about writing.

I started writing after my daughter was born in 2017. My children became my muse. I loved the way an ordinary moment could transform into something meaningful once it hit the page. A tiny memory suddenly carried weight. I wanted to preserve these fleeting moments with my babies before time swept them away. Writing allowed me to capture a moment in time and stitch it together with words. Something I could keep forever.

Back then, I’d usually feel confident enough to post my writing after a few glasses of wine. Alcohol gave me borrowed courage. Temporary bravery.

The next morning, I’d reread my words and cringe. Sometimes I’d delete everything entirely. I never truly gave myself a chance because I was too insecure, too tangled in the fog of my drinking habits to trust my own voice.

When I quit drinking in 2024, I clung to stories like a life raft. I listened to audiobooks about addiction, recovery, relapse, and redemption. I consumed memoirs written by people who had walked through the same fire I was standing in. Strangers who somehow understood the chaos inside my mind better than I understood it myself.

Their stories made me feel less alone. More importantly, they helped me stay sober. They gave me hope that maybe life without alcohol wasn’t a punishment, but a return to myself.

Annie Grace, in This Naked Mind, taught me that alcohol was a socially acceptable coping mechanism cloaked in glamour. She made me realize I wasn’t weak for becoming addicted to an addictive substance. She explained the “why” behind addiction through science, psychology, and the impact alcohol has on the brain and body. For the first time, I stopped viewing myself as broken and started viewing alcohol differently.

Laura McKowen, in We Are the Luckiest, taught me that my alcoholism was not my fault, but it was my responsibility. Her writing was raw, honest, and deeply human. I saw pieces of myself woven into her stories. I didn’t yet see myself in her recovery, but I desperately wanted to get there. Her words made sobriety feel possible.

Holly Whitaker, in Quit Like a Woman, taught me to question everything our culture normalizes about drinking. She wrote about the way women are conditioned to shrink themselves, apologize constantly, and disconnect from their instincts. She exposed how heavily alcohol is marketed to women as empowerment, relief, celebration, motherhood, survival. Her work forced me to confront how much I had romanticized the very thing that was quietly destroying me.

Somewhere along the way, writing became part of my recovery, too.

It became a place to empty out the thoughts that used to drown me. A place to sort through the wreckage my drinking left behind. A place to finally say the things I spent years hiding behind wine glasses, fake smiles, and “I’m fine.”

There are still days when I question all of it. Days when the self-doubt is louder than an airhorn. When the negative self-talk creeps back in like it did during my earliest days of sobriety.

Does anyone actually care to read this?

Am I healing myself, or reopening old wounds?

Is writing helping me move forward, or keeping me chained to a painful version of myself I should leave behind?

Maybe it would be easier to stop writing altogether. To move on and pretend none of it ever happened. But writing honestly requires the same perseverance sobriety requires.

You show up anyway.

Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when no one is clapping. Even when your voice shakes.

There is something incredibly vulnerable about putting pain onto paper, especially after spending years trying to conceal it. That’s why I almost gave up today. Because honesty cracks you open in ways alcohol never allowed.

Still, deep down, I know this writing matters.

Because someone else’s story once saved me.

The stories I consumed in early sobriety changed my life. They carried me through nights when I wanted to give up. They reminded me that recovery was possible even when I couldn’t yet imagine it for myself.

And maybe that’s how this works.

One person tells the truth.

Another person feels less alone because of it.

This is my way of paying it forward.

So, I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep putting these thoughts onto paper one way or another. And if I’m lucky enough to grow old someday, I think I’ll look back at these pages fondly.

Proof that I was here.

Evidence that I fought for myself.

Confirmation that I didn’t give up.

At least not today.

Until the next page,

Katie

I didn’t plan to stay as long as I did.

I didn’t plan to enjoy getting drunk. I didn’t know it would unleash something inside of me that would demand more. A monster surviving off the deceptive, empty promises of alcohol.

I didn’t plan to disappear into blackouts during important parts of my life. To become a shell of a person who could no longer trust herself because she was quietly losing control to a substance. A woman who no longer recognized herself when she looked in the mirror.

I didn’t plan to damage friendships or break trust with the people I loved most. It was never my intention to become an embarrassment to others, or to myself. A friend who wasn’t reliable. Someone people worried about or had to take care of. Someone whose drinking habits slowly became impossible to ignore.

I didn’t plan to lie about my drinking and hide alcohol in discreet spots around the house. My brain was sick. Alcohol had seeped into every crevice of my mind. It was hard to stop. Hard to confront the monster inside of me that dressed itself like an angel but was really evil hiding in plain sight.

No, I did not plan any of this.

I didn’t plan to stay trapped in active alcohol addiction for as long as I did.

But you know what I did plan?

To say no to a drink 3 days into sobriety, even though every cell in my body screamed for it.

To drive away from the liquor store on day 34 of sobriety, after I sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes debating my life.

To put the bottle of vodka back on day 85 of sobriety after nearly taking a sip.

I plan to become a better parent. To become a better partner. To become a better version of myself. Not a flawless version. An evolving one. A version that still requires maintenance.

I didn’t plan to become an alcoholic, but I also didn’t magically become one overnight. A series of choices and decisions I made supported that outcome. It didn’t happen out of thin air.

And I take full accountability for those choices. At the end of the day, they were mine. I will not run from that truth. I will not sit in that denial anymore.

When I realized I had to quit drinking — truly quit, for good this time — I decided to make a new plan and set it into motion.

And this plan relies on one thing to be successful: to stop derailing my life by being selfish with my decisions. To not let the monster back in. The one who lurks silently, waiting to find a way back home to me.

Is it perfect? Hell no.

But it’s sustainable. Healthy. Grounded.

No, I didn’t plan to stay in alcoholism for as long as I did.

I do plan to stay in recovery for a very long time. To keep waking up every day and making the choice not to drink.

I can’t say this plan will last forever. Because nothing lasts forever. And for me, the words sobriety and forever don’t sit comfortably beside each other. It feels too daunting. Too absolute.

Instead, it’s the plan for now. For today. For tomorrow. And the day after that.

It’s one I intend to keep.

Until the next page,

Katie

Five shot glasses line the sticky surface of the bar top. The bartender moves in a steady swoop from left to right, filling each glass in one continuous stream of tequila. Lime wedges are delicately placed onto salt-rimmed glasses before the shots slide toward me one by one.

I wrap my hands around the tiny glasses and pass them out to my friends gathered at the bar.

The smell of sweat, liquor, and bad decisions lingers in the air.

“Why do we always order these?” my friend jokes.

We stand in a tight circle near the bar, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder by strangers doing the exact same thing we are. I lick the back of my hand while my friend pours salt onto my skin.

Lime wedge in one hand. Shot glass in the other.

“Cheers!” we yell in unison.

I lick the salt, throw the liquid fire down my throat, and immediately wince at the burn. Before I’ve even swallowed completely, I’m already sucking frantically on the lime wedge, desperate to erase the taste as quickly as possible.

“See you tomorrow,” my friend laughs, nudging my arm.

At twenty-two years old, that’s how we joked about our drinking habits. We anticipated the black out. Planned to lose pieces of the night and reconstruct them the next morning like detectives working a case.

We were young, wild, and free.

And I was usually the friend who blacked out first.

“Katie, do you remember anything from last night?” my friends would say through laughter.

Looking back now, it’s alarming.

I was the reckless friend who was most likely to get the drunkest first. And I’d secretly feel incredibly embarrassed and shameful. I hated myself for it. But I smiled, too.

It wasn’t normal.

In the midst of my drinking, I was building habits and patterns that were creating the framework for my life. Brick by brick, I was constructing a home for myself that was built with alcoholic tendencies. I couldn’t see those details yet. This was only the beginning.

When I entered the corporate world fresh out of college, I found myself surrounded by twenty and thirty-somethings who were networking and child-free. I went to happy hours, office parties, and team celebrations, all accompanied with alcohol.

The tequila shots were traded for red wine. More polished. More sophisticated.

At least that’s what I told myself.

I pretended I liked wine for the flavor, the notes, the dryness, the pairing, as if I was some wannabe Sommelier. Really, I liked it because it got me drunk while looking acceptable.

I’d drink wine at a fast pace. Instead of enjoying it, I was chugging it. True classiness. I’d always need one more glass, one more before leaving the bar, one more before going to bed. My off switch was nonexistent. Like a fire hydrant exploding on the side of the street.

I was starting to count my drinks in more of an obsessive way. I was drinking alone more often.

Patterns.

Habits.

The building blocks were multiplying.

I married at twenty-eight.

The problematic drinking patterns were still present. My husband’s concern grew, as it had been for years prior.

You have to learn your limits, he’d say to me.

What limits? I’d think. I don’t have a problem.

It won’t happen again, I’d respond offensively, after yet another blackout.

I then started to create rules for myself. No more than 3 glasses of wine. Only beer at the bar. No hard liquor. Only drink on the weekends.

The rules blurred, a lot like my life through the dazed glasses I was always wearing with alcohol in the mix.

It took up so much space in my mind to think about these rules. To make promises that I would cut back or slow down.

The walls I was building grew ominously taller, at a faster pace.

When I found out I was pregnant with my first child in 2017, part of me was relieved that I didn’t need to think about alcohol for a while. I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol during the pregnancy, even though I’d have people tell me that I could just have a little.

I knew if I had even a sip, it would be game over.

The pregnancy was a nice break for me. It gave me a lot of clarity, and peace.

When my daughter was born, I focused solely on her and her needs. I was busy with a newborn. I was tired. It was hard, but I loved it.

Still, I found a way to weave alcohol back in.

To continue the build.

Alcohol accompanied me in motherhood, settling quietly into the background until I no longer questioned its presence. The trendy slogans plastered on signs and t-shirts gave me an excuse to indulge.

Mommy wine time.

Mommy drinks because you cry.

I drank from coffee mugs that said Coffee First, Wine Later.

At my baby shower for my second child, someone gifted me a tiny onesie that read: I take after Mommy and Daddy. I drink from the bottle.

Everyone laughed.

The message was clear:
This is normal.
This is funny.
This is what being a mom in today’s society looks like.

No one looked twice at a woman constantly reaching for a drink as long as she could still make dinner, show up to work, answer emails, and smile in family photos.

And for a long time, neither did I.

The hypothetical home I’d built collapsed on April 27, 2024. The day I finally realized I could no longer withstand the cracks and creaks that had eroded in this space I had built.

The early days of sobriety were bleak. It felt like I was left with nothing. My home, my comfort, my escape tactic was gone. I was forced to look around at my surroundings with a sober mind and a heavy heart. The debris that lay around still needed to be picked up. I needed to clean up the mess I’d made.

The framework of my life had revolved around alcohol for as long as I could remember. I was thirty-five years old, and it felt like I was starting over.

How was I supposed to rebuild?

Where would I start?

And over two years into life without alcohol, I’m still patching holes, painting walls, decorating rooms to make them feel like me again.

I didn’t really know who I was when I stopped drinking. My identity had been stripped from a substance.

The walls I built, the lies I told myself, the patterns I ignored. They all formed a barrier between me and the rest of my world.

I’m still learning who I am without the escape. But I do more things for me now. I listen to my body. I sit in uncomfortable emotions instead of numbing them. I set boundaries and say no more often. I embrace who I am, instead of run from it.

I’ll always be a work in progress. At least now I know I’m rebuilding with a stronger foundation.

Until the next page,

Katie

I see you standing there. Alone. Uncertain. Reluctant.

What are you waiting for?

No one is coming to save you. No one is coming to knock on your door and hand you a new life. No one is going to map out the exact route for you, highlighting every direction with reassurance that you won’t get lost.

You have to choose it.

Not all at once. Not perfectly.

Just the next step.

One foot in front of the other.
Then another.
Then another.

Some days, the weight of it will feel unbearable. Your bones will ache from carrying yourself through cravings. The voice in your head will shout at you, demanding that you give up and drink. You’ll wonder how something that once felt like relief became the very thing hollowing you out from the inside.

Alcohol keeps promising comfort while quietly robbing you blind.

It takes your mornings. Your presence. Your memories. Your peace.

And the cruelest part is that, for a while, it convinces you that you need it to survive. But alcohol was never the real problem. It was the solution.

It was anesthesia. A method of survival. The temporary shelter you built around wounds you didn’t know how to face sober.

It numbed the loneliness. Muted the anxiety. Softened the sharp edges of reality for a few fleeting hours.

Wounds cannot heal in the dark. They need air, and attention, and honesty.

And so do you.

You are not weak for struggling this deeply. You are exhausted from carrying pain in silence for too long.

Most days, healing looks ordinary. It looks like sitting with yourself without reaching for the bottle. Driving home and not stopping at the liquor store. Learning how to survive your own mind without sedating it.

That is courage, even if nobody sees it.

And then, there are the beautiful breakthroughs that happen once you’ve committed to sobriety.

The fog lifts just enough for you to notice precious moments. The way coffee tastes in the morning. The echoes of your children giggling in another room. The pride you carry for making it through one more day.

The peace that finally arrives will welcome you as if it’s been waiting for you all along.

Bask in those moments. They are proof that you are coming back to life.

But, no one else can do this for you.

People can love you. Hold your hand. Cheer you on. Forgive you. But they cannot climb inside your body and choose differently on your behalf.

At some point, you must stop waiting for rock bottom to scare you enough.

Stop waiting for the perfect time. Stop waiting to feel ready. You are already hurting.

The real question is this: do you want your addiction to keep destroying you, or do you want it to transform you?

The only one coming to save you is… you.

So, what are you waiting for?

Until the next page,

Katie

Dear Katie,

It’s me. Or… you, from the future. Today’s date is 5/20/2026.

I’m writing this letter to you on your seventh day of sobriety.

The date is 5/4/2024.

I know you’re in pain. I know you think you can’t do this.

I know you’re ready to give up. To reach for the whiskey in the oak kitchen cabinet, where you’ve been sneaking alcohol for the last few months. To take a sip and feel it wrap around your body like a warm blanket.

But that feeling is temporary.

The shame that follows won’t be.

Please don’t.

If you give up now, you won’t get to meet me here.

Let me tell you what you don’t know yet.

You are strong. Stronger than you realize. I know you feel like you’ve failed a hundred times already. You feel like you’ve let your family down. You’ve broken promise after promise after promise. The trust between you and yourself is fractured. The trust with others is, too.

Rebuilding it will take time.

It will be uncomfortable.

But you can do hard things.

You’ve been at war with yourself for far too long. It’s time to surrender. Time to wave the white flag. You already know your drinking has gotten out of control. Deep down, you’ve known for a while.

The next several months are going to be difficult. Your brain is recalibrating. Right now, it craves the dopamine rush alcohol gave you because it doesn’t know anything different yet. You’re going to have to teach yourself how to cope in other ways.

Walk every day. Even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it. Get outside. Move your body. Let fresh air hit your skin.

You’ll listen to audiobooks about addiction and recovery. You’ll start with This Naked Mind by Annie Grace. It’s going to change your life.

Then you’ll listen to We Are The Luckiest by Laura McKowen. It’s raw, honest, and beautiful. You’re going to see pieces of yourself in her words.

Cry when you need to cry. Let yourself feel uncomfortable emotions instead of numbing them. Sit with them. Acknowledge them. Let them pass through you.

Because they will pass.

You just have to stop running from them.

You’re going to start looking at your kids differently. Really looking at them. Studying their faces. Memorizing their expressions. Writing down the funny things they say. You’re going to become present in your own life again.

And one day, they’re going to thank you for that.

Around ninety days sober, something shifts. A sense of relief washes over you. For the first time in a long time, you begin to feel like yourself again without a substance dictating your every move.

Your mind quiets down.

Your nervous system settles.

Your mental health improves in ways you can’t even imagine yet.

You’re going to celebrate birthdays, enjoy the holidays, take vacations, sit around bonfires — all without alcohol. And eventually, it won’t feel strange anymore. You’ll realize you never needed alcohol to soften life in the first place.

You’ll work on repairing your relationship with your husband.

And you’ll start writing.

You’ll discover healing in the words you pull from your mind and place onto paper.

You won’t have hangovers anymore.

I need you to really hear that part.

No more waking up sick with anxiety. No more piecing together the night before. No more headaches, nausea, guilt, dread, or shame over something entirely self-inflicted.

You’ll finally be able to show up for your family. Your friends. Your coworkers. Your neighbors.

You’ll start to settle into the normalness of sobriety.

And surprisingly, you’ll love it.

You’ll sit in the quiet. In the loneliness. In the memories. And instead of trying to escape them, you’ll learn how to live alongside them.

You’re going to start remembering your life again.

No more blackouts.

You’re going to trust yourself again.

And one day, you’re going to look in the mirror and genuinely love the woman staring back at you.

Will every day be easy?

Absolutely not.

Even now, you’re still learning. Still growing.

And if one day you relapse, I won’t hate you for it. Recovery is rarely linear. You have to learn how to give yourself grace.

You started this Substack account to document your sobriety and your writing. You hope your words reach the people who need them most. Maybe they’ll help even one person feel less alone.

Remember how Annie Grace and Laura McKowen made you feel seen?

That’s your dream, too.

To tell your story honestly.

To help someone else survive theirs.

I’m proud of you.

I love you.

I’ll see you on the other side.

Until the next page,

Katie