4 Years Sober!

I arrived into my 4th year of sobriety! There was once a time when I could never have imagined that to be possible.

I clawed my way through one day, one week, 30 days, 60, 90–all those fragile but miraculous milestones, fearing the power of this disease every step of the way.

And I still feel the fear, but there is less terror associated with it and more respect, even reverence. Once I pushed through the thirst, the anxiety, the shaking–that pounding heart filled with darkness and confusion, the other side was…normal.

Boring old, blissful normal. Something I have taken for granted my entire life. The pleasure of just being your still, ordinary, wide-eyed self.

I don’t need alcohol to get through or unwind or even celebrate. I need to feel all my aches and pains, my regrets, my simple pleasures, my tiny little life alone with a bunch of cats. And I love this girl that I am. I do. She is pretty simple and unspectacular in many ways but some nights, thanks to my sobriety, I get to softly search her and it’s a galaxy in there.

1, 471 days sober today.

Fuck the Zero.

Love,

Sobriety Poet