6months

I’ve just passed the 6th month mark on my sober journey. I’m immensely proud. It’s been better than I ever imagined and easier than I ever thought it could be. I want to be this way, I feel at peace here. And by and large I’ve had an easy ride of it in terms of not having social pressures around me. My husband has just rolled over and accepted it with very little acknowledgement; buys me ginger ale and doesn’t seem phased that the woman he married has radically changed.

It was my birthday last week, and my Dad gave me, as usual, a bottle of Prosecco. I panicked and instead of explaining I hurried to the fridge to let it chill for dinner. I then forgot to offer anyone any and ended up giving it to a friend at her wedding reception a few days later. But I don’t know why I haven’t told people.

Well of course I do, it’s because then it’d be real and I’d be accountable and I might have to stick to it longer, or suffer shame if I…’mess up’/’drink’/’relapse’? Whereas this way I remain in control. And the door is left open. And I don’t have to offer anyone an explanation. Or receive the speculations of others. But, I am starting to think about telling a select few. Namely, my old drinking buddies. It’s funny because it’s become brutally apparent that it’s only actually hard to tell those that have a questionable relationship with booze themselves. Telling a girl at work wasn’t tough at al, in fact I felt proud and…even a bit cool! As she often goes weeks or months without booze herself, my abstinence wasn’t of great importance to her.

But it was to my old buddy. Last Saturday was the aforementioned wedding reception. I did wonder about messaging her in advance, to deflect the attention from it, but it was hard, I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t. On the way there she messaged me asking if I was drinking or driving. I said driving (true!) and felt relieved that that was that.

It wasn’t.

She arrived and straight away started on at me, about how awful my husband was for making me drive, questioning it over and over, telling me I was crazy to bring my kids, no fun, where had her real friend gone…etc etc. On and on all evening, every time she saw me, the only conversation was why I wasn’t drinking. She even went through the possibility of pregnancy, ruling it out because I’d be ‘mad’ to have any more. Charming. She was pretty drunk by this point, and spent an unnecessarily long time explaining what she had and hadn’t meant by that but ultimately, I watched my old behaviour in her and I didn’t like it. She wasn’t fun, she was annoying, rude, repetitive. Her conversation was focused only on boozing.

It’s not who I want to be anymore. But I don’t know how to tell her. We’ve been friends since school. Spent our teenage years hammered together at house parties, cuddled up in fits of emotion in bathrooms, lost in night clubs together, wandering aimlessly home from pubs at 2am, crying to each other as our hearts were broken, tallying each other to the bar, sending each other bottles of champagne at life’s achievements and pouring the gin on its disappointments. Best friends. Or enablers? Our whole lives intertwined and bonded with booze. From teens through womanhood and into mothers. How can I leave her this way? How can we carry on with one of us opting out. I don’t think her drinking’s healthy. For alllll the damn drinking we’ve done, neither of us are good with drink in us. How do I tell her I’ve left?how do I say goodby to that life? I don’t think she’ll like me anymore.