"Are you sure you're an alcoholic?"

   "Are you sure you're an alcoholic?"
   I was recently asked this question after mentioning to an acquaintance that I was approaching my 32-year anniversary of sobriety.
   My first response? I laughed. After a moment, I asked, "Was that a serious question?" Turned out, it was.
   When I am surprised by someone's question, or someone's response, I typically swallow my first reaction, my emotional one. It's an almost unconscious response, and is probably a fear-based defense mechanism left over from my past. My first reaction simmers in my unconscious, then bubbles to the surface a few days later, and I assemble the words I wish I'd said.
   So on that day all I said was yes, I am certain that I am an alcoholic. I explained that I had had an immediate, visceral response to alcohol the first time I caught that liberating, loosening feeling of a light buzz. I explained that I always drank to get drunk, and that even when getting drunk stopped equaling a good time and became a series of frightening incidents of self-destruction, I was unable to stop. And if my own experience wasn't evidence enough, I had been evaluated by an addictions counselor.
   I wish I had spoken more strongly. I wish I had asked, "Are you asking me that because you don't believe I would be capable of staying sober if I were truly addicted?" I wish I had asked, "Why do you think you have the right to question my own self-knowledge?" I know who I am. I know what I am. And I know how I got here.
   I drank heavily - alcoholically - for four years. I experienced my first blackout the second time I drank. By the time I attended my first 12 Step meeting, two months before my 22nd birthday, I had humiliated myself in several local bars, experienced countless blackouts, missed I don't know how many hours of college classes because I'd start drinking at lunch and lose the rest of the day, acted out sexually in a manner my sober self would never be capable or desirous of, and was battling suicidal impulses every time I got drunk.
   Those were the drinking years.
   Sobriety has not eliminated the impulse to drink. I have teetered at the edge of relapse several times in the past 32 years. It's a horrible feeling, desperately wanting - needing - to drink, and knowing that doing so will tear your rebuilt life to shreds. What kept me sober in those tormenting moments was my 12 Step practices, music that soothed and buoyed me, my supportive circle of recovering women, and my spiritual life. When those thoughts flit through my mind, which they rarely have in recent years, I am able to brush them aside with an ease achieved only by rigorous practice of my recovery principles.
   Am I sure I'm an alcoholic? Despite all evidence, I have actually asked that question of myself. An insidious voice in my head will whisper, "Come on, you were just a kid out partying! You're an adult now. Maybe you can have a beer or two..."
   I can definitely have a beer or two. The problem is, there will be a third. And a fourth. And so on, until my money is gone and I am a laughing, weeping, vomiting, intoxicated embarrassment. It has always been so and will always be. I cannot separate drinking from drunk. Imagining myself having being satisfied with a social drink or two is like trying to imagine myself leaping from the roof of my house and taking flight. Drinking is not something to do; drinking is the passageway to drunk.
   My sober life today is bigger than anything I could have imagined 32 years ago when I was a timid, desperate newcomer. Alcohol would have killed me; admitting to alcoholism saved my life.
   Am I sure I'm an alcoholic? Dead sure. And grateful beyond measure.
 

Sober? Check. Mom? Check. Single? Well...

The title of my blog has not been completely accurate for over a year now. I am still (gratefully) sober, still (delightedly) a mom. But I am (surprisingly!) no longer single.
Almost a year and a half ago I made a life-changing acquaintance with a remarkably special man. If I had a list of all the qualities I'd want in a man, he would generate a check mark after every single one. Intelligent, kind, patient, good sense of humor, bookworm. Check, check and check. It is my blessed good fortune that I make all the checks on his list, too.
After a series of brief conversations in public we progressed to exchanging emails, then graduated to Facebook chats. After a couple of cautious months we scheduled our first private face to face meeting at a quiet local restaurant.
We didn't follow the first-date rule of presenting carefully edited histories to each other. Instead, we poured our insides out, laying bare relationship histories, drinking and recovery stories, parenting joys and sorrows, what we loved (animals, books), and what we loathed (right-wing politics and all things Kardashian).
Our conversation extended from mid-afternoon coffee into dinner, concluding only when the restaurant closed at 8 p.m. We parted with a warm handshake and a promise to get together again in the near future.
I hurried to my car, shaking from head to foot - in part due to the sharp, frosty January air, but more because something had just happened to me that I hadn't experienced in a long, long time.
When I got home I stumbled through the kitchen door and froze in the middle of the floor, still shaking, ignoring my dogs' eager greeting. Out loud I repeated, "Oh, my God. Oh, my God." Inside me, a voice calmly repeated, "This is a man you could fall in love with."
I envisioned falling in love as a literal fall. I saw myself standing at the edge of a high bridge, looking down into dark, churning water. Was I willing to risk my safe, peaceful life for another plunge into emotional entanglement? The question answered itself almost as quickly as it was asked. Yes, I was willing to risk it. I was willing to dare to fall in love again.
And, in fact, I did - and he he with me.
Falling madly in love with the partner of your dreams doesn't equal happily ever after, as any grown-up knows. Our togetherness has consisted mostly of joy, laughter, understanding, passion, and the deep appreciation that comes with finding "the one" later in life, when you've learned what matters (honesty, respect) and what doesn't (dirty socks on the floor, hogging the bathroom). But there have been some rocky, tearful interludes, when our present lives collide with past hurts and expectations. What matters, though, isn't that we fight; what matters is we always make up, apologize, and work hard at resolving whatever issue is at hand.
I've had to do a lot of changing to keep this relationship alive; so has he. For my part, I've had to confront the ghosts of a past relationship, acknowledge that these ghosts existed, were haunting my new life, and could potentially destroy it. It was scary work that sent me to a therapist's office. After one excruciating argument, when I was beginning to doubt the relationship was salvageable, a close friend of mine gave me a much needed wake-up call.
I'd spilled every detail of my partner's and my most recent ugly fight. I'd been unable to see past his part in it, focusing only on my hurt. Now, I said, I could see with humbling clarity exactly where my old behaviors had exacerbated the fight.
My friend looked me in the eye and said calmly, "You have a choice. Do you want to continue with your old behaviors and lose the relationship, or do you want to change?"
I wanted to change. And change I have. So has he. Because we want to be together badly enough to work at it. We are old enough to understand the value of what we've found together. What we've found together is priceless.
We laugh hard, every single day. We hug. We kiss. We get each other coffee or an extra blanket. We say "please" and "thank you." We have what I like to call cultural exchanges: I have become a Detroit Tigers fan; he has developed a fondness for Cyndi Lauper's songs.
Most wonderfully, we allow for one another. If I come home from work mentally and emotionally fried, he is fine with me taking my dinner plate to the sofa and reading while I eat, my preferred method of unwinding. If he says he is feeling a tad cranky, I leave him to his laptop and keep conversation to a minimum. We can be completely, comfortably, utterly ourselves with one another That is priceless, miraculous, and irreplaceable. And we are, thankfully old enough and wise enough to appreciate that.
Sober? Yes. Mom? Yes, indeed. Single? Happily, blessedly, and surprisingly, the answer is, not any more.