Here I am, again, Sunday morning in a coffee shop. Same coffee shop, different city, but they are basically the same. No alarms and no surprises, please. I will take the predictability at this point, the comfort of consistent banality over anything else. For I am drowning and at least this gives me a life preserver to cling to in its simple, if corporate, stability. I know exactly what I will get here, even the variations are known by heart. But I have not come here to complain today. No, quite the opposite. I am here to get myself back on to the solid ground of faith – in tomorrow and the next day and the process. This too, shall pass and the season to bloom will come again. Now the skies are dark and drizzly, and bleak. My head is full, not only with my thoughts but in actuality, with a stuffy head cold that is for sure here to amplify the ridiculousness of everything with a touch of sadistic irony.

I have had moments lately when I realise that I just feel bad. There is no other way to describe it, as in these moments my physical and emotional realms are one, and I just feel bad. So I hunt for dopamine bursts in sugar and chocolate that are never quite enough. I know if I exercise I will feel better and will in turn, do better and in turn, feel even better. But for now I am so tired and just want to take to the bed, a southern saying that is so perfect that I can’t believe I’ve never heard it before this year. Perhaps I had, and just didn’t notice it because it didn’t apply to my life. But I’ve always had times like this, so this must be the first time – take to the bed. Turn off the world, draw the curtains, and let my self be consumed by it all until I am ready to emerge again. For now, I am deep in it, deep in some sort of existential despair that is amplified by a simple head cold and the changing weather. In total, I feel like it could be the end of me. However, in hearing this phrase I feel like I am not alone in this terrible, dark, complex psychic state. It tells me there have been generations of women before me that have needed to, wanted to do the same, and have done it, until they could gather the strength to get up and face the world outside their chamber, again.

Oh how I long for the bed, but it will have to wait. I have one more week of juggling and then I’m taking a break. Perhaps I will take to the bed next week, but most likely I will not. Most likely, this too will have passed, as it always does. But this time, this time I am truly listening to what my body and spirit is telling me, to rest, to stop, to take inventory of how far I’ve come and how far I still must go, to gather the strength and the fortitude, and to map out what steps I will take to get there. The tricky, sticky thing about sobriety is that you are slowly uncovering the reality of the past and figuring out a new future from a new perspective. There are a lot of emotions that come up in this process – regret, sadness, grief, acceptance, anger, sorrow, frustration, – and they don’t come up once and just go away. They come at you like a tank. Indestructible and unstoppable, they roll over you, with all of their wheels bound together to survive any terrain and resistance. After you stand up and think it’s over, more come, relentlessly. The only way to get it to end is to surrender – again and again – and fall down on the earth and let them crush you with their stark, hard-to-fathom reality. Easy to say but harder to do, as with each new realisation is followed by another round of tanks, from opportunities missed, chances not taken, or finally understanding the sad ‘why’ of so many actions and inactions. It is hard not only because of the emotions, the realisations, the ripple effect of all of it but probably mostly because I am not used to dealing with anything sober. The softening effects of cannabis are no longer an option. The champagne buzz when everything feels light and possible is no longer an option. There is no escaping it, no pause from it all. I long for help, for relief, but all I can do is wait, to sleep, to hope that the skies will clear and that the sun will come again.

I realise bit by bit how much is left to still unpack, to face, and my ego only lets in a bit at a time, to protect me from having a total mental breakdown. For that I am grateful, but also I have to continually come to terms with the idea that this is truly a process and that I am in the middle of it. Can I do something to hurry it up? Perhaps. Perhaps if I keep up with the positive actions I can hurry it up. No more social media doom scrolling, no more escapist TV. Better food, better habits. More feeling, less pushing the emotions away. My god, this is exhausting. I am exhausted, and yet I have to get up every day, at least for the kids. They deserve to see my happiness, or at least my attempts at getting there, because doesn’t that count, too? The trying, the grit of just getting up and trying again to create a soft safe place to live in, in this in-between time of having started but having not yet finished, of living in the process. In between heaven and hell is earth, where we are now, living, breathing, and struggling, trying over and over again. I just have to accept that this is all part of the process, and show them, too, that this is part of life. Things will not always be perfect, but we will be together, and we will get through it, together. We will make cosy, reassuring fires and play Clue and bake cakes and watch movies where the good guys always win. When we get scared, we will pull closer still, all sleep in the same room if we need to, to feel that it is us against the world. It is ok, I remind my self, as I read the words as I write them. I can be ok with this in-between time, as well. I can get through it, it is not just them who I am showing, it is my self, too. This is the reward of being sober, at least now I know that the downward pull is temporary. Even if my body does not yet feel this way, my head knows this. This too, is temporary, this hell that I am feeling, and I must just keep going through it. At least now I can recognise it for what it is, a temporary passing state, part of the process. Being aware definitely isn’t easy, for now I feel what I am feeling, and can begin to understand why I feel the way I do, too.

I have these whispering notions in me. They are gentle whispers, for now at least, as they don’t want to blow me right open. What if? What if things had been different, what if I had tried harder, or even tried, to make something of my true self? For now I have realised, and I am aware, that trying by wishing and hoping and thinking about it in my head does not mean that I actually have tried in the real world. Even most recently, I fear bringing the ideas that I have into the real world. I think I have failed to launch – failed without even trying. Failed because I was afraid of failing. What a terrible, unfortunate cliché. Overall, in my life, there has also been the overarching theme of wanting to be noticed, rescued, discovered, saved… Why, oh why is this? I mean, besides the fact that this idea is pervasive in every part of society and culture, besides the fact that I never had a guiding parent in my life, besides the fact that all along I have just been trying to survive life itself, besides the fact that I found it all so incredibly hard to figure out, besides all that, it is a wonder that I survived in tact at all. At home, in her mind at least, my mother was a feminist, but in the context of the real world, she was not. She stayed home with the kids and was somehow under the thumb of my father, a situation that I have unwittingly repeated with my own life, and shown my own daughter. Half the reason I have decided to stay in the marriage is to write a different ending for my own daughter, to show her that this is not the way, this is not the end to my story. I will not burn my bridges just to prove that I am right for there is too much at stake, too many innocent victims. I feel that if I were to walk away now I’d just be creating a-whole-nother mess of me trying to do everything myself to prove that I can, all while breaking up the family home, and for what? Can I even trust my own judgement at this point, in this state that I am in? At least from inside it, still in it, can I try to fix what I have broken. As I crawl out of a hole of my own making to live again above the surface of life, I can show her, and my boys, that this is not, in fact, ok. I am not crazy, not worthless, nor destined to be sad and powerless, no, in fact, I am a whole person and am determined to live my life as one. They must see me grow and blossom, and make amends for the damage that I have caused in my wake of not-knowingness, they must.

This sad story must end with me, the story of the female shacked to her mate, somehow defined by him and making up for his shortcomings, because someone has to do it. No, quite the contrary, I plan to hold me accountable for my self and he for him.

No, I am not here to hold you up, as I have. I am not here to let you live your best life at the expense of mine, no. I am here to live with you, besides you, because I care for you, we are a family, and we are in this together. I am the one who will do the saving now, of my self and my family, and you are lucky to be counted among us. I am not afraid of you going, as I know, even if you don’t, that I can do this on my own, as I have been in great part doing it alone for so very long already. I am no longer waiting to be saved, I will save myself now, and you will save you.

Our children will see two adults, taking care of themselves, and if it turns out that I am in fact, the stronger one, they will see this, too. I know for sure that I cannot leave, not now, and I must continue to finish what I’ve started, with my own happy ending. So these whispers will continue to grow louder, probably until they scream their truth. I tried to run away and leave it all behind, but the whispers will never leave me, this I now know. I must go out into the world. As I get my house in order, I will step out more and more, to satisfy these whispers, finally. For now perhaps, in this season, I will continue to hibernate, to heal, to calm my nervous system and heal my family. This is enough, this is the process. Perhaps now that I have written these words I can truly enjoy this time for what it is.

“If you’re going through hell, keep going”. – Winston Churchill