Definitely Better Now

by Ava Robinson

Sobriety wasn’t just about us.

As the often-uttered phrase went, Alcoholism is a family disease, so it only made sense that sobriety should be a family celebration.

We didn’t talk about it, but I’m sure a piece of him felt like I was choosing his side in the fight that broke up our family. I answered the question “to drink or not to drink” with a resounding gulp.

“The point of sobriety is to live a full life, and full lives include some people who drink. I don’t want you to limit yourself to only our tiny section of the world.”

I always felt like what I did when I drank didn’t matter, but that was also the problem: I did almost everything drunk, so nothing I did ever mattered—at least not to me.

All good lies are believable, after all. I knew that because I was a liar, too.

I know my wife thought sobriety would be like a light switch. I was bad, now I can be good. But I still have bad days, even when I’m not drinking. And sometimes I need her to be patient with me. To believe me that I’m working on myself, even if it doesn’t seem like it.”

Sometimes when I said prayers, I edited out God and filled in the catchall terms like Higher Power or Universe, but it didn’t really make a difference because I didn’t believe in any of it. All the same, it felt good to say my intentions aloud. I didn’t want to be angry. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to be helpful, either.

I’d never had sex sober. Sure, there were some morning afters where my head was still spinning, and I was still coming down, where I’d been with people. But that wasn’t sober sex. Everything was still clouded by a veil of drugs, maybe not actively making me high but slowly seeping through my pores, exhausting my system.

Some things weren’t the fault of my disease. They were the fault of someone else.

Home was a precious place, and every memory colored it.

“I had an idea of myself, I think. As a mom, a teacher, someone who’d seen enough about marriage to never want to be involved in it again. I think I was ready to be with someone long before I was ready to let go of that image of myself.” She sighed. “But it didn’t have anything to do with you.” In a way, I knew what she meant. Sometimes it can feel like disloyalty, letting go of past versions of yourself. Even though I’d changed so much about myself, even though I’d worked so hard for it, I still wasn’t sure who I was going to be or what exactly I was working toward.

The whole thing was starting to feel unbearably nice. My mind drifted in and out of happy endings for us. I imagined us living out our lives in a Park Slope brownstone, or a remote cabin in the woods, or even a South Florida retirement community, and they all felt strange. But wonderful and absolutely possible.