Not drinking that day meant acknowledging certain truths: that self-destruction would have served no one, least of all me; that medicating those emotions wouldn’t resolve or alter them; that, ultimately, the drink provided a futile, self-defeating solution. Alcohol is what shielded me all those years from the messy business of standing in that room with my own emotions, coming to terms with my own quiet, restrained, complicated heritage, finding ways to tend to my own needs, instead of waiting for others to jump in and tend to them for me. In a word, alcohol is what protected me from growing
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