The Caretaker
I am Not the Owner of my Sobriety
I am not the owner of my sobriety.
In the months leading up to rock bottom, where I had finally had enough of the mirage I was living, incrementally, I transitioned from party mode to pity party mode. Unknowingly, I’d become incapable of thinking about anyone but myself. I had a loving, pregnant partner. We packed our house, preparing to move two hours from our hometown. We were trying to rent our house out and buy another home.
A lot was going on. It was a time when we needed to work together to ensure we got everything done, but more importantly, it was when we should have supported each other.
For some reason, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t escape my own negative, woe-is-me mindset. We had chosen to do these things. A fantastic opportunity for us as a family had presented itself, and we’d be mad not to take it. Somehow, I went in the opposite direction to the one I should have.
I didn’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with such significant stress, so I reverted to the only one I knew worked for sure: drugs and alcohol.
The more stressed I became, the more I abused substances, the more stressed I became, and so the violent vortex of self-sabotage grew stronger and stronger with each day that passed.
I realise now that I was too scared to ask for help. I didn’t want anyone to think I had bitten off more than I could chew and couldn’t handle many things simultaneously. I was struggling enough to accept that for myself.
I knew my substance use was becoming beyond my control, but I was too proud to admit that to anyone for fear of what they might think of me. I also genuinely believed that I was the only person on earth who had ever felt the way I was then.
I didn’t want to talk to my partner about it because I thought that it would only stress her out and not only affect her health but the health of my unborn baby.
I was too caught up in myself to realise that I was isolating myself and putting distance between my partner and me when I should have been doing the opposite. My twisted theory led me to isolate myself, putting space between my partner. My effort to protect her from stress was only making her stress more as she worried about what was going on with me, but I’d become a person who she was too scared to raise her concerns with as my reactions were always defensive and dismissive.
I was too caught up in feeling sorry for myself to realise that she was coming from a place of love, compassion, and care, and instead, I would take her worries as criticism.
The hardest thing was, though, that I knew she was right. I didn’t want to or could not accept that at the time.
I carried this self-centred mindset long into sobriety.
I did some fucking horrible things to her, and others for that matter, both in the depths of addiction and well into sobriety. These are things that I will be ashamed of for the rest of my life and things that, to this day, as hard as I try, I can’t figure out how I allowed to get to such a point.
My partner should have left me for her own sake. Several times. But for some reason, she didn’t.
She saw the good in me that I’ve never been able to see in myself. Through all the horrible things I had done, she maintained faith that the person she fell in love with would fight his way back, even when I wasn’t so sure I was capable of it.
It pains me to say, but she loved me more than I loved her. I feel horrible that this was the case. I never fell out of love with her. I think I was just so incapable of any love at all.
Getting sober was by far the most significant thing I have ever done for our relationship and us as a family. I have been sober almost exactly four months longer than my son has been alive, and nothing makes me prouder than knowing he has never seen me under the influence of anything.
But some of our most significant challenges as a couple came after I got sober because, for a long time, I held onto that self-centred, self-serving mindset. My brain would do all it could to somehow shift whatever blame for our situation onto her, and I would believe it because I didn’t want to accept the truth that all our problems stemmed from my actions.
I remember using it to my advantage when we would argue. “I’ve been doing all this hard work. You have no idea how hard this has been for me. All you want to do is criticise me over small things that don’t matter. I’m working on more important things”. I’m embarrassed as I type this.
If I didn’t get sober, our relationship would have ended. There was never an ultimatum, but the trajectory I was on would have taken us to a point of no return. My son would have had a part-time, drug and alcohol-addicted father who, when lucky enough to spend time with him, wouldn’t have been present. Knowing how dangerously close I came to that being a reality unsettles me to my core.
If I’d lost my family before it had even started, I know I would have drunk and drugged myself to death, either by poisoning myself to death or by committing suicide.
I’ve been reflecting a lot lately. As a couple and a family, we’ve been through a lot over the last 22 and a half months. I can comfortably speak on my partner’s behalf when I say things have never been better.
Still, though, I feel conflicted. I am grateful for everything that has happened to lead me to this very second because that’s what has led us to where we are today. Life is so good that now that the worst is over, it’s getting easier to say that I don’t regret a thing. It’s not that I am not trying to excuse the horrible things I have done, but because this is the path we have taken to land in the great place we find ourselves today.
Maybe it is okay to say that you have no regrets and simultaneously wish you could’ve gone about things differently because that’s how I feel.
The point is my sobriety doesn’t belong to me. For so long, I felt like I was fighting this battle alone. I was so determined to show people I could get sober on my own. I resisted all kinds of communal and professional help. That toxic, self-serving thinking was so hard to budge.
But as I gain more clarity of mind and let go of more and more things that don’t fucking matter, I realise that I never did any of it on my own. The love and goodwill of others were getting me through, even though I wasn’t reciprocating that.
I leant so heavily on so many people but was too self-absorbed to see how much I was taking from others.
I was so lucky to have a mate with nearly a decade of sobriety living with me at the time I hit rock bottom. I had other friends, too, who had decent lengths of sobriety up and who opened themselves up to me to contact whenever I needed anything. They weren’t just saving face, either. They meant it genuinely.
I had amazing support from online communities. People I’d been interacting with for years but never actually met sent me their numbers and demanded I call them should I ever need anything.
I started writing this silly little blog, and I was blown away when people responded positively. They gave me the accountability I needed.
After some struggles late last year, I have immersed myself in sobriety by surrounding myself with more sober people and sober communities, and it’s been the most incredible thing I have done for my sobriety. I feel stupid that I waited so long to do it.
Not only is my sobriety stronger than it’s ever been, but my anxiety levels are lower than they’ve been in my adult life. My outlook is brighter than ever. My sense of what matters and what doesn’t has never been more apparent, and my fear of what others think of me is slowly but surely witling away.
None of this happens, though, if not for one person. My partner. My partner, no matter how badly I lashed out, was there for me and loved me unconditionally, even when I couldn’t reciprocate that love or love myself.
My partner, who I gave every reason to leave and prioritise her emotional well-being, chose to risk being hurt again and again because she saw something in me that I’ve never been able to see myself.
My partner is the most naturally gifted, caring, compassionate, intelligent, grounded mother I have ever seen, to both an 18-month-old baby and a 35-year-old baby.
Without her, I wouldn’t be sober. Without sobriety, I would be dead.
My sobriety doesn’t belong to me. I am only the caretaker of it.
My sobriety belongs to all the people who were there for me when I needed it. It belongs to the online community, people who read this blog, my friends, my family, the fellowship that has welcomed me so lovingly, my beautiful, messy, cheeky, funny, 18-month-old boy, and most importantly, it belongs to my partner. I’m just the lucky one who gets to carry it around.
I will do all I can to manage, look after, maintain, take care of, polish the fucking wheels, vacuum the cracks, wipe the edges down and whatever else you can think of to keep this sobriety in the greatest condition possible.
I have to because it’s not mine to damage. I am obligated to keep it only in the same or better condition than how I found it.
Happy Birthday, Nutsy.
Thank you for all you have done and continue to do to make our lives so easy.
I love you.
Cheers Wankers.
X.
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What would it look like for you, if you let go of the shame and took ownership of your actions? Stood up and said yes I did that, I can't take it back, but know that I'm owning my actions and am deeply sorry for them?