I celebrated my 36th birthday on Sunday. This was the first year that it didn’t occur to me in the slightest that it was my birthday and that I wouldn’t be drinking.
The earth had made its trip around the sun. Time passed, as it does, remarkably without my say so either way. And so, it just happened to be my birthday.
And I just happen to not drink every day.
I’ve managed to spend quite a few birthdays sober over the past decade. At 29, I was pregnant with the twins, and at 30, pregnant with Cade. I don’t recall 31, and 32 was the year that I declared I would get sober.
“I’m going to have a sober year,” I told my dad. “Do you think I can do it?”
He said, laughing with me, “I don’t think you can last 32 hours, let alone your whole 32nd year.”
He always did have his zingers.
At 32, in fact, my initial concept was that I could have a sober year and return to drinking. I think I got a few weeks in and gave up. My ex-husband did something that upset me a few weeks into this year-long venture that I had haphazardly declared, and I was in my parents’ kitchen and my kids were playing in the living room and I remember thinking, I would feel better if I drank some vodka, and then, just like that, I was drinking vodka. Eating those vodka soaked olives. Filling my glass to the brim again, watching the condensation slide down the glass, hearing the ice fracture and clink when I poured another.
I did feel better, momentarily, and then worse for, I don’t know, maybe a year or so.
Then I was sober at 33, counting days and they were stacking up, then sober again but fresh off a 3-day relapse at 34. A more remorseful birthday, as in, I just fucked this up, I can’t do it again.
At 35, I was once again pregnant, this time with my new husband and this time with a baby girl, and this past Sunday, at 36, it didn’t even occur to me that I was about to have a sober birthday.
In this sense, the reason the “one day at a time” trope is so important is because as I moved forward in sobriety, the unfathomable became fathomable.
I remember early sobriety, or even thinking about sobriety, staring out at the abyss of the remainder of my life and thinking, No, no. Not that. I couldn’t possibly not drink on my birthday.
I couldn’t possibly not toast with champagne at my sons’ weddings.
I couldn’t possibly not have a margarita on Cinco de Mayo, I couldn’t possibly not have a cold beer on a hot summer day, or a Hot Toddy on a cold day (even better if I had a cold on that cold day), I couldn’t possibly not have a bloody Mary with my dad on Christmas morning.
I couldn’t possibly eat a steak without a glass of red wine.
In the rooms, they call your birthday your “belly button birthday” as opposed to your sober birthday. A friend recently said she accidentally told the pharmacy her sobriety date. While they were not able to recover her prescription when she gave them her sobriety date and she had to correct to her actual date of birth, this has me thinking of birthdays and about rebirth.
And death.
These imagined scenarios, all those moments in which I couldn’t possibly fathom not drinking, in which the pairing of alcohol with was so deeply engrained in my heart and mind that I legitimately could not conceive of making it through without a drink -- these imagined scenarios were keeping me stuck in a pattern that was hurtling me towards drinking myself to death.
That’s a bit dramatic, I would think, my death. I’m a young woman, I’d scoff.
But time kept passing. I was not as young as I once was (and I am not as young as I once was, as my body readily informed me in this most recent pregnancy).
Having spent some time in the rooms, the concept of dying from drinking is not dramatic. Not dramatic, even, for someone in their mid-thirties.
I will say, even a few years into this thing, I do still struggle to know what to do to mark a celebration. I have my fake beer, which I enjoy, but I haven’t quite come up with the thing that really does it for me.
All the things I can think of that I might like to mark a special occasion – a sweet treat, maybe a velvety chocolate lava cake with raspberries and whipped cream, buying myself something that feels indulgent - a pedicure, maybe, or more books for my bookshelf that is already spilling over; or sex (its own kind of a sweet treat) -- they’re all birds of a feather. It’s biology. Chasing a dopamine hit.
The things I really want aren’t tangible – you can’t hold select them in the store and hold them in your hand.
The things I want: I want peace in my heart. I want to be honest with myself and those around me. I want to work hard and I want to treat others with respect. To treat myself with respect.
I want to teach my children to be good humans. I want to love my husband well and be loved well. I want my kids to know I’ll show up for them. I want my actions to match my words.
That’s not the kind of shit you can get delivered from Amazon.
I think there are two levels to sobriety when it comes to sober birthdays – this one, this waxing poetic nonsense just above, the things I want in that big picture way, and then there’s the first time it’s your birthday and you don’t take a shot or drink a beer. And you just think to yourself, Fuck, man. this is bullshit. It’s my birthday. I deserve this.
There’s gotta be the first one. And once you make it through the first one, you realize, I made it through my birthday without drinking. And I didn’t die. The muscle strengthens.
And so I have celebrated birthdays, holidays (I recently wrote about the 4th of July), my divorce was finalized, I met my new husband, I got married, I have even managed to eat a steak without red wine -- and still, I did not drink.
The trick is to understand what you deserve is a beautiful life, and stumbling your way through, bumping into walls, floating along, just existing -- moving in this world without honesty or intention isn’t the path to a beautiful life for me.
But this, putting one foot in front of the other, doing the next right thing one moment at a time, eating cake on my birthday so I can be fully present very soon when I put a smash cake in front of my baby girl for her very first birthday (a tradition that highlights the very idea that a birthday ought to be about indulgence) -- this is living.
Happy birthday- here’s to doing the “impossible” with sobriety gifting us clear eyes and an open heart. I find so much resonance in your words.
I attended my first wedding last night as a sober guest. Open bar. All the shenanigans. My brother got married to his best friend and I was able to take in every single moment. My kids joined me on the dance floor. I danced all night (something I never thought I could do sober 😱)
We keep surprising ourselves, right?