9 Months (Cali) Sober: A Promise to Myself

Content note: This piece includes grief, addiction, and suicide. If you’re struggling, please reach out; you’re not alone.

I was born in 1988. It’s a year I’ve always called the best in the world. Nostalgic, stubborn, mine. For a long time, my life didn’t feel like that. It felt like a long, slow fade to black. Not a cinematic crash, but a low-volume grief that swallowed hours, days, decades.

My world stopped when my dad died. That death didn’t arrive like thunder; it arrived like a silence that just kept growing. Then Scott died. Then Alex. I couldn’t hold the parts of me that knew how to show up, couldn't take care of my daughter. I fell off the radar. Nobody asked. I didn’t tell.

Rebuilding after that felt impossible. When I tried to stitch relations back together, she didn’t want to come back into my arms. That alone gutted me. I didn’t know how to carry that kind of pain, so I found refuge in a familiar kind of poison. Another toxic man, and with him, more alcohol. I drank to erase the edges of the grief, to quiet the shame, to dull the lights. It worked for a while. Then it didn’t.

The most surprising truth about getting sober? It has been, in many ways, easier than I expected. Not easy like "no effort," but easy like the fog lifting in a way that lets me breathe properly for the first time in years. Waking up sober means no hangover, sure, but it also means there’s space for small miracles: the birds beginning their morning songs, a sky that actually has colour, a grinder that releases the aromas of weed (and coffee) and doesn’t feel like an alarm for the next blackout.

For years my nights and days were scattered. I’d go to bed at 10 a.m. and wake up anywhere from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., moving through a blur with no anchors. Colour was foreign. Mornings had no soundtrack besides a dull ringing in my head. Now I notice little things: the way sunlight warms a wooden bench, the sound of a laugh I didn’t know I could make anymore.

Temptation still walks beside me. A cold night, Reddit doom-scrolling and a glass of Pinot that used to be a friend. They all whisper. I dream about a single beer sometimes; I imagine the relief, the softening of edges. You can’t plan the seduction of a familiar habit. The trick is not to romanticize it. I ask myself: would one make the next hour better, or darker? I know the answer. It wouldn’t be better. Alcohol doesn’t build me back up; it erases the tiny scaffolds I’ve started to rebuild.

And that’s why saying no is sometimes easy. Because the stakes feel different now. I don’t want blackouts or the gnawing, hollow shame that comes after. My lens is still cracked, probably it always will be, and sometimes the world still looks like a flicker, but I want the colours. I want the whole mess of life: the grief, the joy, the tedious laundry, the ridiculous little wins. I want to actually be here for them.

Sobriety has revealed something fierce and stubborn in me: I CAN do this. I can survive the worst and keep moving forward. People have told me what I am not, what I can’t be. I’ve been told I’m broken, weak, alone. But I’ve survived things that were supposed to finish me. If I couldn’t even kill myself and if I still wake up every morning with a pulse and the ability to choose? Then I’ll choose life. Full throttle. No reverse.

There are practical things that keep me steady. I show up to simple rituals: morning walks where I listen for bird calls, a breathing exercise waiting like a small altar on bad days, a playlist that replaces the urge with measured frequencies that calm my bones. I call a friend before I spiral. I sit with the discomfort instead of trying to erase it. I’ve learned to ask for help, which used to feel like admitting defeat but now feels like survival.

To anyone who’s reading this and caught in that same loop: I promise you, you can do this too. I didn’t think I could. I thought alcohol was the only thing that understood me. It isn’t. There are days I slip, days I flinch, days the temptation feels loud and persuasive. Then there are days I open a window and feel the air move and realize I’m still here to feel it. The small things become the scaffolding of a life I actually want.

If you need someone to sit with you through this process, if you want a text at 2 a.m., or a walk at sunrise, or a playlist that reminds you there’s still music left.. let it be me. I’ll show up. I’ll not judge. I’ll remind you that you are allowed to choose yourself.

If you’re struggling right now and thinking about harming yourself, please seek help. If you’re in Australia, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or go to 000 in an emergency. If you’re elsewhere, your local emergency number or a crisis line can help. You don’t have to do this alone.

I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep showing up. I’m almost 9 months sober. I am a promise to myself and if you want to make one with me, I’ll hold it with you.

XOXO,

gossip girl