Not Every Sober Day Has to Be the Best Day Ever

I’ve often felt like I had something whimsical to say. At least something rooted in gratitude. Something like, hey, this exact thing I’m walking through isn’t great, but sobriety is.

There’s so much beauty in my life, and I owe so much of it to my sobriety, to my sober life, to the life I build, brick by painful brick, day after day.

I have beautiful children. I have a loving husband. I have a job that pays my bills and gives me the time and space to focus on the things that matter to me.

But I have just been in a bad fucking mood.

I am sick and tired of the things I cannot change.

I am sick and tired of working to distinguish what is mine to carry, and what isn’t.

I am sick and fucking tired of the never-ending curveballs, the life being lifey, all that.

And worst of all, there’s not even one direct thing to point to, to blame. It’s not even PMS.

It’s not good to stay here in sobriety. That’s true. Twelve-Step programs advise: resentments are the #1 offender that “takes someone back out.”

I don’t usually point so directly to AA’s Daily Reflections, but today’s (October 9) offers this: “It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.”

People are wronging me, sure, but what is my deal?

My point in going on and on about my grumpiness is to normalize that not every day in sobriety has to be the best day in the history of the universe.

Some days you just stay sober, and that gets the job done.

A well-worn saying in sobriety is this: my worst day sober is better than my best day drunk. And I have found that to be true in my life.

The nuance and beauty and complexity I’m finding in longer-term sobriety is in the both/and.

My children are both incredibly gorgeous and I am so deeply grateful for their health and their spirits and to have them in my life and my house and I can get so overwhelmed by the noise (cue my classic Grinch “THE NOISE NOISE NOISE” gif).

I am so incredibly fortunate to have a job that allows me the freedom to attend field trips and taekwondo practice and it’s not what makes my soul sing.

I love my sober life and some days are just hard.

I was recently challenged to make a piece of art for a course, Laura McKowen’s The Bigger Yes.

Here I am bitching, and yet—I am in a class about stepping into my dharma, into my purpose, aligning with my integrity and walking in the world as my truest self.

I am making art.

I am sober.

Miracles abound.

And here is my son Llew, with a mouthful of Goldfish, finishing an extra credit math assignment for which his teacher asked us to send a picture to earn the credit.

Here is where the sobriety piece comes in: I would have had him do the extra credit, even if I was drinking. That’s the kind of thing I did, and the kind of thing that allowed me to hold my problematic drinking up to the light and say, well, come on, it’s not that bad—I still have my kid do extra credit!

But I would have been drinking a beer. I would have been just home from work, the sweet, fresh buzz washing over me. I would have sent the picture, and I would have said good job, and I would have moved on with my night, downing another couple of beers, doing all the things that I still do.

But in the morning: oh shit. Grabbing my phone in the middle of the night. What did I send? What pictures did I take? The filmy, blech-y memory of what had happened.

Then: thank God. I am okay. Even though I would have been completely gripped in fear, I could have convinced myself it was totally fine. And the days would have continued, my self-esteem eroding, and me, not even knowing it.

My daughter at a park, her hand in a baggy of Goldfish. That little gap in the bottom right is filling in with a tooth, which is putting her in a mood too.

I have been what I call a grumpasaur. I have been vacillating between kind of panicky and nervous.

But, in sobriety, I don’t have to live there.

Because I don’t. It has been rough. But we carry on. I carry on. I put one foot in front of the other. I do the next right thing. And even when I don’t want to be grateful, even when I am in a bad fucking mood, as I have been, the thing I can end the day with and hold up with gratitude is: I didn’t drink today.

I send “white chips” for the sobriety group I belong to, and every so often, I have to send a new white chip to someone who has relapsed, someone who has gone back out and come back in.

When I was struggling to get and stay sober, I received roughly four white chips in the mail over the course of a year. It was both humiliating and touching that someone—this group—cared enough about me to keep sending me this little pretend poker chip: a thing that means literally nothing, a thing I could order on Amazon if I wanted.

But. The act of opening my mailbox and finding this letter. Finding this letter, with this white chip, more than three times.

Reading the words, Keep coming back. Reading the words, One day at a time.

Hearing the words, We don’t shoot our wounded.

I don’t need a new white chip today, so today I have gratitude, even if I do so begrudgingly, grumpasaurously, and even if it kind of pisses me off.

How about you?

We’d love for you to share in the comments:

• What’s it like for you on a sober day that doesn’t feel so great? How does that compare to how you felt—and how things played out—before getting sober?

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