My Sober Journey

My Sober Journey

I have spent most of my life looking back. Leaving things behind me. Allowing friends and family to become a blurry image in the rear-view mirror. Finding that I was leaving parts of myself in that image as well at times.

I honestly didn’t hit rock bottom. Not like I hear of so many others doing. I didn’t decide it was time to stop drinking. To stop the self-poisoning. To stop being a half-ass version of myself. It was others in my life, primarily my mother-in-law, who decided this for me. She quite literally sat my butt down in her passenger seat and simply said, “We are going.” I was going to rehab for drugs and alcohol. I was so lost. I had no direction in life. My choices at this point were leaning toward two undesirable outcomes: incineration or incarceration. Prison or death.

Having grown up with parents in the throws of addiction, I was never going to travel that road. I became the first person in my family to graduate college, get married, and then have children. In that order. I was doing what society sees as “the right things to do.” But none of it would make me happy. I didn’t know that the path I was on was going to take a giant scary, map-less detour. That wasn’t going to be me. Until the drive to rehab where I succumbed to the idea that maybe, just maybe I did need help. A new path. The beginning of a road less traveled in my family of addicts and drunks.

As we drove, I saw flashes of what my dreams once were. I saw 17-year-old Lindsey. And what I saw was a scared, alone girl who had to become an adult way before her time. I recalled my mother dying and me not feeling sad or like the world had ended. I remembered how relieved I was. No more name calling. No more belittling. No more doubting if I would ever amount to anything. No more listening to my own mother tell me how stupid I was and how she hoped I married a real piece of shit like my dad. Remembering how she hoped this future husband would beat me the way I had allowed my own dad to beat her. While all the other teenagers were thinking about Spring Break and college visits, I was wrestling with the thoughts of whether I could have stopped my dad from beating my mom.

I ran away from my newly widowed father. From my car window on a 4-hour drive all alone to an unfamiliar family I hoped would let me in, let me stay, I could see 18-year-old Lindsey escaping the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father once her mom was no longer available to be his personal punching bag. Out that same window, I saw 18-year-old Lindsey running for her life. Moving away to escape this monster who was suppose to be my protector. I had to leave my younger brother behind in my rear-view mirror, and I did regret that. But I had no money. Not much family or friends I could really ask to take me, along with my younger brother as carry-on baggage on this escape journey.

Years later, on the long car ride to rehab, I saw a lot of things. I saw normal families doing normal things. I saw people jogging. I had once loved to run so very much. Booze had stolen that love from me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had really just rented it to booze on a very pricey payment plan. Only the price would be all mine to pay. As with all things in my sober journey, the price to regain the things you once loved is an imaginable one. But I would have gone to any great lengths to pay the fine. To get my life back. I didn’t know how willing I was at the time. I despised those happy families and joggers that day. Riding in the car, head leaned against the glass, catching the occasional glimpse of myself in the side view mirror. Looking away quickly because I couldn’t stand to look at the face staring back at me. Who was I? Who had I become? I had fought and ran and planned escape routes to get away from my alcoholic parents. And now I was finding myself, forced to sit in a car and travel to rehab. There was no escaping myself. Running, literally and figuratively had always been my go-to. It was what I knew.

I didn’t realize it until later in life, but while I was running on foot, I was also running in my head. Running symbolized an escape. With every footstep on the pavement, I was leaving something behind. With every mile I added to my routine, I was trying to get further from my past. Running can only get you so far. At the end of the day, you still have those same thoughts. Those same dislikes of yourself. Those same doubts and disappointments.

For me, rehab became a symbol of a gate opening. One that had been locked for so long. My drinking had put up so many roadblocks and padlocks on the good things in my life, and it was as if my GPS system constantly had its check engine light on. The car stalled before I could ever reach the gate, much less navigate through it. Drinking not only made me an actual dangerous driver, but it made me a mentally unstable one. I thought I was cruising through life, going to be a drunk until I died. And I was ok with that. I had succumbed to being what my mother always told me I would be. An unhappy loser. A disappointment.

Finding sobriety in rehab for me was like cleaning the windshield of your car after you’ve driven through a mud storm. I had been blinded for so long. Only being able to see the shitty parts of my life. Always feeling like someone else was sabotaging me. Seeing little rays of sunshine through that muck on the window thinking that there was still hope for me yet. But it always rained again, making the mud on the windshield even more difficult to see through and around. Drinking made me think everyone’s view looked like this. Grim and unclear. Rehab opened up my trauma from my past. It was the thing my check engine light had been needing. Some adjustments. Some filling up on the good things in life. Gas to my sobriety tank.

My drive these days looks a heck of a lot better. I have tools needed to clear my view when things get ugly. Tools like AA, religion, family and friends, a sponsor, and my writing. They turned out to be the parts of the map that were missing for me on my roadmap of life. My map may look weathered and tattered, much like my favorite old t-shirt, but it is priceless to me. I wouldn’t trade my sober map for anything in the world. I allow myself to glance back in the rear-view mirror of life on occasion, but that is all. I don’t stare long and hard. It’s good to remember where I came from, but it is beautiful to look forward and see where I am headed.