10 years ago today was Friday the 13th, September 2013. It was the last day I had a drink.
I recently watched an Inside No. 9 episode entitled, Paraskevidekatriaphobia, that was all about a highly superstitious man’s overwhelming fear of Friday the 13th. (Inside No. 9 is a horror anthology show created by Reece Sheersmith and Steve Pemberton, and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend that you do.) This all got me thinking about what things are considered lucky and unlucky—Friday the 13th of course being extremely unlucky.
In my case, 9/13/13 is the day that sobriety really started to stick for me. And lucky numbers and talismans aside, the real reason it stuck was because I had changed my outlook on how I viewed recovery. Instead of “I have to get sober because I fucked up, had a nervous breakdown, and I’m a wreck when I drink” and “I have to get sober so people will like me again” it was “Let me see if I can do this thing, just for me.”
While I’ve never considered myself to be an especially superstitious person, there is a part of me that fears bad things will happen if I say anything positive about myself. Like it’s just inviting something terrible to happen if I acknowledge an accomplishment or say I did a good job. I’m sure part of this is internalized misogyny, and a lot of it has to do with how I was raised (e.g., don’t rub it in if you’re doing well, nobody wants to hear you brag) but I’m going to switch it up today and say that I’m proud of myself.
Since 2013 I have moved several times, had a number of jobs during which I finally learned how to have a job, been in a few relationships, made new friends, lost friends, lost my grandfather (who was essentially my dad), went to a lot of AA meetings, went to a lot of therapy, did a lot of theater and comedy, started to figure out what I actually like doing instead of what I’m “supposed” to be doing, quit smoking, quit smoking again, then quit smoking for real, started my own freelance writing business, subsequently owed a lot of money to the IRS, wrote a total of 3 TV pilots, 2 plays, 2 short stories, one feature-length screenplay, and who knows how many dumb comedy sketches, saw a few friends get sober along the way, moved in with a partner for the first time, married that partner, traveled to Japan, went through COVID isolation with that partner, got a cat (finally!), got preggo, had a kidney stone, gave birth and began the whole insane journey of becoming a parent, experienced sleep deprivation on a whole other level, all the while reading a ton of books and watching a lot of weird movies.
I saw and did and felt a lot of things. What I didn’t do was drink or do drugs to deal with any of the difficult stuff, or celebrate the good stuff, or tamp down the anger and frustration, or diffuse the stress, or get through any of the boring or lonely parts. There were a few times I wanted to drink (which is a normal part of recovery and not the sign of failure I used to think it was) and the craving passed.
That’s why I’m proud. So tomorrow, if a piano falls on me, or a Hamburglar-looking dude hands me a round bomb, or I slip on an old-timey roller skate and fall down a manhole, I guess we’ll all know it’s because I had the gall to acknowledge that all that recovery was hard work. Otherwise, I’m just going to do what I’ve been doing for the last decade and take it a day at a time.
Wishing you all the best of luck on your journey, if you believe in that kind of stuff.
Tabitha