Not Drinking is Hard.

Not drinking is hard.

Especially when you’re grieving. But then it’s not really about the drinking, is it? It’s about what you think the drinking has to offer you. What it will help you forget. What you can ignore. What you, for a brief period of time, don’t have to feel so deeply, so hard, so painfully.

I quit drinking not because I was dependent, but because I had made of drinking a habit that was no longer serving me.

Now, as I’m grieving loss after loss in my life, I realize that perhaps I was more dependent than I thought.

Now, when I feel the sort of heartache that doesn’t leave my body for days on end, as I grieve and breathe and try to accept the loss of control that sitting in grief demands, I find a glass of white wine suddenly sounds so enticing.

I watch characters in a show sitting around a bonfire drinking to the loss of a loved one, and I envy their escape. I envy their freedom. I envy that they get to do what they want without worrying about the consequences. Or perhaps they know the consequences. They just choose to drink anyway.

(How many times after a bad hangover have I said, “I’m never drinking again,” only to carry on the next time there’s a party, a happy hour, a girl’s night out?)