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I’m mostly out of the woods detox-wise and it’s scary how the more I come back to myself, the harder it is to connect to how bad it was. I’m already having a hard time describing what it was like, those days/weeks leading up to stopping. Well, that’s not true exactly, I can find the words, but they’re not as raw. The feeling of it is fading away so quickly.

This is the slippery heartbreak of memory, at least in my experience. Most of the things I want to hold so tightly seem to get filed away in boxes wrapped in packing tape and plastered with descriptive labels. They’re there, inside, but muffled, almost like something I could have read about. Like how an amazing vacation begins to leak sensory data as soon as I step on the plane. I can tell you where we went and what we did, but I can’t smell the salt of the ocean or feel the heat of the sand or hear the laughter of my children.

It probably doesn’t make much sense that I wish I had the power to fully tap into the ugliness of my active use — re-living last year’s trip to Hawaii would be a far more pleasant experience — but as things get less vivid, it takes more and more work to hold onto the full story. You can start remembering a partial version. Then you start thinking that if you just do XYZ, you could control it this time. You wrap more tape around the very worst moments and rewrite the label. You begin to romanticize the exact thing that was destroying your life.

Meanwhile, addiction is a patient, calculating, lying motherfucker. Something goes wrong, some hurt or frustration or sorrow descends, and a solution looms into sight. It’s a vision packed with false promises that shouldn’t have a shot in hell of being convincing: you know better, after all. But it keeps expanding. It’s so goddamned hard to look away.

Sometimes it’s like a Polaroid that takes days or weeks or months to fully develop. Sometimes it’s as terrifying as an out-of-nowhere desire to turn down the wrong aisle in the grocery store.

I never again want to forget how things were. But how to stay close to that reality, without drowning in the self-loathing that comes from scrabbling to keep a death grip on every painful choice I’ve made?

I’m not sure if there can be a one-size-fits-all answer to that, but I finally understand, at least more than I did before, why there is so much talk of gratitude in recovery. I used to think the gratitude stuff was about forcing positivity — all those cheesy slogans! — but I think the real magic is that gratitude gives you acceptance without the damnation.

I am so grateful for the peace of living in honesty, for instance, is a completely different way of thinking than Jesus, I was such a lying piece of shit. It’s about focusing on the light instead of dwelling on the dark … while still acknowledging the darkness. Gratitude keeps my past in focus while simultaneously reminding me how much better the present is. It is both tool and reward, and it’s rooted in the now instead of relying on scenes in the rearview.

I’ve spent so long trying to escape life instead of celebrating it, gratitude does not yet come naturally to me. It takes practice, a deliberate intent. But oh, when I can be grateful, I know a truth stronger than addiction’s lies. I can see what’s really around me, the countless reasons I have to stay.

Oh, you guys. The relief of that last post, from the processing that always comes with writing to the way every kind comment and email feels like another support beam holding me upright. I cannot begin to thank you enough.

What a strange, unhappy week it’s been. Like many of you, I am sad and worried about what’s to come over the next four years. I read this phrase recently, You cannot hold back the tide, so you may as well work on building a better boat, and I have been carrying that, cupped in my hand like a bird. What’s done is done, and we must all find a way to live in this new reality. It’s like getting sober: the past is over, the future hasn’t happened yet. So what can I do today, to reinforce the vessel that will carry me through the waves? Maybe even make it strong enough to someday help others who may be getting pulled under?

I realize leftover Halloween candy is not necessarily a great long term building strategy for this endeavor, but I am for sure allowing myself a few shoddy materials this week.

In the non-chocolate-based self-care department, after years of eye-rolling the influx of adult coloring books that seem to have taken over the publishing industry I now find myself drawn — oh ho HO! — to them. I finally just printed a page online and have been studiously beavering away with my Crayola fine-tips, and I’m not sure if I like the activity or not. There’s something undeniably pleasant about the mindless concentration involved, but it also starts feeling like a task with no end in sight: like, am I ever going to be done with this thing?

I nearly trashed my page after realizing that completion would take hours and I didn’t much like the colors I’d used and honestly the laundry’s piling up while I sit here coloring like a preschooler, but I’d picked one of those chirpy motivational message designs. I imagined the relief of tossing it out … followed by the Et tu, universe? feeling of knowing what was lying in the recycling: a piece of paper printed with intricate swirls and patterns, and partially-colored letters that read “NEVER GIVE UP.”

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