18 Months Alcohol-Free! Whoa.

A year and a half of alcohol freedom and here’s what that means to me: alcohol has no hold on me anymore, no place in my life anymore. There is no vacancy up in this joint. I am 100% occupied with the momentous and the mundane and everything in between, and I don’t want to miss a minute.For two decades, I was writing a different life story. I was a binge-drinking college student, a work-hard-play-harder twentysomething, and then, in my last booze-fueled incarnation, a #winemom. An open bar, a witching hour, a holiday. A funeral, a date night, a girls night. I was enabled by any and every occasion and non-occasion. Resisting the urge to drink - say, on any given Sunday, or Tuesday, or whenever - took a Herculean amount of willpower. If I succeeded in denying myself my sauvignon blanc, I was left feeling depleted and resentful.I was a gray area drinker. Jolene Park, who bravely brought this style of drinking out into the open, defines the gray area as “the space between the extremes of ‘rock bottom’ and every-now-and-again drinking: a gray area that many, many people find an impossible space to occupy.”Many, many people? But I thought it was just me. And that's why I kept my ever-increasing struggle to myself for so many years. I thought everyone else either had a Problem-with-a-capital-P or drank "normally." I thought I was the only weak-ass dumdum for whom wine was not the glorious treat I had been led to believe it was.550 days ago, I left the gray area behind for good. I have only looked back to see how far I've come, and to give myself a little jolt of pride whenever I need it. My alcohol freedom is there for me now in a way that alcohol never was. On a crappy day, I remind myself that I am in fact quite brave, and I can in fact get through tough stuff. On a wonderful day, I remind myself how amazing it is to be able to absorb every perfectly imperfect moment. I am numb to neither the crap nor the wonder. I am open and receptive to it all, and simply damn grateful to be right here.