Last New Year’s Eve, I was just over three months into my sobriety.  Things had been difficult, but not excruciating.  I felt I was on my way, trudging the path with a fair amount of success- I hadn’t had a craving in weeks, and I felt sure that I was solid in my program and my sobriety.

I remember being both nervous and excited for NYE.  There has always been something special about New Year’s for me, such a promise held in that one second between this year and the next.  It was a new start, a clean slate- a new chapter of life awaiting, perfectly bookmarked by the beginning and end of a year.  It had always been a happy, celebratory time, and I thought that this year could still hold that same special place for me without drinking.

I was still working in the restaurant, then.  I felt anxious to get off of work and go home to prepare for the evening.  It was late morning to early afternoon when I started to feel the itch.  “Why not have a glass of champagne tonight?” I thought.  I knew that this was my mind’s way of rationalizing and permitting me to drink- holding desperately onto the old habits that I was so used to.  I started to feel deprived and anxious, but my overwhelming feeling was one of pure petulance.  “Why can’t I?”

The old AA platitudes I recited to myself weren’t working this time.  I called my sponsor to bounce my thoughts off of her.  I didn’t let on what a difficult time I was having, and when one of my coworkers walked in with two bottles of liquor, something snapped in me.

I started to cry, and then sob.  This overwhelming flood of want and of deprivation was so completely foreign to me- it was unlike anything I had felt yet in my sobriety.  The selfish emotions quickly gave way to fear.  My mind quickly clenched its fist around the desire and held tight out of desperation and pure panic.  I knew that if I gave even one minute of lapse, I would be lost again with all of my progress gone.

I left work fairly quickly after that episode and got into my car.  “Get to a meeting,” I told myself.  If I could just get to a meeting, it would give me an hour to calm down.  I started the car and turned up the music, the same song on repeat.  My brain was warring with itself, and my arms and hands were shaking as I drove.  I dug my fingernails into my steering wheel.  A word popped into my head, uninvited: junkie.

Every bar, liquor store, grocery store, convenience store I passed on the way to the meeting was a stab.  “It would only take thirty seconds to pull in.  You could buy some, there’s no one stopping you.”  But I didn’t stop.

When I got to the treatment center, it was full of activity.  Our Alkathons are well attended.  I had a difficult time finding the correct room, and finally slumped against the wall in a room so full of people, every chair was taken.  Many were sitting on the floor or standing.  The familiar opening remarks were made, and I knew that if nothing else, politeness and obligation would keep me here for the duration of the hour.

After the meeting, I made a beeline for a woman I knew from my Friday afternoon meditation meeting.  I asked if she minded if I gave her a hug, and when she pulled me in I started to sob again.

I felt overwhelmingly tired.  It was the same old song.  If I just drank, if I only gave into what half of me so desperately wanted, all of these feelings would sink into the background if only for a moment.  If I nestled back into the warm, numb old habits, I could stop all of this.  I realized that I was not who I thought I was, or what I thought I was.  My brief stint of easy sobriety was not an indicator of how every day would be.  I was not invincible to this.  I was not immune.

Over the last year, tons of amazing things have happened in my life.  I’m busy planning a wedding, a honeymoon, and a life with my husband.  I have a new job that I am absolutely thrilled about, wonderful coworkers and a boss who is an amazing representation of the kind of leader I aspire to be.  Thinking about New Year’s Eve this year is both happy and frightening, because in looking at my life, I feel the same type of easy steadiness in my sobriety that I did last year.

Three months and fifteen months in sobriety are very different, but AA has taught me to look not at the differences, but at the similarities.  I rang 2016 in on the couch with my then boyfriend, now fiancé.  I’ll most likely do the same thing this year.  I’ve been invited out to celebrate, but I just can’t risk it.  As comfortable in my sobriety as I may have gotten over the past fifteen months, I know how quickly a moment can turn, and suddenly you are on the cusp of a different life than the one you’re leading now.

I understand now that it’s not the bad days I need to worry about, it’s the days I feel the strongest.  The days when I feel like I have everything are the days I have everything to lose, and last year taught me, with absolute certainty, that I can’t ever forget that.  I am not ever going to be invincible.  I will never be immune.

And so, during that brief second on December 31st when one chapter closes and another opens up wide with possibility, I’ll be humbled knowing that while alcoholism never goes away, there’s always hope that it gets a little easier this coming year.

Keep going.

Have a very happy new year.