The following is a totally true story, except it’s not. Because, I’m following the two rules in this high stakes game of validation called Instagram: no nudity (this isn’t strip poker) and only show your best cards. And, the unwritten rule: if you’ve got an unlucky hand, bluff just enough to make people think you’re winning. (Heck, sometimes even show cards you don’t have.) The internet is a dangerous house of cards my friend, a very dangerous one. So, although this is meant to be a vulnerable moment where I divulge the dirty details of my relapse in sobriety, I will probably come across as a cheating house wife in my omission of important events. Yes, this story might have some holes.
Not to humbly brag, but I’ve perfected the art of bluffing… in public. In private, I can’t even fool myself. I’m always sober in public, the poised klutz everyone expects: positive with a tinge of sarcasm. I’ve had many “meet cutes”* with unassuming people in public where I’ve put on my best self. But, I don’t let it go beyond that. Because, although I can hold a stone cold smile until hell freezes over, the statue crumbles under the surface. My own frigid reality seeps through the cracks, destroying its foundation.
My sobriety was built on a foundation of expectations: this will happen when I’m sober, I’ll achieve that when I have ninety days. After one year, I’ll be a smashing success. Birds will literally dress me each morning from my golden throne. I yanked my alcoholic tooth out and left it under my pillow, waiting for the sobriety fairy to show me the money! Yes, sobriety in itself is a gift: no deathly hangovers or blackouts that lead to “emergencies.” Not living life on code red has a quaintness to it. But, eventually, I need fucking fireworks, the vavavoom, the Oscars, the bestsellers, the excitement of Christmas morning… I NEED STIMULATION!
One frigid morning, when the chilling realization that there would be no presents under my pillow set in, I relapsed. Irony of ironies, the Postmates lady who delivered my alcohol was literally dressed as a fairy. No, it wasn’t Halloween, but it was Venice Beach where anything goes. “I’m your alcohol fairy,” she giggled while scanning my ID. Ha! I googled fairies in a drunken haze after she left: tooth fairies, wood fairies, devil fairies… It turns out not all fairies are benevolent. Some are tricksters. I should have taken that as a sign, a trick of the cards.
I’m shuffling the deck. Do you remember my hand when I started this story? I said I’d leave out certain events… So, I’ll cut to the end where some seriously spooky doctors were pumping my stomach in the ER. I must have seemed possessed as I came to, screaming, confused, four days into a serious blackout. Who needs Halloween when you can spin the wheel of your fate until real life seems like a treacherous tilt-a-whirl? The only thing scarier would have been if those doctors were wearing clown costumes as I explained I got my booze from the alcohol fairy.
Listen, I am sober again. But, this time I’m not holding out for a fairy godmother. Being sober is living in reality and if I want something I have to work for it; which, honestly, is a bit more comforting than a creepy magical world of expectations.
*meet cute: a tv term for that moment in every rom com when the main character meets the person they’re going to fall in love with.