One week sober

After breaking my 19 month streak

May I start by thanking everyone for the overwhelmingly kind response I had to my relapse story last week? If you missed it, here’s what happens when complacency comes knocking at your door and you welcome it in:

I wanted to write something profound about the last week. How I finally had an epiphany and am enjoying my time kicking back on the pink cloud of early sobriety. Whilst the resolve may be present in bucketloads - thank god - I don’t feel fully present in myself.

Going through the motions feels the only fitting description.

The first couple of days back off the sauce, I felt a fire up my arse as I willed my body to get as far away from hungover as possible, resolute in my decision to quit again. Plans, schemes and dreams surfaced in an endless reverie, presenting the next hyperreal version of myself to squeeze into. Unsurprisingly, she was a dress size smaller and achieving things I’d need lobotomising to cope with.

A mind prone to addiction will take any opportunity to latch onto the next obsession. A mind prone to addiction, paired with OCD, will do this and calmly, insidiously, set your brain on fire. There’s a Rolodex of fixations stored up ready to go, and not one of them is productive or pleasant.

I thought this time I was bucking the trend: sticking two fingers up to body dysmorphia and adopting a new hobby by buying a tiny vlogging camera. I had lofty dreams of creating lifestyle/sobriety content through an autistic lens, pushing through the discomfort with my appearance until it alchemised into acceptance.

From the hours I’ve already spent decapitating myself by zooming in so that my torso only is in the shot, I’m not sure we’re making much progress.

Body dysmorphia is such a strange beast: one moment I can feel nothing short of smug about my appearance, surreptitiously peering through sunglasses to see if the person walking past agrees, yet in most cases I want to hide my clearly gargoylian face from the world. I have no idea what I actually look like.

Much of my conditioning to be as unautistic as possible - until recent years - drilled into me that women should be dainty and small-featured. They should move with grace and ease throughout the world, and not have weird mouth tics and stims that they don’t even realise they do until they watch back footage of themselves with disdain.

Internalised ableism is the final frontier of unmasking. How strange that an autistic person - talking to a camera away from other humans - may look and act autistic.

Putting all this self-indulgent nonsense against the backdrop of the state of the world right now feels beyond insufferable. Still, if in doing so, it helps one other person in sobriety, or someone who’s autistic, or suffers with body dysmorphia, I will take the hit. Now is more important than ever to help each other and try to make sense of this batshit world. They want us drunk, they want us distracted and malleable.

It hasn’t been all slaving over mirrors and wondering if I can chance another round of Botox or fillers: I made it out to Madrid to stay with an old friend. It’s been the perfect mix of socialising with someone I can be fully unmasked around, and having time to myself to recharge whilst she’s at work during the day.

But I still feel empty. As someone who put so much of their self-esteem behind their corporate career, moving into a self-employed field feels as desolate as it does rewarding. I know that it’s really only a case of sitting down and setting my own versions of goals and KPIs, but something feels stuck.

I’m sure that something isn’t entirely unrelated to the fact that my now on-off partner and I are still in the emotional weeds. As an autistic woman who can be very black-and-white herself, my penchant for men with Pathological Demand Avoidance is becoming a bit of a hindrance. What a great idea to pair up two people with an innate need for feeling in control.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Hopefully, as I get more comfortable in sobriety again, my thoughts - and writing - will become less erratic. Until then, enjoy the unfiltered view into my brain.