Sixteen

I have now spent years trying to make people happy after that disastrous summer when I left Nantucket, left so much unhappiness in my wake.

I have now spent years trying to figure out how to make myself happy, how to come to terms with who I am.

Who am I?

I am an alcoholic.

Today, I am a grateful, recovering alcoholic, but it was not always the case.

My first foray into the world of recovery was in my early thirties, just after I met the man who would become my husband, against his better judgment, against, perhaps, everyone’s better judgment.

I slept with my long-lost sister’s boyfriend, although I have no recollection of it. My father, who I had only just found after twenty-nine years, kicked me to the curb. He did so kindly, and with tremendous regret. He did so even while admitting that he recognized himself in me, the drinking, the terrible behavior that I refused to see.

He had, he said, done enough damage to his own family with his drinking, and it wasn’t fair to continue to bring more destruction by letting me stay. Plus there was the small fact of my sister refusing to ever speak to me again. It was better, he said, if I left. And I did.

I came back to months of heavy drinking. Jason tried to get me sober, but it was much easier to drown my shame and sorrow in alcohol. We lost touch, although he would check in every few months, leave a message, send a text.

I lost my job when a new editor came on board, a new editor who didn’t look so kindly on the long, liquid lunches. Nor did he see the point of separate features and women’s desks. He consolidated, and two of us were left without a job. Everyone there felt terrible, and as a result loaded me up with freelance work. I made more money freelance than I had ever made on staff.

And then, for a while, I stopped drinking. I went to meetings. I took it seriously, and found Jason again, at a meeting, naturally. This time, because I was sober, had been sober for over a year, we found ourselves continuing what we had so nearly started first time around.

From being worthless and awful and depressing as hell, my life turned around. I woke up in the morning looking forward to the day. I woke up feeling alive, energetic, looking forward to whatever the day might bring instead of wanting to stay in bed with the covers over my head, tired, hungover, and dreading doing it all over again.

I had work, happiness, and a boyfriend! Not a handy shag or a drunken conquest, but an actual boyfriend who loved me and treated me well and understood me, for who better to understand an addict than another addict himself.

I was happy, peaceful, filled with hope. Jason’s recovery was so inspiring to me. We, as a couple, were so inspiring. We did, eventually, find our own meetings, separately, but that first meeting, in Paddington, was one we always went to together, and even though we didn’t sit together, and if you didn’t know we were together you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell, everyone knew. We were the couple that all the singles aspired to be.

We were happy. Happy enough that one weekend we drove up to Sissinghurst, to see the famous gardens, and in the white garden Jason sank to his knees and pulled a ring box out of his pocket, and my heart exploded with excitement and disbelief as he asked me to marry him.

We married at the town hall on Marylebone Road, and the room was packed, with my friends from the media, and old friends of us both, and tons and tons of people we knew from meetings.

For a while, life was better than I could ever have imagined. Settled, calm, peaceful. I worked my program, we both did, and I knew that I would never go back to drinking again. It actually amazed me, that I could go to a party where the first thing someone would do would be to offer me a glass of wine, and not only could I decline, I could continue a conversation with someone without thinking about that glass of wine, without hearing it whispering my name, over and over, until I had no choice but to give in.

It felt like a miracle, that for the first time in my life the drink wasn’t calling me. We even kept wine at home, for when friends came over. Not a lot, but a couple of bottles of red and white in the garage, just in case we needed it, which we rarely did.

I didn’t miss it. As long as I kept going to meetings, kept doing what I needed to do to keep sober, it seemed that alcohol wasn’t a part of my life anymore, and I was certain it wouldn’t ever be again. The pink cloud of sobriety.

Oh, how little I knew.

When Annie was born, life changed again. I remember, clearly, the night I thought it would be fine to have just one glass of wine. I could do it again, I thought. All these years of being fine meant that I was cured. Also, I hadn’t been going to meetings for a while. Jason still went, but I was so busy with Annie, and she had been such a colicky, difficult baby it was all-consuming.

I think she was four, and it had been a particularly bad day. She had thrown a massive tantrum in Wagamama, where I was meeting friends for lunch. It was the first grown-up lunch in a nice restaurant I had had in ages, and I was really excited, and Annie was going to be a big girl with one of the other girl’s daughters, Ruby, and it was all planned.

But Annie didn’t like the food. Or the restaurant. Or the people. Even though the last time Jason and I had taken her, on our way to buy her clothes in Selfridges as a treat, she had loved it. This time, she literally threw herself down on the floor and screamed at the top of her lungs. My friends pretended it was fine, that they had all been there, but I knew they hadn’t, and from the disapproving looks all around me, the tut-tutting and shaking of heads, I felt awash with the kind of shame I thought I had left behind a long time ago.

Annie didn’t calm down, and didn’t calm down on the bus home, and when I phoned Jason, in tears, he said I knew he’d be late home because he had some important meeting, and he was really sorry, but that maybe I should just put her to bed.

Well, I tried that, but she pounded on the door, screaming and screaming, and by the time she eventually went to sleep, I was at the end of my tether.

I went into the kitchen—we had a little house in West Hampstead by that time, the most beautiful little carriage house that had a big conservatory on the back which doubled as a sunny kitchen, and I sat in that sunny kitchen sipping my tea, as an image of a glass of wine crept into my head and I could not get it out.

I could taste it. I could feel it slipping down my throat, feel the sweet relief, the tension of the day slipping away. I tried everything to get that thought out of my head, but it was all I could think about.

When I say tried everything, I will confess I didn’t actually do the things you are supposed to do when you are a recovering alcoholic and the alcohol is calling you: I didn’t make a program call, or call my sponsor. I didn’t pick up the Big Book or a daily reader and let it open naturally, knowing it would inevitably fall open at the one story that would help me not drink. I didn’t do any one of the myriad things they tell you to do when you are a recovering alcoholic, and part of the reason why is that sitting at that kitchen table, able to smell and taste and feel the wine, I decided I was not a recovering alcoholic.

I decided that it was so long ago, my out-of-control drinking was entirely due to my unhappiness and my being single. And my God, it wasn’t like we weren’t all doing much the same thing. Of course I was drinking to excess, and of course I did unimaginably terrible things when drunk. Doesn’t everyone?

But look at me now! There I was, in my late thirties, happy, settled, with a wonderful husband and wonderful family. Everyone I knew drank, and no one I knew drank to excess. My friends would laughingly call it the witching hour, that time of day when looking after an unruly child, or unruly children, is all a bit much for us and a glass or two of wine is the perfect antidote to the stress of carrying all of this life, all this responsibility, on our shoulders.

How insane, I remember thinking, at that kitchen table, that I too should not be able to do that. How absurd that I have spent all these years thinking that I am somehow different, that I cannot do what all my friends do and have a glass of wine, or perhaps two, during the witching hour. And God knows, today of all days, I deserve a glass of wine.

I won’t have much, I remember thinking. In fact, I won’t even have two. I’ll just have one, because it’s been a hell of a day, and because I can, and because after all these years, I absolutely know that it won’t be a problem, that I am exactly the same as everybody else.