Now that I’ve told more people in my ‘real’ life about my blog, in addition to getting online comments from readers, I’m often getting face-to-face comments or text messages from friends and family reacting to what I’ve written. They say things like, ‘Sorry to hear you’re having a hard time with Corin away’ or ‘Loved your latest blog, you’re so right about butchers always being jolly’. At first I find it a bit weird and uncomfortable, given that for so long my blog was private, but soon enough I’m totally down with whatever anyone says. (Mum: ‘I think you use too many exclamation marks.’ Me: ‘Sorry, but I love exclamation marks!!!!!’)
The only problem I do still have is that I don’t think my friends and family fully understand the whole community vibe surrounding my blog. I keep saying, ‘You’ve got to read the comments to understand what’s so cool about it.’ Sometimes they do and then say, ‘You’re obviously helping so many people’, which, while seemingly true, is only the half of it. As much as I give, I take—I’m still the grateful regular recipient of loads of wisdom, advice, support and encouragement. And I feel real friendship with many other sober bloggers.
I start to feel like I have a great story that needs recording because everything that’s gone on for me has been utterly fascinating. Not just all that I’ve learned about my drinking and alcohol and addiction and beating my cravings etc. . . . but also the blog! How it began and what it has blossomed into.
Given that I’ve just written and delivered a Master’s thesis and am kind of ‘in the zone’ with writing, I figure I might as well jump straight into typing out all that has gone on. I start a new document on the computer and cryptically call it ‘IT’ (hiding it in the folder where all my thesis chapter drafts are) and begin writing: ‘Holy shit, we’re relocating . . .’
After a few weeks of chipping away at the story, I decide to get really brave and email a publisher. I’m thinking, ‘Fuck it, I think this is an interesting story, might as well see if a publisher agrees.’ I figure I’ve got nothing to lose—feel the fear and do it anyway and all that jazz. I go hard and write a ballsy and direct sales pitch. I might only get one shot at this so I might as well make it a good one.
Email to: Nicola McCloy, Allen & Unwin, Auckland Office
Hi Nicola,
I’m writing to see if you think my blog has potential to be turned into book. I started it as a private online journal to help me in my solo quest to get sober, but over time it has become something quite else. I now get hundreds of hits a day from all over the world and numerous comments from a growing online community of people looking for support and inspiration in dealing with their own alcohol problems.
I’d like to write a book that rips the cover off my kind of alcoholism. I don’t present the typical image of an alcoholic. I didn’t lose my job, home or family. I didn’t crash my car or fall over in public. I am a middle-class, respectable, seemingly well-put-together, successful woman who drank steadily and heavily in private. I drank alone and I stopped drinking alone. I haven’t gone to AA, my blog has become an AA of sorts. This was entirely unexpected. The warm, wise and helpful comments I get from others online are unbelievable.
I’d like to go public now with a book and open up about my struggle and transformation as I’m convinced there are thousands of people who will relate to my story. I am convinced that there are many, many people who are right now locked in a private drinking hell like I was. Wanting to make a change. Scared about living a life without alcohol. I envisage the book not being a drinking memoir as such, but rather the story of how I got sober, including the story of my blog and how it grew and became crucial to my recovery.
I look forward to hearing what you think.
Many thanks, Lotta Dann (aka Mrs D!).
I take ages writing the email, checking it over and over before finally taking a deep breath and hitting send. I’ve got nerves in my tummy! I only have to wait four days for a reply but they are an agonising four days. When Nicola finally responds her email is worth the wait. I’m at home alone eating lunch and watching The Real Housewives of New York when it arrives.
Email to: Lotta Dann from Nicola McCloy
Hi Lotta,
Thank you so much for getting in touch.
Since I got your email, I’ve been dipping in and out of your blog and absolutely I think there’s potential there for it to be turned into a book. Your writing style is so direct, so honest and relatable.
As luck would have it, we had a publishing meeting this morning and I canvassed the possibility of a book with my colleagues. Everyone got the idea straight away and they were very positive about the potential for it.
So where to from here? Well, I think it would be great if we could have a bit of a chat on the phone to talk a bit more about your vision for a book.
I look forward to talking to you.
Best, Nic
Well, blow me over! After I read Nicola’s email I walk around the empty house exclaiming ‘OH MY GOD!!!’ wildly before throwing myself backwards on the bed in hysterics. This is another ‘my life as a movie’ moment. I know this is huge. A book! This will be a big step—a full reveal of who I am to my blog readers and of my drinking problem to the wider world. But I think of Corin and I know he’s behind me, and I think of my online community and I’m brave. I’m ready. I’m going to do it.
You know what happens next because you’re holding it in your hands.
•
In the eight months it’s taken to get this book to you I’ve graduated with my Master of Arts (oh the joy of walking across that stage to receive my degree! Shame I put the graduation cap on backwards after I’d shaken the Vice Chancellor’s hand—for goodness sake, when am I going to sort my fashion faux-pas out?!) and celebrated two years of sobriety (by drinking virgin mojitos at a Mexican restaurant with my sisters). I’ve hosted disco parties and pizza nights and danced for four hours straight at a friend’s 40th (hits from the 1980s all night—so fun!). I’ve also dealt with some heavy-duty emotional shit feeling like my feet are planted firmly on the ground.
I’ve cried tears at various points in the writing (realising that I still don’t always know how to fill the ‘empty space’ left by wine), gotten giddy with delight (re-reading Jason Vale made me feel so great!) and have realised I’ll probably always be a work in progress when it comes to dealing with tricky emotions without reaching for dysfunctional coping mechanisms (don’t get me started on sugar—that’s a whole other book).
There is no happy ending to this book. The happy point, I think, came at the beginning, on the 6th of September 2011, when I made the decision to remove alcohol from my life. The happy point came when I was standing in my kitchen in my dreadful hungover state at my personal rock bottom and thought ‘I don’t want to be this woman any more’. Once I made that decision I have stubbornly refused to shift from it, and I always will. I will never return to being that boozy person I once was.
Boozing is living a wild, crazy, blurry, detached and numbed-out life that is sometimes fun and sometimes sad and sometimes downright miserable (when you get to where I was with my boozing).
Sobriety is not. Sobriety is not grand gestures and exciting developments. Sobriety is all the little things.
It’s the lovely conversations at the end of a party, the quiet cosy conversations that are real and memorable.
It’s getting up at 11 p.m. to rub a sick child’s back and feeling so grateful to be fully alert.
It’s the delight in an empty recycling bin.
It’s driving home at midnight. I love driving home so much.
It’s hearing people talk about their own struggles and not inwardly running a mile, but listening, really listening.
It’s that beautiful moment after you’ve stared down a pang and resisted the urge to drink, it’s gone away and you realise it was lying to you and you didn’t want/need/deserve the drink after all. That is a truly beautiful sober moment.
It’s sitting with an inner calmness that blows like a warm breeze over your mind. (Okay, sometimes sobriety means dealing with woe-is-me thoughts too, but I’m trying to be positive here!)
It’s waiting, waiting for bad moods to pass, waiting for glum phases to end, waiting for the light to return. Knowing it always does.
It’s really appreciating a hot cup of tea, really appreciating each and every sip. Or really appreciating a small sweet square of chocolate as it melts in your mouth.
It’s looking in the mirror and knowing that whatever is looking back at you is real, not some blurry distant mirage.
It’s just the underlying beauty in the knowledge that you are sober. You are not a drunk anymore, you are sober. It’s that little gold nugget of truth that you tuck away inside and nurture.
I’m not sure what’s on the horizon for me next, but there is one thing that I can say with absolute certainty.
I am Lotta Dann, you can call me Mrs D, and I will always be Going Without.