To wrap up 2015 I’m giving away a signed copy of my book!
To enter, send an email to rubyabrowne[at]gmail.com with your name and address by January 5th.
I’ll select a winner randomly, but everyone who enters will get a handwritten thank you note from yours truly. It’s the best way I can think of closing 2015.
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It’s been a hell of a year, y’all. Though I can’t say I’ll miss it a whole lot, I’m forever grateful for the little community we’ve grown here over the last year. I’m really excited to see what kind of strides we can all make together in 2016. I think it’s going to be one of our best years yet.
I won’t be posting again until January 4th, but when we come back we’re going to have Monday through Friday posts. That’s right. Five posts each week instead of just two. We’re also going to have an exciting new format, including guest posts from writers I love. I can’t wait to share some of their work with you over the next year.
As always, thank you so much for reading, for following, for your love and support. Your kind words and well wishes have gotten me through some of my roughest times this year. I wouldn’t have done it without you.
Tomorrow will be my second sober anniversary and I am terrified. So terrified I’ve found myself lying on the floor, still in my coat and scarf, kicking the wall, and sobbing. So terrified I drove to my parents’ house after dinner to cry onto my mother’s shoulder. So terrified I’m struggling to find the words to write about it. Terrified.
Because the second year is when I learned that not drinking isn’t the end of the battle. That I’m still sick. I still have bipolar disorder and it’s still something that needs to be managed. The second year is when I learned that there’s a difference between giving your all and giving enough.
The second year is the year I learned that yes, I have PTSD. Yes, some horrible things have happened to me. Yes, I’ve been hurt by people, but they didn’t do this to me. The second year is when I learned that no matter how much other people have done, the fact that I’m sick is nobody’s fault and I have to stop blaming them. That blaming them is just letting them do it again and again.
This year I finally learned that if I’m ever going to get better I have to mourn the loss of normality. I have to let go of the idea that if I can just stay sober everything will be okay. I learned I have to manage my medication, go to therapy, exercise everyday, avoid caffeine, get regular sleep, and write daily. Just like not drinking, these aren’t options for me. They’re not perks. It’s just what I have to do if I want to be okay. And I want to be okay.
If I’m going to do that, some things have to change. I have to admit that I’ve been wallowing in my marriage in order to avoid discovering who I really am without booze. That I’ve let a relationship become my defining attribute, so that I don’t have to figure out what my defining attribute is. What I want it to be. I’m going to have to admit that I’ve been using love and food and video games and sleep to prop me up the way bourbon used to.
I feel like I just barely made it to the finish line this year. I feel like a dry drunk. But I also know that–just like when I quit drinking–realizing what I need to do is half the battle. So in the next year I’m going to give myself the space to figure out who I am as a person. Give myself the space to manage my illness effectively. The space to stop blaming my character flaws on what happened to me in the past. The space to stop confusing character flaws and symptoms.
Because when I hit my third year, I want to know I earned it. I want to know I’m stronger. I want to know I did it different.
Things are getting quiet around here. The boxes are all broken down and we’ve hung the pictures on the walls. Moved in, but I still haven’t fallen into a proper schedule.
Consistency is key, I know this. I have to get up at the same time every day, go to bed at the same time every night. I have to get at least thirty minutes of exercise daily and eat around the same times. Bipolar disorder thrives on the sporadic. It amplifies the fluctuations, grabs hold to the moments I fall out of rhythm and pulls me hard in a dangerous direction.
It feels like I’m slipping. And then I blame myself for the slip. And guilt myself for the blame. One emotion cascading into the next until it’s everything I can do not to curl up on our new carpet and sob.
I imagine I am the Columbia River, pummeling through the gorge. I imagine I am Mount Hood, tearing up across an empty skyline. I imagine I am rainfall and mushrooms and moss. Powerful and peaceful and radiant. I imagine I am a free-floating seed, but only for a moment. Soon I will find roots again, create channels.
Ruby Pipes 