I’m waking up in a dark bedroom not my own with the all familiar dull thud in my head, heaviness in my heart, and the desperate need for water. All signs that once again I have had too much to drink, and I am disgusted. I take a deep breath to try and center myself, and I can smell the stale booze and cigarette smoke on my skin and in my hair. I am on vacation, and I hate it, and I don’t even want to think about the day ahead. I have soiled the day with my antics from the night before.
I hear my husband softly snoring, and that gives me a wee bit of comfort. I peel my swollen eyelids open, do a quick body scan. I want to know if I fell asleep in my clothes. Well, I have my bra on, but that’s about it.
I was in Fort Myers Beach Florida at a little condo where we have a week on the ocean once a year. My mom and I bought a timeshare on a whim over 20 years ago to demonstrate our independence and stick it to my dad and my ex-husband. I’m not sure how that was really “sticking it to them” but we were pretty smug about it.
And so began so many years of charming loving memories with my mom and my kids. The kids were still little back then, where every morning the ocean floor held adventures and mystery. We’d wake super early before the tide came in, stumbling down to the beach with our brightly colored buckets to see what treasures were revealed. It’s some of my very best memories and it all still makes me feel happy and cozy and delighted as I saw the world from their eyes. Especially my mom. My mom grew up in poverty in the south, and “owning” a little condo, once a week, on the ocean, seemed like an impossible dream that came true.
Time went on of course, and the children grew older and it became harder to pull them out of school to go to the little condo on the ocean. My dad died, and a piece of my mom did too as she withdrew, lost her sparkle. and in time began her decent into dementia. Alcohol and I began our bitter battle, and I too lost my sparkle. But still we kept the little condo on the ocean.
I got remarried and my husband and I started going to the little condo on the ocean. But it didn’t feel the same. It somehow lost its innocence. It lost its magic from the time when the kids were running around, taking sleepy baby naps on the couch. The mornings didn’t carry the same promise, and the days did not wrap themselves full of adventure. Instead the mornings were fuzzy hangover mornings full of regret, and the days were full of drinking and around and around it all went, making me dizzy, making me confused, and making me drunk. But we were on vacation, and isn’t that what adults did? They drank to relax, to take the edge off. But my edge wasn’t coming off, it was hanging on tight and my vacation became a nightmare as the drinking took over. So hangovers replaced exploring the ocean floor. Spending the afternoon drinking at a local beach bar replaced the hunt for the perfect seashell. And playing Marco Polo in the pool? Well, you guessed it. It was replaced with getting wasted by the pool.
Each year when it was time for my husband and I to plan to return to the little condo on the ocean I would say I didn’t want to go, and used the excuse that I didn’t want to take the time off work. His eyes would grow wide in amazement and he’d put his hands on his hips. “Are you kidding me? What kind of a maniac doesn’t want to go to Florida, in the winter, to the ocean?” This maniac. Because the drinking and the hangovers were ruining the memories that I held so dear to my heart.
Fast forward. I am now 8 months sober, and this year I became brave enough, vulnerable enough, and strong enough to explain why all these years in the past I fought like crazy to skip this particular vacation.
I am at the little condo on the ocean right now. It is my first time here sober since my mom and I would bring the children to laugh and play in the sun. It’s just my husband and I. and there are no hangovers in the mornings, and there are no days spent drinking at the local beach bars. Instead we are waking up early to look for treasures on the ocean floor, we are taking walks looking for the perfect seashell, we are laying by the pool reading, and we are kayaking in the mangroves.
As I look around the little condo on the ocean this morning I think about my mom, the kids and I inhabiting this space. I’m not feeling sad any longer, I am feeling grateful for the time we were all together with endless days of wonder beckoning to be spent full of love. And I’m so grateful I didn’t give up on this space and let my struggles with alcohol take it away from me. It is clean and fresh again, and ready for new memories and adventures.
