Not sure how many times I’ve said that date out loud. A lot. Every day for awhile. Once or twice a week for years. Now it just sits silently on my tongue, a date that won’t be forgotten, a date that means something really only to me.

Even still, I’d argue that 2.4.14 impacted a bunch of people in my life, whether they knew it or not. My…choice? to not drink alcohol any longer was less of a choice and more of an imperative: Nothing of major consequence had happened on the outside, but inside was an entire world of destruction. I did a fucking number on myself. The bossy, bookish girl who grew up to be a self-deprecating but lovable sarcasm generator was a black hole soul. Drinks made it tolerable.

Until they didn’t. So I came to that point where a part of me actually listened to the voice that loudly called out from the murky depths, that said that drinking was no longer a solution. That voice was the real me. That voice was right. I was lucky to really believe it.

You see, when you realize a key doesn’t fit a lock – a lock you need to open every day, 3 or 4 or 9 times a day, you quit using the wrong key. Because no matter how much you try, that door is not gonna open. I don’t know that I’ll ever understand why or how I figured it out. Some call it divine intervention. It didn’t feel divine. It felt shameful. Shameful that I didn’t figure it out sooner. Shameful that I spent a lot of time and hurt trying to open the fucking door with a generationally passed-down, worn out, jagged key.

I still don’t think I’ve somehow been handed “the” solution; I think it’s folly to assume that life is easy breezy cover girl now that I’m ten years past the door. It’s hard, but it’s hard in the way that feelings always are. If I’ve figured anything out in ten years, I think it’s that we only get one shot here – it’s short, so short, sometimes we don’t even know how short. I don’t want to spend it trapped in the misery of my ancestral trauma. There’s plenty of that without the alcohol.

There’s more I want to write, but nah. I’ll leave it there. If I’m lucky, ten will turn into twenty or twenty-five, and I’ll still be here with my silly little key, but this time it works, and the door stays open.