THE LONELINESS NOBODY WARNED ME ABOUT IN SOBRIETY

I stopped drinking, but why did I feel so alone?

There is a kind of loneliness in sobriety that I don't think we talk about enough.

And I remember exactly when I started feeling it.

Somewhere between six and nine months sober, something began changing inside me.

For the first time in my life, I was beginning to understand what loneliness really felt like.

And what made it so confusing was that I had never experienced loneliness quite like this when I was drinking.

I could be sitting in a crowded room, surrounded by my family, people I loved, people who loved me, and still feel deeply, painfully alone.

I remember thinking, How can I feel this lonely when I'm surrounded by everyone? After all I have all these kids, plus grandkids now. The house was never empty. Me, lonely? No way. 

But there was something else happening underneath that loneliness.

Nothing was going the way I thought it would once I got sober.

I think somewhere in my mind I believed that if I stopped drinking, my life would start falling into place.

My relationships would get better. My family would be happier. My emotions would settle down. I would finally have the peace I had been searching for.

But that wasn't happening the way I imagined.

I had stopped drinking, but life hadn't stopped being life.

People were still people.

Relationships were still complicated.

My expectations were still there.

And suddenly I was feeling emotions I had spent years escaping.

Alcohol had been my escape. Sobriety was teaching me how to stay.

And staying present with myself was uncomfortable.

Here's what I've come to understand.

Sometimes loneliness isn't about the absence of people.

Sometimes it's about feeling disconnected from yourself, from your expectations, and from the life you thought you were supposed to have.

I was grieving something I couldn't even explain.

Maybe I was grieving the woman I used to be. Maybe I was grieving the life I imagined sobriety would give me. Maybe I was finally becoming aware of feelings that alcohol had helped me avoid.

And perhaps it was a little bit of all three.

But here's the part I want another woman in early sobriety to understand.

Being sober doesn't mean you will never feel lonely. And feeling lonely doesn't mean your recovery isn't working.

Sometimes it means you're beginning to feel life without numbing it.

But we cannot stop there.

We have to learn what to do with those feelings.

For me, recovery meant learning to build genuine connections with other women, showing up to meetings even when I didn't feel like going, being of service, working the Steps, and learning how to sit with uncomfortable emotions without running from them.

It meant letting go of the belief that everyone and everything around me had to change before I could experience peace.

And most importantly, it meant learning that I could ask for help.

Because isolation can be dangerous for someone recovering from alcoholism.

And loneliness, when left unspoken, can slowly turn into resentment, self-pity, and the desire to escape.

Today, I understand something I didn't understand at six months sober.

Sobriety removed the alcohol. Recovery taught me how to live with myself.

And those are two very different things.

A few questions for the woman reading this tonight

• Are you lonely because you're alone, or because life isn't meeting your expectations?

• Are you allowing people to know the real you, or are you hiding behind the words "I'm fine"?

• Are you building a life in recovery, or simply waiting for sobriety to make everything better?

• When loneliness visits, do you reach for connection or retreat into isolation?

You don't have to have all the answers today.

But please don't confuse a difficult season of sobriety with a failed recovery.

Sometimes the greatest relationship we will ever rebuild is the relationship we have with ourselves.

And that takes time.

Recover. Reinvent. Rise.

Michelle Ann | A Woman in Recovery
TheHealingCheff.com